ghost of miles

The recap for today's Yanks-Mariners game confirms my anecdotal suspicion: New York is 12-0 without A-Rod in the lineup this year. Quite an astonishing turn from last year, when they were under .500 without him... Cano really seems to thrive even more in the cleanup spot.

I hope CC's up to starting every third day throughout the playoffs. Yes, every third day...can't afford to give the ball too often to A.J., Javy, or Dustin Moseley. Sarcasm aside, if Pettitte's not back by mid-September, then NY's chances of repeating are finished. Javy's deadarm issues clearly are not going away, A.J. is A.J., and I think Hughes' effectiveness may be questionable as well. It's a very different picture if Andy's back in it, of course, but his setback this week means he won't be pitching an MLB game until mid-September at the earliest, and that's not a lot of time to regain his optimum level of performance before the playoffs. Pettitte update EDIT: A-Rod to the DL, Nova called up Nova will get the start Monday against Toronto. And I guess we'll be seeing a lot more of Nunez (and Pena) with A-Rod now on the DL.

We re-aired Young Wynton: Early Marsalis this past week and it remains archived for online listening. Coming up this week: "As Evening Falls: Jazz Nocturnes."

Roger needs to get himself a new gig.

The record-store owner/collector? Murray Gershenz He had to have been Mr. Pear.

See Scott Wenzel's comment at the bottom of this Night Lights post.

This is not good: MRI shows small but persistent groin strain for Pettitte I think we'll be lucky to have him back by mid-September. In the meantime, Phil Hughes is about 35 IP away from hitting the limit that the Yankees have set for him. Combine that with Javy's struggles and A.J.'s Jekyll-and-Hyde performances and you have a very shaky rotation for the September schedule, let alone the playoffs.

Please welcome back to active baseball play--JOSE CANSECO! Canseco signs with Laredo Broncos

I saw that, but it's supposedly because A-Rod's out of the lineup. Yanks up 4-2 going into the bottom of the 7th, which is good, as both Tampa Bay and Boston are running away with their games tonight.

Don DeLillo wrote a wonderfully evocative fictional recreation of the Giants-Dodgers game, published first as "Pafko at the Wall" in Harper's and then later as the first chapter of his novel Underworld.

Anybody else read the article about this series in the new Downbeat (September issue)?

Yes--the Mickey Mouse revision, or something akin to that.

Pinstripe Alley blogger Travis G. thinks it's time to bat Brett Gardner leadoff.

Still held on--pretty similar to his epic near-fail against Boston a few games ago. I really thought we had a shot at it, but Jeter grounded into a double play with the bases loaded to end the game. Tie atop the AL East again! NY's 7-10 since July 29... amazing that we're even still tied with you guys, Papsrus.

Maybe, but what just happened to Cliff Lee in the 8th?

Thanks for the link to the audio clips, Mark. Amazing to hear the difference between the original and the remastered track on that Calloway performance.

Javy was at 106 pitches after 4 IP, last I checked. 6 hits and 5 walks given up--it's amazing he's only surrendered two runs so far. Yes, the offense is MIA again, against yet another "hey-we've-never-faced-this-guy-before" pitcher (as documented up the thread, the Yankees over the past 10 years are the worst team in MLB against pitchers they've never seen before...hence the jokes of late that any team who wants to take the Yanks down in a series this year should call up their three best Triple A pitchers). I dunno, Dave James, I'm as hot and cold on this team's postseason chances as the bats seem to be. Hopefully Pettitte will get back in the nick of time... and Hughes will be halfway decent down the stretch. Right now I don't think Javy will be seeing much of anything but middle/long relief action in the playoffs, especially if his fastball never tops 89 again. EDIT: Javy didn't come back for the 5th. Granderson just caught stealing, so we're still at 0 runs and 1 hit after five innings against Scherzer. EDIT 2: I nearly forgot--Scherzer was in the Yankee system--part of the Granderson for Jackson/Coke deal. Geez, they ought to at least have a decent book on the guy... A-Rod out of the game for mysterious reasons, and now Swisher out as well. EDIT 3: Sweeny Murti tweets

"Did you get any pears?... Did you get any pears?"

My reaction as well. The copyright issues alluded to at the end of the article would be a nightmare, but if they could be resolved for some of the recordings, imagine what a 7-CD best-of Mosaic compilation might sound like.

He was one of the first jazz artists I heard--a fellow indie-rock fan and good friend of mine mentioned that he'd been listening to some Ellington, and about a week later I picked up a DKE cassette on a whim at a local bookstore. Not long after that I went out to D.C. to visit an ex-girlfriend, and the whole week I was there we listened to the cassette quite a lot in the car (along with Nirvana's NEVERMIND, which had just come out...quite an audio pairing!). I figured out later on that the music was drawn from Ellington's 1946-47 transcriptions, and ended up asking for (and receiving) the whole box-set as a birthday present: The music on the cassette is replicated on this single CD: Something in the music that hit me hard as profound and beautiful--19 years later I've got a lot more of it, and a strong sentimental attachment to the 1946-47 transcriptions, since that's where I first encountered him.

My initial reaction the same as yours, TTK--I liked it so much that I ended up watching most of the encore presentation as well. Very interesting season so far.

Tony DeSare and Jose James are two that come to mind.

LeBron getting feisty on Twitter:

In other words, you've decided to take your talents to Fort Lauderdale! Congratulations, Dan--sounds like a great gig for you, and a very smart move on the agency's part to give you this opportunity.

Medjuck, see John Howland's book ELLINGTON UPTOWN: DUKE ELLINGTON, JAMES P. JOHNSON AND THE BIRTH OF CONCERT JAZZ. Pgs. 90-99 deal with the Vitaphone film short.