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Dudes in plaid shirts recap Jets-Patriots
Scoop stuff
I broke news today, sort of. I heard that the Mets were signing Scott Hairston, so I tweeted it. I trusted that the people from whom I heard the news believed it wholeheartedly, but since I know the way these things often play out and am familiar with the game “Telephone,” I hedged the hell out of the Tweet with a full disclaimer before the news.
Adam Rubin, who is actually in the business of breaking Mets news and does a better job of it than pretty much anyone, confirmed the report later.
And so I contributed my piece to the nonsense that is offseason baseball coverage. I’m happy to say I’m now 1-for-1 in transaction-related scoops.
For what it’s worth, I also broke the news that Billy Wagner needed elbow surgery, way back when (only to have Mike Francesa read my report word for word on air without crediting me or SNY), and I was the first person to publish the news — on MetsBlog, at about 3 a.m. ET — that Willie Randolph had been canned.
That’s about it. I don’t intend to ever be in the business of breaking news with any real frequency, but when someone here hands me some or wakes me up with a phone call because I’m the most accessible person with a public forum, I’m happy to publish it. I recognize that’s probably a good way to increase my online profile or whatever, but at the same time I’m content to sit here writing about sandwiches.
I will say, though, that there’s one minor scoop for which I am directly responsible and have never been credited. I was the anonymous source that fed Matt Cerrone the details of the Johan Santana contract.
It went like this: I got word that Santana, his agents and the Mets’ front office were negotiating his contract in the SNY offices because of their accessible Midtown location. I work in said offices, and figured out which conference room they were in (it wasn’t hard — it’s the fancy one).
The workday was winding down as the negotiations were starting, and I had nothing particularly important to do that evening, so I went upstairs and parked myself at the receptionist’s desk outside the conference room. I considered doing the old sitcom cup-on-the-door thing. I IMmed Cerrone when they got dinner delivered.
I sat there for a while, browsing the Internet and waiting for something to happen. I was just about to give up when a dude — a young guy, must have been someone who worked for the agent or something — emerged from the conference room on his cell phone.
“It’s done, dude,” he said. Then he paused.
He continued: “Six. Yeah, six and 137-point-five.”
Layup. That was my one endeavor into investigative journalism. I figure it’s not always that easy.
Of course, I had been working here for all of three weeks at the time, so I spent the next week crapping my pants worried that someone would find out and I’d somehow get in trouble. But then I realized I was actually kind of doing my job, and then no one ever asked me about it anyway.
As for Hairston, he seems like a nice pickup to compete for a fourth or fifth outfield spot. Eno Sarris has way, way more.
In which Lyndon Johnson refers to his “bunghole”
Nothing much I could add to that. Via Josh.
If we could talk to the animals…
Chaser, a border collie who lives in Spartanburg, S.C., has the largest vocabulary of any known dog. She knows 1,022 nouns, a record that displays unexpected depths of the canine mind and may help explain how children acquire language.
Chaser belongs to John W. Pilley, a psychologist who taught for 30 years at Wofford College, a liberal arts institution in Spartanburg. In 2004, after he had retired, he read a report in Science about Rico, a border collie whose German owners had taught him to recognize 200 items, mostly toys and balls. Dr. Pilley decided to repeat the experiment using a technique he had developed for teaching dogs, and he describes his findings in the current issue of the journal Behavioural Processes.
Man, dogs are awesome. First of all, for people who go on and on about how cats are so much smarter than dogs: Find me a cat that knows 1,022 nouns.
Second, you could be like, “Chaser, go scratch the bear,” to this dog and it will go pick out the stuffed bear from hundreds of stuffed animals and scratch it. And then he’ll turn around and crap on the floor, because that’s just how dogs roll.
I don’t really understand why people are so desperate to teach our languages to animals, because I suspect if we ever do crack the communication barrier we’re going to find that animals don’t have anything all that interesting to say. Probably after you say, “Chaser, fetch the ball,” Chaser just thinks, “ball! ball! ball! ball!” And then later he thinks, “food! food! food! food!’ And sometimes, “other dogs’ asses!”
Straight up, I’d guess that the way a dog learns to associate auditory cues with specific objects and actions can tell us very little about how a human child learns to understand language, even if there’s some overlap in certain processes. Dogs are not people.
Also no matter how often we assume it, dogs probably never think they’re people either. That requires a certain level of self-awareness that I’m not willing to attribute to dogs, awesome though they may be.
Why Rex Ryan is awesome, part five million
I didn’t out-coach Belichick. There’s no way. Our players out-played their players. That’s really what it came down to. There was nothing schematically I did to win that game. Our guys were prepared to play and that’s my job. But to say that I out-coached Belichick, I would not agree with that. I think it’s almost a joke. I don’t think anybody out-coaches Belichick.
– Rex Ryan.
There’s a ton of hubbub about Ryan’s bravado, and then there’s this. The guy says all week that the game is about him versus Bill Belichick. Then he very clearly out-coaches Belichick. Then he deflects the praise toward his players.
Shoulder the pressure, deflect the praise. Sure, he’s doing it all with awesomely brash fatman bombast, but it seems less like bravado and more like Media Relations for Coaches 101 to me. Again, I’m not sure any of it matters, but it’s precisely the opposite of Jerry Manuel’s approach. Whether it’s calculated or not, it has got to be at least part of the reason Ryan’s players seem to love playing for him.
Let’s go eat a goddamn snack.
Sandwich of the Week
People always refer to “gilding the lily” as if it’s a bad thing. And look: Lilies are nice and all and I recognize that there’s not much demand to improve them. But only a fool wouldn’t trade a straight-up old school lily for a lily covered in solid gold. Gild that thing. That’s what I say.
The sandwich: Spicy Chicken Sandwich with pepper jack cheese from Chik-Fil-A, many locations, most of them (but not all) outside of New York.
The construction: Boneless, breaded white-meat chicken breast with pickles and pepper jack cheese on a buttered bun.
Important background information: Someone needs to write a book on American regional fast food. Does that already exist? If not, someone needs to pay me to write a book on American regional fast food.
Chick-Fil-A might occupy the first chapter. Though the Georgia-based chain is slowly diffusing throughout the country, in inaccessible areas it remains the stuff of legend, due mostly to the strength of its chicken sandwich. The folks at NY Mag’s Grub Street — likely the “foodie” types who turn up their noses at most chain fast food — even ranked it among the Top 101 sandwiches in New York.
Pressure cooked in peanut oil, it is crispy and tasty on the outside and moist on the inside. It far outclasses chicken sandwiches from all the major fast food chains, many of which are cardboard-dry and appear reconstituted. Better than most is the McDonald’s Southern-style chicken sandwich, a clear rip-off of the Chick-Fil-A sandwich that features exactly the same stuff but is just not quite as good in any way.
What it looks like:
How it tastes: Gilding the lily, and not in the good way.
I was hungry by the time my flight landed in West Palm Beach on Friday and downright starving by the time I secured my rental car, so I was thrilled when Matt Cerrone tipped me off that there was a Chick-Fil-A not five miles north of the airport, off I-95. I figured I’d swing through to pick up the classic Chick-Fil-A sandwich, something delicious that I haven’t eaten in some time.
When I got there I saw the sign heralding the new Spicy Chicken sandwich, and I figured if I like the regular one so much and I like spicy things in general, I should probably go for it. And then I saw that I could add cheese to the sandwich for only 30 cents more, and hell, cheese is delicious. Pepper jack that bastard up.
What I ate was still delicious, mind you — undoubtedly head and shoulders over every other fast-food chicken sandwich. The breading was still crispy and the chicken inside still moist. But the spiciness tasted somehow forced, like they just added a ton of spicy spices to the breading and robbed it of its subtlety. (Can a fast-food sandwich have subtlety?) And the pepper jack cheese, though creamy and good, just felt unnecessary.
Eating the sandwich only served to remind me how amazing the original sandwich is in its simplicity. Fried chicken, pickles, bun. Sometimes if everything’s good you don’t need to pile on ingredients for more flavor. That’s how the spicy version tasted, and it made me crave Chick-Fil-A’s OG sandwich offering.
Luckily, I stopped and got one on my way back to the airport. And lo, it was good.
What it’s worth: Cost something like $5 with a Diet Dr. Pepper — which they had on tap at this Chick-Fil-A. And it was only three or four minutes out of my way, tops. Very well worth the price.
How it rates: Hmm. If I had a separate scale for fast-food items, this might reach the upper 80s or even approach the fringes of the Fast Food Sandwich Hall of Fame. But there isn’t a separate scale, so this gets judged against the rest of them, which is kind of unfair but whatever. Truth is, it is the exceptionally rare — and perhaps non-existent — mass-produced fast food sandwich that’s going to compete in deliciousness with the upper echelon of sandwiches I’ve reviewed here.
But you know I like fast food, and obviously I recognize the benefit of enjoying incredibly convenient and reasonably priced fare, especially when it is also very tasty. I didn’t even have to get out of my car! America! 72 out of 100.
Hooray!
Yes!
Ohhhh!
Hooray!
Sorry for the complete lack of posts here since Friday morning. My quick jaunt to Port St. Lucie, it turned out, did not include a lot of time for writing. Sandwich of the Week coming tomorrow, plus maybe some other stuff.
But most importantly: Hooray!
Gone south
If things are a bit slow around here today, it’s because I’m heading to Port St. Lucie on a bit of a whirlwind trip. I’m not sure exactly what my schedule or Internet situation will look like, so I may or may not be posting stuff (which is always true).
The good news is I’m definitely going to see grass, which hasn’t been visible in Westchester for weeks now.
For now, enjoy the best song I know of about Florida.
Two things about closers
Two things you should read about closers: 1) Eno Sarris’ plan for how the Mets could use K-Rod effectively without having his $17.5 million option for 2012 vest.
2) Cliff Corcoran’s analysis of just how good Mariano Rivera has been compared to every other relief pitcher ever.
I’ve long held that the one-inning closer role should be retired with Rivera. The telling stat is this one: In the 20 years before Tony La Russa popularized the one-inning closer, teams entering the ninth inning with a lead won the same percentage of games as they did in the 20 years after. There has got to be a better way to construct a bullpen than wildly overpaying one guy to throw 60-some innings.
Tedquarters 