August 28th, 2006 → 10:33 am @ Seth Mnookin
One holdover from the days when I was a media reporter is the overwhelming amount of magazines I receive: Wired, Men’s Health, Shape, Vibe. (If a marketer ever tried to craft a profile based on my mail, he’d think I was schizophrenic or leading a double life. Or both.) Most of the time, said magazines sit around my apartment until the piles become overwhelming. Then I recycle them.
But every now and then (read: in the middle of an epic losing streak during which I can’t sleep), I end up reading through a whole slew of said magazines. So it was last night. And let me say: GQ confuses the hell out of me. A recommendation for a lamp begins, “That black halogen floor lamp your mom bought you freshman year isn’t going to cut it anymore.” The advice column features this question: “I just graduated and I have a bunch of job interviews coming up at various magazines in New York City. I’m confused by the whole business casual thing.” And then there’s an article on $500 hand-made shirts made in Paris and a photo spread of Zach Braff wearing $4000 suits. I understand aspirational, but that’s a serious disconnect.
By the time I got to page 384 and John Jeremiah Sullivan’s “The Final Comeback of Axl Rose,” I was experiencing a pretty intense case of vertigo and basically just flipping through the remaining 25 pages so I could move on to last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. But Sullivan — whom I hadn’t heard of but later discovered is the author of Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriter’s Son — pulled off an increasingly rare feat: a glossy magazine article that had me laughing out loud and nodding my head at the same time. (It’s not as difficult as making circles on your stomach with one hand while tapping the top of your head with the other, but it’s close.)
The story was written in the first person and done without the benefit of an actual interview with Rose, which is probably a good thing; celebrity interviews, as it were, are usually carefully scripted events meant to convey a sense that said star of the moment and said writer are longtime friends instead of two people who just met each other and will never speak again. (“When I first saw John, he was sitting next to the pool at the Chateau Marmont. I walked over to our table, and he looked up. ‘You hungry?’ he said, eyeing me from beneath his vintage Wayfarers. ‘Let’s grab a bite.'”) Sullivan’s piece gleefully dispensed with this kind of formulaic tripe in favor of passages like:
“When he first came onto the scene, he often looked, in photographs, like a beautiful, slender, redheaded 20-year-old girl. I hope the magazine will run a picture of him from about 1988 so the foregoing will seem a slightly less creepy observation and the fundamental spade-called-spade exactitude of it will be laid bare. But if not, I stand by it. Now he has thickened through the middle — muscly thickness, not the lardass thickness of some years back. He grabs his package tightly, and his package is huge. Only reporting. Now he plants his feet apart, ‘You know where you are?’ he asks, and we bellow that we do, we do know, but he tells us anyway. ‘You’re in the jungle, baby,’ he says, and then he tells us that we are going to die.”
or laconically pithy observations, such as:
“He was nervous, but nervous in the way that any decent person is when you sit down in front of him with a notebook and are like, ‘I have to make a two-thirty flight. Can you tell me about the heaviest things in your life? And order more spinach-‘n’-artichoke dip. I can expense it.'”
Indeed.
I know I’m supposed to come up with a epigrammatic ending here, but I’m tired, late for an appointment, and still reeling from a 3-11 record over the last 14 games (to say nothing of a starting lineup that would have been more appropriate for a spring training game than a late-August match). If you’re looking for a diversion, spend the $3.99 and grab the September GQ. Lord knows you could use something that makes you laugh out loud.
Post Categories: Axl Rose & GQ & John Jeremiah Sullivan & Media reporting
August 27th, 2006 → 1:47 am @ Seth Mnookin
Oops: got a little carried away there. (And really, that wouldn’t be fair to Embree — by the end of his tenure with the Sox, he wasn’t pitching in high leverage situations.) So let’s just say it: Mike Timlin is sucking ass. In the last nine days, Timlin’s gone 4.1 innings, coughed up 7 earned runs, blown 2 saves, and picked up 2 losses. (Take a deep breath before you read this next sentence. Ready? Here goes.) If Timlin had done nothing more than hold the line in the last week-plus, the Sox would only be 2.5 games behind the Yankees in the East. (It’s only because I’ve been over this ground before that I’ll resist going back to drink from that well.) (Oh, and remember: be nice. Or at least polite. Ish.)
Post Categories: Mike Timlin
August 26th, 2006 → 11:56 pm @ Seth Mnookin
“He’s never had to lead. He can just go and play and have fun. He hits second – that’s totally different than third or fourth in a lineup.”
— Alex Rodriguez, Esquire, April 2001
It really is, isn’t it?
New York Yankees starting lineup, August 26, 2006
1. Damon, CF
2. Rodriguez, 3B
3. Jeter, SS
4. Abreu, RF
5. Giambi, 1B
6. Cano, 2B
7. Williams, DH
8. Cabrera, LF
9. Fasano, C
Post Categories: A-Rod & Derek Jeter
August 26th, 2006 → 11:48 pm @ Seth Mnookin
With A-Rod’s three strikeouts on Saturday — to go along with his four on Friday — he now has 13 Ks in his last 23 at bats.
Post Categories: A-Rod
August 26th, 2006 → 11:46 pm @ Seth Mnookin
Sure, his run in the ’86 playoffs was as good as, say, Mark Bellhorn’s in 2004. But man, does he suck in the booth. He makes Ron Gant look like Howard Cosell.
Post Categories: Broadcasting
August 26th, 2006 → 11:08 am @ Seth Mnookin
From the Elias Sports Bureau, August 26, 2006:
“Alex Rodriguez struck out four times in a 6-5 loss to the Angels, and in the sixth inning he stranded a runner at third base with one out. That was the 25th runner that A-Rod has stranded at third base with less than two outs this season, the highest total in the majors.”
Which begs the question: Do golden sombrero‘s go with purses?
Post Categories: A-Rod
August 26th, 2006 → 12:15 am @ Seth Mnookin
Last week, someone who spends a lot of time around baseball told me he thought Coco Crisp was the worst centerfielder in the A.L. I thought that seemed excessive, although admittedly I hadn’t seen Crisp much in Cleveland (and the wild variations in defensive valuations — is Trot Nixon the best right fielder in the league? Or one of the worst? — leave a bit to be desired).
So I can’t speak with any authority on where Coco ranks among other centerfielders. I can say his instincts have been atrocious, and rarely as much as they were tonight. In the bottom of the fifth, with Schilling dealing and Yuniesky Betancourt on first, Willie Bloomquist hit what should have been a bloop single into center field…except Coco decided he was going to be a hero and bellyflopped about ten feet short of the ball, allowing Betancourt to score and giftwrapping a triple for Bloomquist. The last time a person made that kind of decision — needlessly diving for a ball when the benefit of a catch would be far outweighed by the danger of letting the ball get by you — Adam Stern ended up with a highlight reel, along with a stern lecture. (I’ll be here all week, folks.) “We’re playing no doubles there,” Francona said after Stern’s game-ending, April 18 grab. “We want it to take two hits to have the guy score from first. If he doesn’t make that catch — if the ball slides by him — he scores on hit. I think he learned a lesson, and thankfully it didn’t cost us a ballgame.” By the 20th, Stern was back at Pawtucket. He hasn’t been back since.
Who knows what Crisp was thinking. Maybe he’s running scared, and hoping he can find some way — any way — to win back his confidence, and Sox fans. Maybe he was thinking back to June, when he made what was immediately called a highlight reel grab for the ages. (That’s obviously hyperbolic, although it might have been the catch of the year. At least for a couple of days, until Gary Matthews Jr. literally climbed the outfield wall to steal a homer from Mike Lamb.)
Maybe he really is the worst centerfielder in the league. Or maybe he’s not cut out to play in Boston. It happens. This could be one of those times.
I think it’s weak when writers slam baseball execs for making moves those same writers supported at the time, and I supported the Crisp signing. He was young, he came cheap, and his offensive numbers were good and trending upwards (and were significantly better away from Cleveland than they were at home). Right now, it looks like this was a move that didn’t pan out. And if the season ends up as it began — with Crisp looking as if we wants to be anywhere but on the field at Fenway — I can’t imagine Coco will be patrolling center for the Sox next year.
Post Categories: Coco Crisp
