September 14th, 2006 → 1:23 pm @ Seth Mnookin
It’s true: tonight’s the long-awaited reading at Professor Thoms’ in Manhattan’s delightfully gentrified East Village (219 Second Ave). Reading/q&a/book signing (there’ll be a bookseller on site) starts at 6:30 — and yes, I’ll answer anything you throw at me — and at 7:30 we all watch the Sox play the Orioles, which can’t be all bad: if the Sox didn’t have to play anyone but the Orioles and the NL, they’d be something like 130-10.
And: I know I’ve been a bit behind the last few days, and I know there’s been plenty to talk about: the Ortiz for MVP controversy, Chapter 28 in the Mike Timlin saga (the headline “Timlin Not Ready To Retire” couldn’t have inspired lots of joy in New England), the spectacle of open warfare in the Fenway trenches, another page in the ongoing what’s up with Manny brouhaha, the hometown park coming in 28th out of 30 in terms of fan value. My only excuse is I’ve been reading every book ever written about the Black Dahlia. Seriously.
Anyway, I’ll remind you all once again that this is as good a time as any to read my book, a recounting fo the when, why, and how of 2001-2005. Hope to see you all of you living in New York. We can relive the glory days.
Post Categories: Feeding the Monster Readings
September 14th, 2006 → 11:49 am @ Seth Mnookin
This week, Jason Moran‘s Bandwagon and the Bad Plus are playing a double-bill at Manhattan’s Blue Note. (There’s a review of the show in today’s Times.) The Blue Note is one of my least favorite jazz clubs — the acoustics suck, the sight lines are crappy, the food is sub-standard, and the crowds drawn by the legendary name are frequently both annoying and unknowledgable — but this is a show worth going to. The Bad Plus are one of my favorite groups of the decade, and they’re as good an introduction to the current jazz scene as anything out there; for such an adventuresome (and rhythmically complex) group, they’re also an easy entry in for those intimated by the whole genre. (“Iron Man,” “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “Heart of Glass,” “We Are the Champions,” and “Chariots of Fire” all make regular appearances on their set lists. No joke.) I’m surprised this isn’t a double bill that’s played together more often; as I wrote back in 2003, they’re among the best of this generation of jazz musicians. (I’ve become newly obsessed with another pianist I wrote about: Brad Mehldau. Check out “Day Is Done” and “Live In Tokyo.”)
Post Categories: Jazz
September 14th, 2006 → 7:56 am @ Seth Mnookin
For two or three years now, I’ve found myself using the verb “freckled” to descibe a series of marks on someone’s body, or a landscape, or a building; just this week, I described a woman’s body as being “freckled with cigarette burns.” I had no recollection of where or why I first started using this construction…at least until this week, when I happened to be reading through “Jimmy’s World,” Janet Cooke’s made-up story about an eight-year-old heroin addict that won a Pulitzer in 1980. Cooke, a writer possessed of an occasional flair for imagery even if she was a bit deficient in the honesty department, used this exact construction to describe Jimmy’s arms as being “freckled” with track marks. I must have picked this up three years ago, when I was writing about Jayson Blair and other journalistic scandals.
My nod of the cap was accidental; many others are intentional. You could fill a library with the books that are run through with homages to Moby Dick. You practically need a reference book to appreciate fully “Ulysses” or Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow,” and that would have a whole section on the ways in which Pynchon specifically alluded to Joyce. Jonathan Coe’s “The Winshaw Legacy, or, What a Carve Up” draws explicitly from the 1962 movie of the same name, and the text of his book contains numerous in-jokes that 99% of readers will never get: sentences, phrases, descriptions drawn from other sources. (Coe has a term for this; unfortunately, my copy of “Winshaw” was borrowed and had not yet been returned; that’s why I hate lending out books.)
In today’s Times, Motoko Rich has an article on the front page of the Arts section titled, “Who’s This Guy Dylan Borrowing From Henry Timrod?” Dylan is, of course, Bob; Timrod is a 19th century Civil War poet. The nut graf: “It seems that many of the lyrics on that album [Dylan’s just-released “Modern Times”]…bear some strong echoes to the poems of Timrod.” To wit, Dylan’s “When the Deal Goes Down”: “More frailer than the flowers / These precious hours.” Nimrod’s “Rhapsody of a Southern Winter Night”: “A round of precious hours / Oh! here, where in the summer noon I based / And strove, with logic frailer than the flowers.” There are a handful of other examples as well — in “Spirit On the Water” and “Workingman’s Blues” — but even in their totality, they don’t account for many of the lyrics on the album. (Rich doesn’t acknowledge the allusion to the Grateful Dead, a band with which Dylan toured, in the song’s title. “Deal,” in fact, has a line — “Don’t you let that deal go down” — that seems to be an allusion to the old folk song of the same name. I certainly wouldn’t put it past Dylan to refer to a song that referred to a song in order to comment ever-so-obliquely on a past brouhaha. But more about that in the next graf.)
This isn’t the first time fans have found striking similarities between Mr. Dylan’s lyrics and the words of other writers. (Oops: that’s actually Rich’s line.) Three years ago, the Wall Street Journal published a scolding article comparing passages from Dylan’s “Love and Theft” to Japanese writer Junichi Saga’s gangster novel, “Confessions of a Yakuza.” The “Yakusa” story became a mini-contretemps, with more than a few headline writers borrowing from Dylan’s oevre for inspiration (“Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright,” “Well There Ain’t No Use to Sit and Wonder Why”).
There’s a small chance, at least in the Timrod case, that Timrod’s phrase simply lodged in Dylan’s mind, something that’s happened to both my mother and me. (My mom once realized a line from one of her poems came from a short story she’d read nearly twenty years earlier.) It’s more likely that Dylan was purposefully nodding to Timrod, a sly tip of the cap that only the select few — 19th century Civil War buffs and poetry junkies — would even have a chance of picking up on in. (The letters for “Nimrod” are contained within “Modern Times,” which, coincidentally, is the title of a Charlie Chaplin classic. From the Civil War poet to an ironic artist’s statement on modernization to perhaps the most important folk artist of the 20th century…) Rich, to her and the Times‘s credit, doesn’t overplay her story (although the article does bring up the talentless plagiarizer Kaavya Viswanathan); let’s hope the rest of the media world follows suit.
Post Categories: Bob Dylan & New York Times & Plagiarism
September 10th, 2006 → 10:32 am @ Seth Mnookin
I’ve been running around a lot the last few days, which has been a mixed blessing — on the one hand, it’s spared me from watching Mike Timlin (or, for that matter, the rest of the Red Sox bullpen) — but it’s also kept me from my normal, obsessive-compulsive posting. (I know: 16 posts in ten days isn’t something to apologize for. Thus: obsessive compulsive.)
So: here are a couple of flashbacks from way back in June. Despite knowing full well the considerable risks involved with writing about Manny, I’ll offer up a June 26th post on the free agent class of 2000 and what it means for Manny’s future with the Sox.
And even though I know no one’s yearning for the 2001, here’s an excerpt from the book that revisits December 20, 2001, the day the Yawkey Trust finally chose the new owners of the Red Sox.
So enjoy. Or, at the very least, distract yourself from 19 losses in the last 25 games.
Post Categories: Feeding the Monster Sneak Peeks & Manny Ramirez & Red Sox ownership
September 10th, 2006 → 10:31 am @ Seth Mnookin
Good old Murray Chass has a history of smacking sources when they dare not talk to him. Thankfully, that’s not usually the case in the rest of The New York Times.
Usually, but not always. In an article printed Thursday titled “Perils and Pleasures of a Walk Down Memory Lane,” a fluff piece explores people’s fascination with and attachment to their childhood homes. Former senator (and vice presidential candidate) John Edwards is writing a book on the subject; Edwards, deciding he didn’t have any desire (or obligation) to help the Times sell papers but he did have an obligation to his publisher to promote his book, decided he’d hold off on talking to the paper about his book until his it was actually published.
The nerve! In a completely gratuitious dig, Elizabeth Olson and Christopher Mason — because a story on childhood homes certainly needs more than one reporter — write, “Mr. Edwards declined to be interviewed further because he wants to save his remarks to coincide with his book’s publication in November.” Was there any need to include this sentence? Absolutely not — not a single reader would have read the story and wondered why, in a piece larded with anecdotes about Goldie Hawn breaking into her old home, there were only a couple of quotes from Edwards. But they’ll notice now that the Times thinks Edwards is being crassly commercial.
Post Categories: John Edwards & Murray Chass & New York Times
September 8th, 2006 → 9:38 am @ Seth Mnookin
Pitcher 1: 7-0, 2.82 ERA, 1 save, 8.91 K/9, and a batting average against hovering around .200 in 8 starts and 14 relief appearances over 63.2 innings.
Pitcher 2: 7-2, 2.89 ERA, 5.48 K/9, and a .208 batting average against in 14 starts over 87.1 innings.
Those two pitchers don’t sound hugely different, right? Pitcher 1 has some relief appearances mixed in, significantly more strikeouts per IP, and averages about a third of an inning more per start, but besides that the stats are more or less identical.
If you haven’t guessed by now, pitcher 1 is an amalgam of Josh Beckett (4-0, 2.83, .165 BAA), Jon Lester (3-0, 2.45 ERA, .241 BAA), Craig Hansen (1-0, 4.50 ERA, .250 BAA in 6 appearances), and Manny Delcarmen (1 save, 2.57 ERA, .231 BAA in 8 appearances) versus the National League. Pitcher 2 is Anibal Sanchez. (Sanchez, in his two AL starts, was 1-0 with a 6.30 ERA and a .326 BAA.)
Why am I pointing this out? Because yesterday, I wrote about the departure of some behind-the-scenes front office talent and wondered whether that had anything to do with the fact that the Sox have seemingly given up a lot of young players who have succeeded elsewhere, while the players they’ve held on to have struggled. (To be fair — to myself — I included this caveat, known as a “cover your ass” in the industry: “That doesn’t mean they won’t, and the success of the young NL phenoms who cut their teeth in Pawtucket and Portland doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have struggled in the AL, or struggled in Boston’s fishbowl atmosphere (San Diego, South Florida, and Pittsburgh ain’t exactly known for their rabid fanbases).”) Scratch the surface a bit and it doesn’t look like the Sox’s young guns have struggled quite so much, at least against comperable talent. (Add in Papelbon to pitcher 1’s stats and you get this: 8-0, 6 saves, 2.55 ERA, 8.76 K/9 in 8 starts and 22 relief appearances over 74 innings.) If only he hadn’t been traded, Gammons might have been right when he said Beckett would win the Cy Young. Unfortunately, he’s playing in the AL.
A little more digging turned up another, um, flaw in my arguement. Are Chadd, Garcia, Eljaua, and Moore the departures that have hurt the Boston Red Sox in 2006? The short answer is no: none of them were ever involved in major league decisions. (Eljaua was involved in Japanese pro scouting…and the Sox’s influx of Japanese players has been about the same before and after he left, i.e., nonexistent.) And regardless of how good Chadd, Garcia and Moore were (and are), there’s a difference between scouting and signing guys and helping to decide who to trade, who to keep, and how to construct a major league roster. Scouts are involved in the former, not the latter.
These scouts might be missed in the future; there also might be scouts just as good already in the Sox’s system. We won’t know that for another couple of years. That’s often the case in baseball: the full impact of decisions made today can’t be truly (and honestly) evaluated until a couple of years down the line. I should — and do — know this; it’s why, for months, I’ve argued that we won’t be able to talk about the non-signing of Pedro and Damon until their contracts are completed. I fell prey to the same thinking I often criticize: wanting to find the answer to a question prematurely.
Oh well. I’ve always said mistakes are inevitable in life; the important thing is to acknowledge them. So I’m acknowledging. Live and learn.
Post Categories: Red Sox front office & Scouts & sweet & Sweet crow
September 8th, 2006 → 9:33 am @ Seth Mnookin
There are many joys of living in New York. The Village Vanguard is half a block away from my apartment. The Shake Shack is within walking distance. The subways run all night. The mayor doesn’t mumble.
There’s also the Times. Most of the time, I count myself as lucky that the Times is the newspaper delivered to my door (er, lobby) every morning.
When I see Murray Chass’s byline, it is not one of those days.
Today, Chass has column about the Marlins. Sort of: the headline is “Raves for the Daffy Marlins, Gibes for the Red Sox.” It’s not surprising that Chass — the man who recently acknowledged that, for him, a labor negotiation without a work stoppage was akin to a baseball season with the World Series (never mind that a work stoppage would actually result in a baseball season without a World Series) — can’t manage a column about the Marlins’ run towards the playoffs without starting off with some digs at the Jeff Loria/Joe Girardi situation. It’s also not surprising that Chass appears incapable of writing anything without it turning into a rant about how much the Sox suck ass; Chass, after all, is the guy who wrote that for the Sox to truly overcome the Yankees, they had to win the AL East…ALCS humilation be damned.
But even Chass seems to be treading dangerously towards white whale territory. Times folks (and I know a fair number of them) are almost universally embarrassed by Chass’s jeremiads. It’s time to stop being embarrassed; this is a man who needs an intervention. Addiction is never pretty, and it’s time for the Times to stop acting as an enabler. Step in and support the poor guy. He’s crying out for help.
Post Categories: Murray Chass & New York Times
