ghost of miles

Joshua Diemert at Pinstripe Alley agrees: Robo challenge … sounds good to me, and seems similar to what iirc Dan has advocated for. Will give teams and batters a chance to reverse the obviously blown calls while preserving fluidity for borderline calls and framing. Bring it on, the sooner the better. No love lost here for bad umpiring.

Great indeed!

So yesterday former Yankee pitcher Orlando Hernandez, aka El Duque, threw out the ceremonial first pitch at Yankee Stadium and took some photos with Yankee rookie and game starter Luis Gil. Gil went on to rack up 14 strikeouts in 6 IP, breaking El Duque’s team record for most K’s by a rookie in a single game. I love it when things like that happen—reminiscent of David Cone’s perfect game as a Yankee back in 1999. The ceremonial first pitch that day was thrown out by Don Larsen. (As a bonus, Larsen had been chosen because it was Yogi Berra Day, and Yogi was returning to the stadium for the first time in 14 years after being fired by George Steinbrenner 16 games into the 1985 season.) El Duque and Luis Gil

Hey, me too! Such a great set.

Speaking of annihilation… Judge hit one 467 feet into the third deck at Target Field last night:

A recent trip to New York City’s Tenement Museum inspired me to finally get around to reading Mike Gold’s classic novel of Lower East Side life in the early 20th century (Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep, published four years after Gold’s work, is an outstanding book covering roughly the same area and period):

CD 1 of the Springsteen Columbus, Ohio show that my youngest brother and I saw a couple of weeks ago. The Boss was in prime form that night:

Not aware of another one, though there's an excellent book about the AAF which you likely already know about (and is admittedly not a bio, but certainly an in-depth account of Miller and the transition from the civilian band to the military band: Next To A Letter From Home: Major Glenn Miller's Wartime Band Recommended to others as well who might have an interest in Miller and/or this particular orchestra, which was an extraordinary one.

Sounding great out of the gate.

Judge has been in MLB for 7+ years without getting ejected prior to this incident, and—as I’ve documented before—is the far-and-away leader when it comes to balls being called strikes. I’ll grant that the call he was protesting was on a borderline pitch that could have gone either way, but it’s amazing to me that Judge went this long without being tossed, given all the blown calls he’s endured since coming up in 2016. Robo-ump is coming, sooner or later, and the game will be the better for it.

Pre-ordered. An appropriate valedictory set for Michael.

This week’s New Yorker cover by artist Faith Ringgold is titled “Sonny’s Bridge, 1986”:

Up one more time—I scheduled this rerun six weeks ago, so it was weird/coincidental timing that it aired last week: 1968, Riot: The Year In Jazz

Wish I’d been able to see the actual exhibition, but the catalogue’s the next-best thing:

Verrrry interesting, haven't heard this one before! Familiar with the song only because of the Gene Krupa/Anita O'Day studio version from around the same time.

Jim Bowden at the Athletic lists his ten biggest disappointments of the young season so far, and bad umpiring clocks in at number 3: 3. Umpires making headlines because of egregious mistakes We have never had a more talented group of umpires in the history of the game. Instant replay has been a huge success and evaluating umpires has never been more precise. That’s why it’s so disappointing that umpires Angel Hernandez and Hunter Wendelstedt stood out for all the wrong reasons in the season’s first month. First up was Hernandez, who on April 12 made a series of laughable calls behind the plate during an at-bat by Rangers outfielder Wyatt Langford. With the bases loaded and one out in the fourth inning, Langford didn’t swing at single pitch from Astros righty J.P. France, watching all five he faced land significantly outside the strike zone. Ball 1 was in the dirt, Ball 2 was high and outside, “Ball 3” was way outside, “Ball 4” was farther outside and “Ball 5” was even farther outside. Hernandez called the last three strikes. Everyone misses calls, but not like this. Did Hernandez decide to let a rookie know who was boss, that he would decide the strike zone rather than go by the rule book? Who knows with Hernandez, who has a well-deserved reputation as one of the least accurate umpires of all time. This was a total embarrassment to the integrity of the sport, and why Hernandez hasn’t been fired or paid to go away is beyond me. Even worse than that was what took place during the Yankees-A’s game on Monday when Wendelstedt, the home plate umpire, ejected manager Aaron Boone because he heard a fan heckle him and thought it was Boone. TV cameras supported the account of Boone, who said he didn’t say anything to deserve the ejection. After the game, Wendelstedt doubled down on Boone’s ejection, saying, “Apparently what he said was there was a fan right above the dugout. This isn’t my first ejection. In the entirety of my career, I have never ejected a player or a manager for something a fan has said. I understand that’s going to be part of a story or something like that because that’s what Aaron was portraying. He’s the manager of the Yankees. So, he’s the one that had to go.” Wait, what? Now you’re accusing the manager of lying and you’re misrepresenting the situation? Apparently Wendelstedt didn’t know YES Network had a camera trained on Boone that showed he said nothing and another camera on the fan in the front row who made the comment. Wendelstedt should have been suspended and fined a day’s pay for this egregious mistake as well as his response. Three straight balls well out of the zone--certainly more than a ball's width--and Hernandez called them all strikes. No reason for this nonsense anymore, given the available technology. Some fans carried on when replay was introduced, saying it would slow down the game, erode the "romance" of legendary bad blown calls, etc. Instead we have a game today where egregious mistakes can be easily corrected, and a system in place that keeps the replay tactic from being overused. If some sort of modification, perhaps similar to Dan's suggested challenge approach, is necessary to bring robo-ump to use, then by all means implement it. I'm so sick of seeing numerous blown calls in games, and there's really no excuse for them continuing. I predict we'll have some form of robo-ump in the next couple of years.