So there’s that. Color me ambivalent. Hopefully Collins demonstrates the player-development skills that earned him regards for his role as Minor League Field Coordinator, and not whatever characteristics made the Angels run him out the door in 1999. And here’s the friendly reminder that the manager probably doesn’t matter as much as we think.
This week’s sandwich — which, as I already confessed, I ate last week — came to me on a tip from a reader like you.
Well, he’s not exactly like you, since we’re all unique and everything. But he is also a reader, and presumably if you’re here, you are as well. The particular reader in question, Mark, writes an excellent (albeit infrequently updated) Giants blog called Bluenatic that you should probably check out.
Mark discovered this sandwich near his workplace and tipped me off via email. You can and should do the same, either by sending a note to tberg@sny.tv or by using the contact form in the tab to the above right. Especially — especially — if you know of a sandwich as good as this one that is reasonably accessible from Midtown Manhattan or Westchester. This region has no shortage of great sandwiches and so, in theory, it shouldn’t be too hard to find a new sandwich to write up every week. But I am limited in scope by my own web-browsing and traveling habits, so I invite you to shake up my whole sandwich paradigm.
The sandwich: Grilled Pork Banh Mi from the Chicken House on 36th street between 7th and 8th in Manhattan.
The construction: A hot, crusty baguette with pork, mayo, sriracha sauce and a bevy of vegetables and herbs that I was too hungry to entirely sort through. Carrots and lettuce were visible, and I’m sure I tasted cilantro and basil.
Important background information: Chicken House isn’t much to look at. It’s a narrow takeout fried-chicken joint with a half-counter and maybe four or five bar stools for the eat-in set. In the 10 minutes I spent waiting on the banh mi, no one else that came in ordered a sandwich. On this particular day, at least, nearly all Chicken House’s business was in fried chicken and fish.
But I could tell from the care that the man at the counter put into my sandwich that it was going to be good. I couldn’t even see all of what he was doing back there, but the concentration on his face and deliberateness with which he piled on the ingredients boded well for the product.
Maybe my own deli experience gave me a radar for fellow great sandwich creators, or maybe we, the sandwich heroes, have some sort of unspoken cosmic connection and he could see in my eyes how badly I wanted a carefully constructed and delicious sandwich. Either way, this was a sandwich made with love — the love of sandwiches. I shouldn’t stereotype, but that type of passion wasn’t entirely what I expected from a quick-serve takeout fried-chicken place in Midtown (not that there’s anything wrong with takeout fried-chicken).
What it looks like (inside wax paper and a plastic bag):
How it tastes: If you read this site with any regularity, you know me well enough to know I don’t liberally throw around the term “party in my mouth.” Actually, I searched this site for “party in my mouth” and found that I’ve only used it once before in all my sandwich-reviewing — in a remarkably similar construction, and also referring to a Vietnamese sandwich.
Truth is, there is some flavor — a combination of flavors, I think — unique to Southeast Asian cuisine that I can’t entirely put my finger on except to say that it’s amazing. I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the basil combined with chili, but there’s something else in there too. I’ve noticed it in Thai, Vietnamese and Cambodian foods now. Has anyone ever had Laotian cuisine? Is it also awesome?
Anyway, this sandwich had that flavor, and it’s still good. Sorry I can’t be more specific. Also, the array of vegetables added some crunch, and bread was excellent. Warm, tasty, crusty, plentiful. Real good foundation for a sandwich.
My only quibble with this pork banh mi, though — and the only thing keeping it out of the Sandwich Hall of Fame — was that there wasn’t quite enough meat. The pork that was on there was moist and delicious — it definitely tasted char-grilled (though I have no idea what the mechanics of that would be in such a small indoor space). But I like a lot of meat, and this sandwich was mostly bread and vegetables. Delicious bread and vegetables, mind you, but I need protein to power my inactive lifestyle.
What it’s worth: That’s the other thing! This sandwich — which was huge, even without a lot of meat — cost only $6. That’s a great deal for anywhere, but for Midtown it’s damn-near insane. Granted, it also cost me one subway trip on my Metrocard, but that’s only because I was too hungry to walk there.
The rating: 89 out of 100. As close to the Hall of Fame as you can be without getting in. And I’m tempted to try it again in case the short amount of meat was a one-time hiccup.
A middle-school principal in Orange County, N.Y. busted in on two students he thought were cutting school, only to find them in bed in their underwear.
Pretty compelling evidence, though technically he referred to a moon made of ribs, not a moon eating ribs. Via Rob Neyer.
Neither Jeter nor his agent, Casey Close, has disclosed what numbers they are seeking, but it is believed Jeter wants a five- to six-year deal somewhere in the range of $20 million a year. If you do the math, that’s a difference of at least $50 million from the Yanks’ offer.
Most baseball analysts agree that, on the open market, the 36-year-old Jeter would attract no more than a two-year deal for a total of $15 million to $20 million.
– Anthony McCarron and Bill Madden, N.Y. Daily News.
OK, it’s important — as always — to take the contract details with several grains of salt, since neither Jeter nor his agent is on record with his contract demands. And I know that essentially every single human in the N.Y. sports media has provided his or her opinion on the negotiations, so there’s probably nothing new here.
But it strikes me that Jeter stands to lose a lot more than the Yankees if the two part ways. For one thing, there’s the straight-up cash part of it: No other Major League team would offer Jeter even the three-year, $50 million offer that’s rumored to be the Yankees’ starting bid.
Second, if Jeter cares at all about loyalty and legacy and all that jazz — and presumably he does, since those are like the most Derek Jeter-y things about Jeter at this point — then it behooves him to stay in the Bronx. He must know as well as anyone how offputting it would be to his fans to see him playing in another team’s uniform.
The Yankees stand to take a pretty sizy marketing hit if they let Jeter walk, but it seems unlikely that their fans will stop showing up en masse and watching games on YES as long as the team continues winning. And, straight up, it’s unclear that signing Derek Jeter to a big, expensive contract extension is the best way to keep winning.
If the Yankees’ payroll is finite — which has never been entirely clear — and a $20 mil-a-year pledge to Jeter could feasibly keep them out of the bidding for some future free agent stud (also unlikely), then they’d be better off putting some of their considerable resources toward finding a younger, less expensive shortstop. Jeter is still a good player in spite of his shaky defense and diminishing production. But J.J. Hardy, Rafael Furcal and Jose Reyes — all years younger than Jeter and all currently slated for free agency next offseason — posted similar or better WARs in 2010. Jeter is hardly irreplaceable.
Barring unforeseen circumstances, Jeter will still be rich, handsome, bound for the Hall of Fame and dating Minka Kelly regardless of where he signs this offseason, so it’s hard to say he’ll lose all that much by leaving the Yankees. But he’ll stand to lose money — both contractually and likely due to fewer endorsements — and he’ll forever forgo some of that mystical “True Lifelong Yankee” legacy he has developed in the Bronx.
So it strikes me that the Yanks could easily call his bluff. Leave the three-year, $50 million on the table and tell him to come back to them if he finds anything better. He won’t.
Courtesy of This is Photobomb via Mischa Gresser. The first-best photobomb, obviously, is this one.
Nothing overwhelmingly interesting from Murphy since I’m not sure a player’s self-assessment is worth much. But he does get at least a little specific, saying that he feels his range is fine and he needs work on the pivot and rhythm of double plays.
That seems to fit with what we know about Murphy defensively. For all his epic errors, he appeared to have better than adequate — and maybe even downright good — range at first base by the eye and the stats (though it was hardly an adequate sample).
Again, there’s not enough in his history for us to say for sure that he will be able to handle second base defensively. But this much is true: I’m rooting for the guy. If he can handle the keystone, he gives the Mets an inexpensive, decent-hitting middle infielder under their control through 2014. That’s very valuable.
Presumably Sandy Alderson and his crew recognize that and will give Murphy plenty of reps at second to show what he can or can’t do.
Also, though it doesn’t help them win baseball games, it’s cool that he’s a homegrown fan favorite with an awesome at-bat song.
The NHL has left it up to the teams to determine their own policies on bloggers, and the Islanders are using that wide breadth of a policy to make a determination on Botta. The other problem for Botta, or any writer in the Nassau press box that runs afoul of team management, is that the Islanders’ press credentials clearly indicate the team has the right to pull them at its discretion.
And Botta is a journalist, in the estimation of the PHWA, which has gone to bat for him in this dispute. Sure, there may have been complaints about Botta by the Islanders that go beyond content and speak to behavior or some violation of decorum. (We’ve heard Botta’s speaking to players outside of designated interview areas was an issue raised, which is by no means a credential-losing sin.)
Those problems are minor, and could be hashed out without a “nuclear option.” So this is essentially an issue of censorship, of undermining an important voice in the Islanders media and fan communities.
I don’t want to delve too deeply into this since it’s far from settled, Chris Botta is a member of the SNY.tv family, and I don’t want to ruffle any more feathers than have already been ruffled. But a couple of people have asked me why the press hasn’t shown more outrage over this, and I’m not sure that it’s even necessary.
No coverage of the dispute portrays the Islanders in a favorable light, because it’s difficult to see how they’re not shooting themselves in the foot by shutting him out. Botta provides better coverage of the Islanders than anybody. Denying him access to the club only further alienates an already-withering fanbase.
The actual job part of my job includes a decent amount of advocating to get professional bloggers credentialed. I have had no role in Botta’s issue with the Islanders, but I’ve spent plenty of time trying to convince media-relations departments to allow our bloggers to cover their teams from the inside. To me, as long as the content is professional, there should be no distinction between a “blogger” and a “columnist,” since those are just words.
Some teams are way cooler about it than others. The Knicks, for example, have been extremely obliging.
Look, the blogger-reader relationship is relatively simple: I give you something to read when you’re bored at work, and you stroke my ego by actually paying attention to my nonsensical blather.
But I do a lot for you. I do. You think these sandwiches eat themselves? C’mon. Eating tons of delicious sandwiches is a burden I bear for your benefit. And it’s not as easy as it sounds: Eating the sandwiches is a breeze, but finding a different sandwich to write about every week is a challenge.
A stunning confession: Sometimes, the Sandwich of the Week is not a sandwich I ate that week. Often — as will be the case this weekend — it’s a sandwich I ate a week or two earlier. And with the baseball season over and my workload at the studio lightened, I’ve had some more time to identify and devour interesting local sandwiches.
That creates a sort-of bottleneck situation: If there can be only one Sandwich of the Week, then I compile a backlog of sandwiches, and by the time I get to writing about them I struggle to remember all the details.
I also don’t do well with structure. Sometimes I don’t want to wait for the weekend and don’t want to bother with the rigid and completely arbitrary formatting demanded by Sandwich of the Week, with proper ratings and all that.
Sometimes I just want to write about sandwiches. That’s what follows here. As part of our blogger-reader relationship, you’ll just have to indulge me.
Following food trucks on Twitter is reasonably fascinating. First off, you get to see where they’re going and if they’re going to be reasonably near your workplace. Second, you learn that operating a food truck or cart in New York City essentially means perpetually jockeying with other vendors for prime placement and a constant struggle with law enforcement. The latter is something the Vendys organizers talked about a lot. But I guess I didn’t recognize just how big a problem it is for the vendors until I saw all the evidence on Twitter: street-meat heroes forced to pick up and move in the middle of what should be the lunch rush.
And it’s hard to fault the cops. If you’re selling schnitzel on the street, you’re going to create a pretty good deal of foot traffic, and thousands of vendors operating unchecked in this ridiculously populous borough could bring about chaos. Meaty, delicious chaos.
I’m honestly not sure how the permit system works for street carts and food trucks, and where they are and are not allowed to operate. But while I was waiting on my sandwich at the Etravanganza stand on 52nd and Park, a cop came along and said something to the cart’s owner, who then asked the officer if he could just finish my sandwich before he packed up. Thankfully, the policeman obliged and walked away. Then the man in the cart said to me:
“This is every day. My dream is to open my own restaurant.”
I stepped back to examine the cart and noticed that it pretty clearly started as one of those coffee-and-donut breakfast stands. There were donuts and muffins in a plexiglass case, surrounded by signs advertising tacos, sandwiches, breakfast burritos, daily specials.
I don’t know for sure, but it seemed to me that this guy was creative and enterprising enough to take his humble breakfast cart to its logical extremes, using it to cook interesting foodstuffs and extend his business into lunchtime. So if I had to guess, I’d bet the cop was moving him along because he didn’t have the permit to sell so deep into the afternoon — it was already 2 p.m.
The cop was likely doing his job, then. But if I am choosing sides in a conflict, I will 100% of the time sympathize with the one serving me pork at a reasonable rate.
Which brings me, at long last, to the sandwich: Grilled cheese with bacon, chorizo and jalapenos on whole wheat bread. It looked like this:
So how was it? How do you think? It was a grilled-cheese sandwich with bacon, chorizo and jalapeno. All those things are awesome. As was this sandwich.
Despite all the additions, it was still, at its heart, a grilled-cheese sandwich. None of the fillings overwhelmed the buttery grilled bread or the molten American cheese inside.
(On American cheese, briefly: A lot of uppity food lovers often judge the hell out of American cheese, and I get it, I guess. It’s obviously not the best cheese or even a good cheese. Kraft singles are pretty much the definition of replacement level for cheese. But to me, grilled cheese is best with American. Yes, it’s processed, unnatural and unhealthy. Whatever, so are many delicious foods. And in this case I’m sandwiching it between two slices of bread practically slathered in butter)
The jalapeno and chorizo added a nice bit of spice — something I had somehow never considered might benefit a grilled cheese. Actually, I’m kind of baffled that I never thought to add sausage to a grilled cheese on my own, so massive kudos go to the cart’s owner for his ingenuity.
The bacon, I suppose, could have stood to be just a little more crispy, but that’s really nitpicking. For a $5 sandwich constructed under obvious time constraints, this was excellent.
Tedquarters 