finding meaning from pirates 12, yankees 5

I've clearly been making a big deal out of the Pinstripes' long-awaited return to Pittsburgh, and last night's game provided the reason why. Consider the take of Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke?, which clearly gleaned more from this game than an otherwise routine victory in late June:

Tonight, as the Pirates cruised with a 12-3 lead in the ninth inning and Franquellis Osoria on the mound, mopping up the last three outs, the fans stood on their feet and chanted, "LET'S GO BUCS! LET'S GO BUCS!" And maybe this game was on the North Side of Pittsburgh with an awful reliever on the mound as a bad Pirate team closed out a win over a struggling Yankee team in mid-June, but for one night everyone in the stands might as well have been in Oakland at Forbes Field in October of 1960, watching Roy Face close out a surprising Game 1 win over the vaunted Yankees, and singing, "The Bucs are going all the way!" That's what baseball can do to you sometimes, and that's why sometimes stupid interleague games in June that have no real bearing on the standings can mean the world to a bunch of fans.

I was at the All-Star Game at PNC Park in 2006, and what struck me most was how good it felt to observe people in Pittsburgh taking an interest in baseball again. Indeed, the buzz that filled the ballpark that night was palpable -- a reminder that there's still no sports feeling like a playoff baseball feeling, which is something Pirates fans certainly haven't felt for a loooong time. True, a lot of folks were at PNC last night to see the Yankees, but it was still a sellout crowd on a Tuesday night when there were no giveaways or gimmicks to attract people who simply had nothing better to do. And as Dejan's story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette notes, this wasn't a crowd mainly made up of Yankees fans. It also wasn't a crowd that had some half-assed interest in what transpired on the field: They stayed til the end, and they were chanting for the Buccos right up until the last out. Baseball in Pittsburgh has been on life support for a long time, and while the current Pirates still have a long way to go, we are seeing signs of life, even if it's little more than just enough life to hold our interest until the Steelers get to St. Vincent. And last night, we can hope, was a great start.

(more) revisiting the 1960 world series

GREAT story and photos in today's New York Times about the Pirates' improbable World Series win over the Yanks, what with the teams meeting tonight in Pittsburgh for the first time since William Stanley Mazeroski ended the whole shebang with that home run at 3:36 p.m. on Oct. 13, 1960. Even for those who don't like sports, or who have little interest in them, this is the sort of story that clearly explains why sports are so cool. There's too much about that remarkable series in the article, so there's no point re-hashing it, but the money quote is right at the end, when the writer, Sean D. Hamill, interviews a young man who recently occasioned to visit the still-standing piece of the home run wall Maz's shot cleared on that glorious afternoon at old Forbes Field 48 years ago:

Recently, J. W. Eddy, 25, a Pirates fan from Uniontown, Pa., visited the remnants of that wall while taking a break from studying for the bar exam at the nearby University of Pittsburgh Law School. Why come to this old piece of brick wall to remember an event that occurred 23 years before he was even born? "It’s kind of sacred here, really," Eddy said. "To any true Pirate fan, it’s like folklore. You just come to touch some of that history."

Amen.

Maz is slated to throw out the first pitch tonight, which should be great. And, just to add to the cool, The Times has even re-printed George Silk's famous Life magazine photograph of cheering fans taking in the moment from atop the Cathedral of Learning, the University of Pittsburgh's towering campus landmark. Pretty neat.

yankees-pirates, 48 years later

When the New York Yankees last played in Pittsburgh, Bill Mazeroski did what he did and "made Mickey Mantle cry," as the young Colagero Anello tells Sonny LoSpecchio in A Bronx Tale, a movie moment that still makes everyone from Western Pennsylvania quietly pump their fists every time they see it, if not also causing them to point toward the screen and shout "HA HA!" to the annoyance of anyone else also present. All these years later, with the Bronx Bombers coming back for a sold-out interleague series at PNC Park starting Tuesday night, all the usual opportunities to wax nostalgic are out there. For starters, Gene Collier has a column in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that points to the obvious economic disparities between the teams, though he fails to mention that if the Pirates were better run, they'd have been much more competitive in recent years. Books-wise, I'd recommend Jim Reisler's Best Game Ever, which totally stole my own idea for a book topic but really is a terrific read. And heck, for old-time's sake, let's take this opportunity to gaze at that famous photo of Maz as he approaches home plate in what will always be Pittsburgh's greatest sports moment:

BEAT 'EM BUCS!

george carlin, r.i.p.

Always was a fan of his act, but especially the one in which he articulated the differences between baseball and football. RIP.

what would crash think?

"Well, I believe in the soul ... the cock ... the pussy ... the small of a woman's back ... the hangin' curveball ... high fiber ... good scotch ... that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap ... I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a Constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve, and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days. Goodnight." ~ Crash Davis, Bull Durham

Bill Conlin's column, in today's Philadelphia Daily News, brought to mind Crash Davis, played by Kevin Costner, and his unforgettable speech to Annie Savoy, played by Susan Sarandon, in one of the great baseball movies of all time. Conlin, after all these years, and after a long-winded history lesson he no doubt thinks impresses us at the start of his piece, has reached a different conclusion: He believes the time has come for the National League to adopt the designated hitter, if only because American League teams better take advantage of having that extra bat in the lineup. (No word on Conlin's take on the works of Susan Sontag, or the cock ... the pussy, etc.) There's something to be said for Conlin's position, given many of the points he makes, but I wonder if he would have bothered bringing it up at all had Yankees pitcher Chien-Ming Wang not injured himself circling the bases the other day in Houston. What Conlin also ignores is how much strategy is removed from the game when pitchers are forced to bat, to say nothing of the fact that the DH can also be viewed as a gimmick to prolong the careers of aging sluggers incapable of fielding a position. It's also a boon for for the players' union, which benefits greatly from the additional roster spots afforded to all those extra hitters. It may be the way of the future, at least given how the game is now being played in the AL, but there's just something unnatural about it. Part of being a baseball player is having to do everything there is as a baseball player: hitting, fielding, baserunning. That for the last 35 years half of the major leagues has played the game one way, while the other half has played it the other, is the only real scandal here. Crash, where have you gone, buddy?

some bull about bohemia

Get this: Philebrity is channeling Christopher Hitchens -- a life of kings favorite whose Slate columns we've linked to since Day One -- by wondering where the real Philly Bohemia is. Anyone else sense a whiff of hypocrisy in this? Anyone? Anyone? Philebrity -- in case the name didn't give it away -- is a blog site dedicated to listing "cool parties" and "shows" at which everyone flaunts how different they are by looking remarkably similar to everyone else, that makes fun of tourists in "Mom Jeans," that sneers at any kind of music you might have heard of, and that (occasionally) passes off pedestrian, knee-jerk political insight as "progressive." [Interesting that Philebrity describes it has a "man-crush" on Hitchens, considering he's arguably the most vocal supporter of the invasion of Iraq and its subsequent occupation out there. But whatever.] Yes, I know what you're thinking: Why do you read that site, then? Curiosity, for one, gentle reader: It's informative about certain items of interest, and it's written in a snarky, smart-ass sort of way I often find appealing. Besides -- and let's face it -- hipster girls are hot. But to think Joey Sweeney and his Band of Badasses even thought to invoke Jack Kerouac in this little dispatch, complete with a famous photo of Jack from a Beat poetry reading in the 1950s? I mean, come on. Look, I'm second to no one in my admiration for Kerouac, but there's no doubting the so-called Beat Mystique has taken on a life of its own in the last 50 years, to the extent that its cool-outsider aura has been transformed into just another clique of misguided slackers living off the bounty provided by the great material wealth of this country, if not also their parents, many of whom were more likely to have worked for (gasp!) a multinational corporation than some co-op that recycles its receipts for the good of Gaia. I mean, without Daddy's trust fund allowance, how else can Joe and Jane Cool afford that phat loft in NoLibs while spending days that end in "y" thinkingthinkingthinking about the next turgid short story they're going to write while shopping at H&M and running up a ginormous credit-card tab at Standard Tap? The funniest part is, many of them know nothing of Jack Kerouac other than that he wrote On the Road or Dharma Bums, which, you know, many of them never quite got around to finishing, either, and how's that for stereotyping, anyway? Heck, no less than The Village Voice has weighed in on what has become Kerouac, Inc., based on the sorry way some have actually attempted to cash in on his legacy. But so what? If I'm following the logic here, we want to gentrify bad neighborhoods until somebody else does, too, at which point it's just not Bohemian enough anymore. Bottom line: Capitalism isn't perfect, but it is a good thing. To paraphrase what Winston Churchill had to say about democracy, it's the worst economic system there is, except for all the others. Are there excesses? Sure. Is there crassness, consumerism and lots of crap being bought and sold out there? Yup. But it's also the reason Web sites like Philebrity can thrive and exist, and that kids with otherwise nothing better to do can debate where they can confine themselves to talk about continuing to do nothing. That's not to say there's no place for art, or for places where good art can be created and cultivated by good artists. Just that those doing the creating should shut up, do it and please spare us their holier-than-thou pontificating about everyone else who doesn't quite measure up to such rigid standards of non-conformist conformity. We don't much like you, either.

no joke: watch the real world tonight

Keep your eyes peeled for winged pigs: the life of kings is asking people to watch television tonight. Not just any television, mind you, but MTV. And if that weren't ridiculous enough, to be even more specific I want you to watch that silly reality show called The Real World, which comes on at 10 p.m. EDT. No, gentle reader, I haven't lost my mind, though I do realize this request goes against just about everything I hold near and dear. Rather, I'm doing this for a group of friends in a local band called Pawnshop Roses, whose ballad "All the Way Down" will play tonight during the show, perhaps even as one of the program's brainless drunk chicks loses one of her heels while staggering home not long after some douchebag made her cry because he walked off with some other broad he picked up at some meathead bar right after he tried to drink a shot of Jaegermeister off her midrift. Or something. Seriously, the boys from PSR are a good group of dudes who play good rock 'n roll. Guitarist Kevin Bentley told me Sunday he had always dreamed one of his songs would be on MTV. Tonight, it will be. Check it out.

dwight white, r.i.p.

Sad but true: Dwight White is dead. Condolences are obviously in order, and the details of the complications from his surgery will certainly shake out in the days ahead, but man, oh, man. Dwight White. Mean Joe and LC got a lotta love, but Dwight White was the man. Fats Holmes also died in January, which means half of the famed Steel Curtain is now gone. Hard to believe, considering neither Holmes nor White lived to reach the age of 60. RIP.

a penguins post-mortem

Well, we learned this much: The Detroit Red Wings really are the best team in the National Hockey League. Their dominance of the Pens for so much of the Stanley Cup finals was so evident -- Detroit's speed and its ability to play defense was such that often it seemed the team had six skaters on the ice -- it's a wonder the damn thing actually went six games. But we also learned this: The Pens played with tenacity and grit, enough to literally steal that memorable Game 5, which they certainly should have lost. And today, we learned that something really was wrong with Evgeni Malkin, whose play was mysteriously poor throughout the series. Bottom line: The Pens are young -- Sid Crosby is 20, Malkin 21 and Marc-Andre Fleury just 23 -- and many of the game's all-time greats had to lose before they won. They will be back.

pensblog has some fun with sykora's called shot

This is just too fantastic for words, courtesy of the pensblog:

the epic that was game 5 of the stanley cup finals

As the one and only Mike Lange might say, if you missed it, shame on you for six weeks. But if you saw it, if you sat through all or most of that five-hour sporting epic that took place last night in Detroit, you're surely not going to forget it anytime soon, if ever. Hockey is one of those games with what might kindly be described as a niche following -- though still sometimes mentioned as one of the U.S.'s four major professional sports, its national television ratings often rank somewhere between poker and re-runs of Murder, She Wrote. With the constant white screen and the difficulty that goes with following that little black puck, hockey can be a tough game to watch on TV. But then, alone in your living room, you sat through something like last night, something like the three periods and the three overtimes that added up to Penguins 4, Red Wings 3, and you wondered: What's not to get? Granted, not all games are like this. They don't all involve a team staring at elimination and staking a quick 2-0 lead before suddenly falling behind 3-2, the creeping inevitably, the home crowd on its feet, the Stanley Cup being polished and ready to move for the pending coronation until ... the game gets tied with 35 seconds left, the Pens' Maxime Talbot improbably poking the puck into the corner of the net, causing folks from one city to jump and scream while those from the other just screamed. And then the overtimes -- not one, not two, but three of them, all filled with constant sways of action, with big shots and even bigger saves -- all hail Pens keeper Marc-Andre Fleury -- with a back-and-forth melodrama that left you bug-eyed and delirious, a dizzying display that caused you to wear a path in your living room carpet by the time it was all over, at 12:46 a.m., when Petr Sykora of the Pens finally found the net with a goal he had literally guaranteed to a television reporter sometime in the second OT. And that's when your phone started ringing, when friends began texting with congratulatory messages and your parents suddenly called from Pittsburgh just to ask if you saw it, knowing full well you did because they simply needed to share their excitement with you. All it means, in the long run, is that there will be a Game 6 Wednesday night Up-tahn at The Igloo, that the Red Wings still have a 3-2 edge, that the Pens must win two more without losing to win it all. But so what? It'll always be something to savor, something to remember, something that's just a simple reminder of why you really love sports so much in the first place.

brian howard is a better person than you are. just ask him.

The funny thing about Philly's alternative weekly newspapers is the utter unseriousness of their political commentary, most especially when they deign to be serious. It's all so reliably predictable -- one frequently need only take one look at a headline or byline to instantly know what one is about to read. Honestly, the alt-weeklies' politics makes for a cutesy, run-along-now diversion when measured next to the papers' otherwise sound (if somewhat occasionally overwritten) arts and music commentary.

That said, Brian Howard's editor's letter in this week's Philadelphia City Paper really does set a new standard for narcissism, vanity, and self-righteous sanctimoniousness masquerading as true political insight. It reads like a childish book report, and its tone represents everything I find distasteful about contemporary liberalism, even in this era of Bush administration excesses and disappointments. [Disclosure: I know Brian Howard. I went to college with him.]

Brian Howard hates war, you see. Passionately. So much so that he was "on the verge of shedding angry tears" at the dawn of the conflict in Iraq. It's such an admirable stand, really. So admirable I can't wait for him to weigh in on his opposition to kicking puppies, murdering your neighbor, and forgetting to call your mother on Mother's Day. But it goes deeper than that, gentle reader. See, Brian Howard once spent a few "intense months" in Cairo, where he interacted with "Muslims from a number of Middle Eastern countries." And guess what? He became friendly with -- wait for it -- "people with beliefs much different from my own but with concerns not so dissimilar." No! Really! It can't be! I was reminded of all those kids in Leningrad and Kiev during the 1980s, the ones you sometimes read about who wore blue jeans and listened to the Beatles and Tears for Fears at the clubs while openly wondering why Reagan and Gorbachev couldn't just shake hands and get on with that whole peace thingy because, you know, we're really not that different deep down, man, and peace in our time would only happen if people just sort of, you know, let it happen and stuff. Except, of course, for the inconvenient fact that the Soviet leadership had begun that decade by invading Afghanistan, much like it had been swallowing up the eastern bloc, Central America and even southeast Asia since the end of World War II (God, I miss the Cold War). Fast forward to today, where the Iranians are about to go nuclear at a time when their president consistently makes idle boasts about wiping one of his neighbors off the map, to say nothing of entire cultures who are rapidly reproducing while simultaneously raising many of their children to strap bombs to their waists before sending them into pizza parlors and nightclubs to blow up grandmothers and teenagers. Look, one can argue reasonably about whether Iraq was the proper front for the current conflict, but the sad fact of life is that war is a perpetual part of the human condition. The only way 9/11 really "changed everything" was by reminding us once again of this unfortunate reality. But Brian Howard is conspicuously silent about all that and what to possibly do about it, since it would requite actually thinking and understanding something that doesn't directly concern him.

Now, I will give the City Paper credit for this: Doron Taussig's lengthy cover story interview with Bassam Sebti, an Iraqi who has come to the U.S. to study writing while leaving his family behind, is fascinating, thorough and nuanced. Many readers, in fact, will no doubt miss this little nugget toward the end of the piece: "...Bassam does not believe America should pull its troops immediately out of Iraq. He doesn't even believe that the invasion necessarily had to be a bad thing for Iraqis. He does believe that Americans and Iraqis will need to work together to build a better Iraq, and if that's going to happen, Americans will need to pressure their leaders to make better decisions, and offer more than blithe assurances that things are getting better." In other words, despite having endured more direct misery than any of us will ever know, Bassam Sebti is still thinking about the long-term stakes. He's remarkably aware of what lies beyond the here and now. His part of the world, perhaps more so than ours, needs more people like him.

But Brian Howard, in trying to draw on the human toll of the Iraq War as if he were the first to think of such a thing, only insults Sebti's (and his readers') intelligence when he writes: "It's important to see this war, when we do bother to see it, to look beyond explosions and try to imagine the hell living through this war for the last five years has been for families, civilians in Iraq. Reading Bassam's story brought a lot of that back for me." Good to know, pal. Good to know.

That's not even the worst of it, though. See, Brian Howard wonders, just after Memorial Day, how many of us even realize we're in a war. He then proceeds to point out that he spent Memorial Day weekend vacationing in Maine with his girlfriend's family, a jaunt that included a swing by the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, which his girlfriend's father "saluted" as he drove past. Got that, gentle reader? Brian Howard is thinking about the war. Brian Howard hates the war. Brian Howard hates George W. Bush. And Brian Howard hates you for not thinking about all this as much as he does, even as he's happily sticking his feet in the sand, smug with his own sense of moral superiority.