Matsui Makes Sure Ejections Don’t Stop Yankees

By BEN SHPIGEL
Published: September 13, 2009

Even teams 40 games over .500 are not immune to frustration. Witness the fifth inning Sunday, when the Yankees — piqued after two consecutive losses and engaged in a tie game loaded with missed opportunities — watched the ejections of their cleanup hitter and manager in quick succession.

“That’s a big bat out of our lineup,” Manager Joe Girardi said of Alex Rodriguez, “and we’re fighting for a lot of different things down the stretch here.”

Their release came in the form of a 13-3 romp over the Baltimore Orioles at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees pulled away in the eighth inning with an eight-run rally fueled by Hideki Matsui’s three-run homer. C. C. Sabathia worked seven sturdy innings, improving to 6-0 with a 2.01 earned run average in his last eight starts, and Melky Cabrera drove in four runs to help the Yankees restore order and avoid a three-game sweep.

Such an occurrence, however rare, would have posed no danger to their goals, immediate or long term. At 92-52, they hold comfortable leads over Boston in the American League East and over the Los Angeles Angels, who visit the Stadium on Monday for a makeup game, in the race for home-field advantage throughout the A.L. playoffs.

But the prospect of losing three straight — and to the lowly Orioles, no less — revolted them, which is why a steely-eyed Matsui, through an interpreter, said afterward, “Winning today’s game was pretty important.”

The Yankees battered Orioles starter Jeremy Guthrie and a parade of relievers for 20 hits and 12 straight runs, the first two coming in the fourth inning, which ended with Rodriguez striking out looking with the bases loaded. Rodriguez was furious with the call, flipping his bat, and expressed his displeasure with the plate umpire Marty Foster.

As for what happened next, there were conflicting viewpoints. Rodriguez said that he was initially upset with Foster’s call, but that he was more displeased that Foster maintained a conversation with Baltimore catcher Chad Moeller throughout his at-bat. Before the Yankees batted, Rodriguez went into their video room to see the location of the contentious pitch, an outside changeup — “still a ball,” he said — but said he did not discuss it again with Foster. He said he told Foster to “just keep talking to Moeller.”

As for Foster, he said that Rodriguez did not stop challenging him, arguing from third base, then again from the dugout. “I let him go, I let him go, but there has to be an end of it,” Foster told a pool reporter. “I can’t let him argue with me all day.”

Foster tossed Rodriguez, his first ejection since July 24, 2004.

“For him to take it into his own hands, with no warning, I thought was very unprofessional,” Rodriguez said.

Girardi stormed out of the dugout. He did not last long. Girardi tossed his cap and continued to argue just a few inches from Foster. Girardi gestured as if he were throwing out Foster and had to be restrained, an eruption that may earn punishment from the commissioner’s office. They have a history dating to July 6, when Foster ejected Girardi, who was defending Derek Jeter after a close and controversial call at third base.

“I don’t know what his deal is with the Yankees,” Rodriguez said of Foster.

The Yankees’ outburst went on without Rodriguez, with his temporary replacement at third base, Eric Hinske, playing a pivotal role in their go-ahead sixth. Hinske drew a two-out walk to load the bases and bring up Matsui, who ripped a liner into right field that drove in Jeter and Johnny Damon. For Jeter, who had three hits, it was the 100th run he scored this season. That is 12 straight seasons with at least 100 runs. In that category at least, Lou Gehrig (13), still has him beat.

Sabathia overcame a rough start and a mental lapse from Damon to pitch into the seventh inning for the ninth straight time. As indispensable as Sabathia has been this season — his 17 wins lead the A.L. — he is particularly valuable when pitching the day after Yankees losses. They are 5-0 in those last five starts.

“This was tough,” said Sabathia, who only struck out one, his fewest since June 21 at Florida. “I didn’t really have the command and stuff that I’ve had the past about a month and half.”

Even afterward, Damon was apologetic, embarrassed that he forgot how many outs there were in the fourth inning. After catching Jeff Fiorentino’s fly, Damon, believing the inning was over, turned around as if to toss the ball into the stands. He quickly realized his mistake, throwing the ball in to Jeter, but Justin Turner had tagged up from second and scored what was the Orioles’ final run.

“It’s happened to me a few too many times playing this game,” Damon said. “I’m just glad we won.”

News source：http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/sports/baseball/14yankees.html?_r=1&ref=baseball

Burnett’s One Bad Inning Dooms Yankees

By BEN SHPIGEL

Published: September 12, 2009

Derek Jeter played shortstop and batted leadoff for the Yankees on Saturday afternoon, as if there was ever a doubt. The day after he surpassed Lou Gehrig to become the franchise’s career hits leader, in a rain-delayed game that ended at 1:28 a.m., Manager Joe Girardi quashed the notion of giving him a mental or physical break. If the Yankees are playing, so is Jeter, their paragon of consistency.

On the other end of that spectrum is A. J. Burnett, who combusted in the second inning of the Yankees’ 7-3 loss to the Baltimore Orioles at Yankee Stadium. A fresh batch of fans had barely finished standing and applauding Jeter, who padded his total by leading off with a single and later scoring, when Burnett gave back that lead by allowing six runs.

Brian Roberts capped the outburst with a grand slam that landed in the Yankees’ bullpen in right-center field, where Josh Towers was hastily warming up. Towers did eventually succeed Burnett, but not until the eighth inning. Burnett finished by retiring 17 of the final 19 batters he faced, including eight straight after Roberts’s slam.

But his tendency to throw “one bad pitch,” as he called that down-and-in sinker to Roberts, and have one bad inning is what concerns the Yankees as they steam toward the American League East title and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.

“You do want him to get on a roll,” Girardi said. “It’s important for us.”

Despite losing two consecutive games for the first time in almost a month, the Yankees (91-52) have little to worry about aside from manipulating their rotation for the playoffs. Starting C. C. Sabathia in the division series opener is a near-lock, meaning that for Game 2, Girardi would choose between Andy Pettitte (5-1, 3.06 earned run average in 11 starts since the All-Star break) and Burnett, who has pitched well at times but rarely throughout an entire game.

In eight starts between June 14 and July 27, Burnett was 6-1 with a 1.68 E.R.A. In his last nine starts, he is 1-5 with a 6.14 E.R.A.

Jose Molina, who caught Burnett on Saturday, speculated that he might be tired but quickly added that he had not seen any evidence.

“That’s a question that a lot of people are going to ask, if he’s tired or worn down, but I don’t think he needs a rest, I think he’s 100 percent,” Molina said. “To me, it seems like he’s battling all the time. It just happens to be that way and he’s on a bad roll.”

Compared with other A.L. teams, the Orioles do not hit many home runs — they entered Saturday tied for 11th among 14 teams — and had not hit one since last Saturday, a stretch of 42 2/3 innings, before Nolan Reimold led off the second inning by clobbering a fastball into the seats in left-center.

A one-out walk to Matt Wieters preceded three consecutive singles, the last, by Robert Andino, driving in Wieters to nudge the Orioles ahead, 2-1. After Roberts’s slam, three of Burnett’s next five outs were deep drives caught on the warning track.

“No, I’m not concerned, man,” Burnett said, adding: “I’m not looking at what’s in front of this team. I’m looking to my next start.”

By giving up two home runs Saturday, Burnett has allowed a career-high 24, including 9 over his last seven starts. The hitter-friendly dimensions at Yankee Stadium have hardly been a factor, as he has surrendered 13 homers over 15 home starts compared with 11 in 14 starts on the road.

“There’s a lot of little things you have to do to be successful,” Girardi said. “Sometimes, if you don’t do one of them, you can get away with it. If you don’t do a couple of them, it’s hard to get away with it.”

Brian Matusz, the Orioles’ rookie left-hander making what may have been his final start of the season, allowed four hits while silencing the Yankees over seven innings. Baltimore does not want to overtax the 22-year-old Matusz, one of its prized pitching prospects, in his first full professional season. He has pitched 157 2/3 innings in the majors and the minors.

The Yankees have some history of being humbled by pitchers they have never faced before — Fernando Nieve, Craig Stammen, Doug Fister, for example. They will see a lot more of Chris Tillman, who struck out eight in five innings Friday, and Matusz, and they did not sound excited.

“What did we have? Four hits on him?” Jeter said. “They were just scattered. He was never really in trouble.”

Neither are the Yankees, who scored twice in the ninth off Jim Johnson. But their final three weeks would feel a little less like an anticlimax if Burnett had not thrown one bad pitch, in one bad inning.

INSIDE PITCH

Johnny Damon missed his second consecutive game because of a sore hamstring and lower back, but Joe Girardi said he expected him to start Sunday.

News source：http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/sports/baseball/13yankees.html?ref=baseball

Even in Class A, Posada and Pettitte Sensed What Was to Come With Jeter

By JACK CURRY

Published: September 12, 2009

He was an 18-year-old shortstop from Kalamazoo, Mich., a first-round draft choice who wore his cap tilted back on his head and who looked as if he needed to gain 25 pounds. When he showed up to play with the Yankees’ Class A affiliate in Greensboro, N.C., in 1992, Derek Jeter was a curiosity to some teammates.

Jorge Posada and Andy Pettitte were on that team and they remembered when they first saw the 156-pound kid who was supposed to become a great Yankee. So this skinny shortstop is the next star? It did not take long before Posada and Pettitte understood why Jeter was not the same as the other minor leaguers.

“Nothing really surprises me when it comes to Derek Jeter,” Posada said.

On the night when Jeter slapped a single to right field — where else? — to surpass Lou Gehrig on the Yankees’ career hits list, players like Posada and Pettitte spoke about Jeter with a mixture of appreciation and awe.

As Jeter pursued Gehrig and each of his at-bats turned into an event, it was obvious that his teammates, especially his longtime teammates, relished riding in the back seat. Pettitte said that Jeter always had “a lot of class and a lot of charisma” and carried himself differently, something that did not change as he boosted his hits total to 2,723.

“We were so young and started this run off at a young age,” Pettitte said. “Again, you knew that he was special.”

In 1992, Jeter did not feel special. He went 0 for 7 and struck out five times in his debut with Class A Tampa. Because Jeter had received an $800,000 signing bonus, he felt as if every pair of eyes was scrutinizing him. He called home several times a day, pushing his phone bill to $400 a month.

After Jeter batted .202 in 47 games with Tampa, the Yankees sent him to Greensboro to get some more at-bats. Jeter would have rather traveled back to Kalamazoo. Posada recalled how Jeter was erratic at shortstop in his first day at Greensboro but rebounded.

“The second day, you saw what every guy in the organization saw,” Posada said. “He made a great play in the hole, he made a great play over second base and he hit a home run. He hasn’t looked back ever since.”

That is not entirely true. In his first 11 games at Greensboro, Jeter batted .247 and made 9 errors in 48 chances. Pettitte recalled how some of those mistakes came in his starts.

“I know he made a few errors behind me while I was pitching,” Pettitte said. “I was like: ‘Look at this guy. Are you kidding me? The first-round draft pick or whatever.’ He says to this day that I big-leagued him bigger than ever. And I may have. I don’t know.”

Pettitte laughed about how he and Jeter had different versions of the story. Seventeen years later, Pettitte and Jeter still tease each other about a game that should have been forgotten. But if Jeter knows it will make Pettitte chuckle, he will talk about it for another 17 years.

“Like Jorge says, he hasn’t changed,” Pettitte said. “He still says the same corny jokes or wisecracks that he did back then.”

Even as Posada called Jeter his “best friend,” he spoke about Jeter in a reverential way. Posada said Jeter did not open up to many people and probably never would, preferring to keep “the same people around” who have known him the longest.

“I admire him, I do,” Posada said. “I enjoy playing with him. I think he’s a great leader. I think he wants to win. He shows that. That’s the only thing he wants to do. He wants to, every game.”

The teammates at Greensboro — Jeter, Pettitte and Posada — graduated to Yankee clubs that won four World Series titles in five seasons. The Yankees (91-51) have the best record in the major leagues this season and, with help from those three players, are trying to secure another championship.

Still, after the Yankees lost to the Orioles, 10-4, on a soggy Friday night, the loss was shoved to the background. The focus was on Jeter, who passed Gehrig with a single off Chris Tillman. The fans gave Jeter stirring ovations, something that his longtime teammates matched with praise of their own.

“You take for granted sometimes that you play with him and you see him and see him,” Posada said. “The last week, coming to 2,721 hits, then you’re like, ‘This guy has some unbelievable numbers.’ He breaks the record. He’s the No. 1 all time.”

News source：http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/sports/baseball/13jeter.html?_r=1&ref=baseball

Ripken’s Respect for Jeter

September 11, 2009, 11:31 pm
By Jack Curry

As the dreadful Baltimore Orioles staggered into Yankee Stadium on Friday, Derek Jeter needed one more hit to zoom past Lou Gehrig as the franchise’s career hits leader.

Cal Ripken Jr., the Hall of Famer from the Orioles, was being honest, not critical, when he discussed the chances of Jeter not getting at least one hit in the three-game series.

“It would be a miracle if we held him without a hit,” Ripken said.

Obviously, the Orioles, who are last in the American League with a 5.06 earned run average, do not believe in miracles. In Jeter’s second at-bat, he rapped Chris Tillman’s 94-mile-per-hour fastball past first baseman Luke Scott and into right field. It was Jeter’s 2,722nd career hit, the most by a Yankee.

Fourteen years ago, Ripken displaced Gehrig from a more monumental record when he played in his 2,131st straight game. Ripken extended the record to 2,632 games before not playing in a game in September 1998.

While Ripken was uncomfortable with being compared to Gehrig, one of the best players ever, as a player, he enjoyed it when he was compared to Gehrig as a person. Ripken guessed that Jeter appreciates that part of the comparison as well.

“Privately, humbly, I’m sure Derek feels really good about that connection to Lou,” Ripken said.

Ripken was proud and relieved when he finally broke Gehrig’s record, but said the enormity of it sank in later. In another 10 or 15 years, Ripken said Jeter will “be even prouder” of what he had accomplished.

Jeter has always been a gentleman with the Yankees, a personality trait that has been mentioned often as he chased Gehrig. Interestingly, Ripken, who retired after 2001, said that Jeter’s respectful approach created a situation where opponents did not begrudge his success.

“In some ways, you take pride when you play against a guy like Derek,” Ripken said. “You respect him because he plays baseball the right way. You’re there to win and you want to win. But there are players that you like to see have good games along the way. He’s one of them.”

News source：http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/ripkens-respect-for-jeter/

Jeter Passes Gehrig as Yankees Hits Leader

By TYLER KEPNER Published: September 11, 2009

Derek Jeter grew up on Yankees history, by birth and by providence. He was nurtured as a fan by his grandmother, who lived in New Jersey, and drafted into the tradition as a first-round pick in 1992. Only a few years ago, though, did Jeter notice that nobody in his team’s history had ever reached 3,000 hits. Teammates stumbled on it while paging through a record book.

“Then we were wondering who had the most,” Jeter said on Friday afternoon. “But it’s not like you sit there and target it.”

For more than 70 years, Lou Gehrig had the most hits for the franchise, a record that stood until Jeter passed him Friday with his 2,722nd hit, a single that skipped past Gehrig’s old position, first base. Jeter’s graceful grind through 15 seasons has vaulted him past his storied predecessor as team captain.

Jeter connected in the third inning, on a 2-0 fastball from Chris Tillman of the Baltimore Orioles that got past the diving first baseman, Luke Scott. Jeter, who has made a career of hard-hit balls to the opposite field, spread his arms wide and clapped after rounding first base.

The players on the Yankees’ bench poured from the dugout to greet him at first base, taking turns hugging him. Alex Rodriguez was the first to arrive, then Mark Teixeira, Joba Chamberlain, Johnny Damon and the rest.

The fans chanted Jeter’s first and last names, and Jeter waved his helmet to several areas of the new Yankee Stadium. As he did on Wednesday, when he tied the record, Jeter pointed to the box with his parents, sister and friends on the suite level above the Yankees’ on-deck circle. Jeter’s girlfriend, the actress Minka Kelly, stood beside his mother, Dorothy, and both smiled widely.

The crowd continued to chant for Jeter. Nick Swisher, the next batter, stepped out of the box to make the moment last. As the cheers cascaded over Jeter, he waved his helmet again and then clapped a few times in Swisher’s direction: back to work.

The hit arrived in Jeter’s second at-bat against Tillman, a heralded Orioles rookie who challenged him with a 94-mile-an-hour pitch. Tillman won their duel in the first inning, striking Jeter out with a curveball after getting ahead with fastballs.

It was raining then, a persistent, heavy mist swirling around the stadium, with standing pools of water on the warning tracks. (The rain picked up later, and the game was delayed in the seventh.) The grounds crew hustled to rake the mound after the top of the first and spread new dirt a half-inning later. A double splashed in a mud puddle down the right-field line in the second.

By the time Jeter set the record, though, the rain had tapered. In any case, the crowd of 46,771 did not seem to care. The fans stood for Jeter’s at-bat, snapping photos of each pitch, and an inning later, commemorative T-shirts and pennants were on sale at Stadium gift shops.

George Steinbrenner, the team’s principal owner, was not there — he has not been to a home game since opening day — but his publicist quickly issued a statement on his behalf.

“For those who say today’s game can’t produce legendary players, I have two words: Derek Jeter,” Steinbrenner’s statement said. “As historic and significant as becoming the Yankees’ all-time hit leader is, the accomplishment is all the more impressive because Derek is one of the finest young men playing the game today.”

The statement went on to praise the character and ability of Jeter, comparing him favorably to Gehrig, who died of A.L.S. in 1941, a little more than two years after his final hit. Gehrig was far more prolific as a run producer, but Jeter matched his hit total Wednesday in 64 fewer plate appearances.

“He continued to be consistent year in and year out; I think that’s something every player admires,” Jeter said Friday as he talked about Gehrig. “Every story you hear about him, you hear he was a classy person and a great teammate. People thought really highly of him.”

Dorine Gordon, the president and chief executive of the ALS Association Greater New York Chapter, also issued a statement congratulating Jeter. “Derek epitomizes so much of what we admired in Gehrig,” her statement said. “Each skillfully filled their roles as team captains with strength, determination and humility.”

Jeter reached the milestone 24 years to the day after Pete Rose passed Ty Cobb to become baseball’s career hits later. Jeter, 35, has more hits than Rose did at the same age. Rose played until age 45 and finished with 4,256 hits.

That record is within Jeter’s reach, if he wants to play that long. He is signed through next season and said this week that he would keep playing as long as he has fun.

The game is fun now for Jeter, with the Yankees holding baseball’s best record and possessing, perhaps, their best chance at a championship in years. He has helped carry them there with a storm of hits, part of an annual barrage that has set a new standard for his famous team.

INSIDE PITCH

Johnny Damon missed the game with a sore hamstring and lower back. Damon said he might have sustained the injuries on Wednesday, when he jumped at the wall for a home run and his spikes did not stick in the padding. “I’m just happy this is a one-day thing and by tomorrow, I’ll be fine,” Damon said. ... Reliever Dave Robertson said he would begin his throwing program in a week or so as he recovers from elbow stiffness. ... Derek Jeter is hoping for a quick workday Saturday; his beloved Michigan Wolverines play Notre Dame at 3:30 p.m. “Big game,” Jeter said. “I hope it doesn’t rain. No delays here.”

News source：http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/12/sports/baseball/12yankees.html?_r=1&hp

Some News about Yankees

Yankees Reliever Undergoes Second M.R.I.

September 10, 2009, 7:40 pm
By Tyler Kepner

The Yankees right-hander Dave Robertson underwent a second magnetic resonance imaging exam for his stiff right elbow Thursday in Pensacola, Fla. Dr. James Andrews, who examined Robertson, recommended that he rest for 10 days to two weeks before starting a throwing program, a timetable that does not rule out Robertson for a chance to make the postseason roster. Robertson has a 3.29 earned run average in 42 games, averaging more than 13 strikeouts per nine innings.
洋基右投手Dave Robertson由於右手肘僵硬的問題，星期四在佛羅里達的Pensacola接受了第二次的MRI檢查。負責這項檢查的醫師James Andrews建議他最好休息10至14天的時間再開始練習投球，這樣的練習時間表也不會影響到Dave Robertson是否能夠進入季後賽名單的問題。Dave Robertson本季出賽42場，獲得3.29的ERA及高達13的K/9值。

News source：
http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/yankees-reliever-undergoes-second-mri/

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The Long and Short of Derek Jeter

September 10, 2009, 11:26 pm
By Jay Schreiber

Twice in his remarkable career, Derek Jeter has had a hitting slump that suggested he was letting outside factors distract him ever so slightly at the plate.
在隊長輝煌的職業生涯當中，遭遇了兩次明顯的打擊低潮，主要是受到外界因素的影響，導致分散了他在打擊時的注意力。

The first slump came in April 2004, when in the presence of his new, and very expensive, teammate, Alex Rodriguez, Jeter went 0 for 32. The second came this week, when Jeter went 0 for 12 over the course of three games in two days, perhaps because he was trying a little too hard to get the last few hits he needed to pass Lou Gehrig.
第一次發生在2004年4月的時候，當時是他貴翻天的新隊友阿肉加入洋基的時刻，他那陣子繳出了32之0的打擊成績。第二次則是在這禮拜，隊長在兩天連續出賽三場的情形下，繳出12之0的表現，也許是因為他太過積極想追上前輩Lou Gehrig的紀錄而導致的結果。

Back on April 29, 2004, Jeter ended that 0-for-32 slump emphatically, smacking a first-inning home run off Oakland’s Bary Zito that carried over the left-center field wall at Yankee Stadium.
讓我們回溯到2004年4月29號當天，隊長在第一局，就敲了一發飛躍中左外野大牆的全壘打終結了32之0的打擊低潮，當時的苦主是運動家隊的雞頭。

On Wednesday night at the Stadium, Jeter ended his slump ingeniously, dropping a first-inning bunt down the third-base line that the Tampa Bay Rays didn’t even try to make a play on.
而星期三晚上，隊長在第一局則是聰明的利用偷點的方式上壘，球沿著三壘壘包滾去，讓光芒隊一點守備的機會都沒有。

A blast and a bunt, one more little piece of evidence to support the notion that Jeter may not be the most talented player of the last decade and a half, but he might just be the most resourceful.
不論是全壘打或是突襲短打，這些或許都沒有辦法證明隊長是過去這十五年來最具天份的打者，但他或許是場上最能夠隨機應變的球員。

News source：
http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/the-long-and-short-of-derek-jeter/

The Iron Horse and the New Yorker Profile

By RICHARD SANDOMIR Published: September 10, 2009

In The New Yorker 80 years ago, Lou Gehrig was portrayed as an unsophisticate and a mama’s boy once rumored to have gone to the movies with a “red-cheeked German girl who wore a bunch of flowers in her hat.”

Asked in the profile, written by Niven Busch and titled “The Little Heinie,” if he would ever marry, Gehrig said, “My mother makes a home comfortable enough for me.”

His mother, Christina, Busch wrote, “is continually cooking for him, making apple cake, and cookies with raisins and pieces of bright red suet in them, making roasts, and frying the fish and eels he catches in the Sound.”

Lou caught so many eels that his mother pickled them, Busch reported. Some Yankees seemed to believe that pickled eels helped their hitting.

“Why should Lou eat eels?” one teammate apparently said to Gehrig’s father, Heinrich, during a meal at the Gehrigs’ residence in New Rochelle. “He always hits good, doesn’t he, Mr. Gehrig?”

It is unimaginable that such a chaste, even fluffy, article would be written about Derek Jeter, who now shares Gehrig’s Yankees record of 2,721 career hits. Jeter is also close to his parents, but has lived on his own for quite a while, and his active social life (parodied in a Visa ad with George Steinbrenner) is no secret. But unlike the naïve Gehrig, Jeter is a shrewd manager of his public image, perhaps one reason he has never been profiled by The New Yorker.

Roger Angell, who has written about baseball for decades at the magazine, and greatly admires Jeter’s hitting, said: “I’ve never heard him say an interesting word. He’s not a guy who likes to talk. But he’s very well liked.”

In the 1929 Gehrig article, Busch sets up Gehrig as something of a cipher unsuited “to have a public” because he is not “stimulated or discouraged by the reactions of the crowds that watch his ponderous antics at first base for the Yankees, or cheer the hits he knocks out with startling regularity and almost legendary power.”

Aside from baseball, Busch wrote, Gehrig’s main amusement is fishing and his primary associates are “his mother and Babe Ruth.” Gehrig’s mother “has exercised a good deal of care on his upbringing.”

Christina could not keep Lou from reacting in anger when mean old Ty Cobb repeatedly called him “a Wiener schnitzel” and “thick-headed Dutch bum,” Busch wrote. Gehrig got so unnerved that he charged Cobb, who eluded him, and “hit his head on a stanchion of the low roof and fell down stunned.”

Busch reappeared in the Gehrig saga in 1941 when, as a story editor for the producer Samuel Goldwyn, he suggested making a film about Gehrig. Goldwyn said a baseball movie would be “box-office poison,” according to A. Scott Berg’s biography of Goldwyn. Ray Robinson, a Gehrig biographer, said that Busch told him he had a projectionist show Goldwyn newsreels of Gehrig’s “luckiest man” speech of July 4, 1939. Goldwyn cried at hearing Gehrig’s simple, heartbreaking oration, which guided him to produce “The Pride of the Yankees” as a love story between Lou (Gary Cooper) and Eleanor (Teresa Wright) that would appeal to a female audience. The film was released in 1942 — the year that Busch married Wright. They divorced 10 years later.

Their son, who is also named Niven but goes by Terry, does not recall his father talking about meeting Gehrig in 1929.

“He didn’t tell many New Yorker tales,” said Terry Busch, whose father wrote the novel “Duel in the Sun” and co-wrote the screenplay for “The Postman Always Rings Twice.” “He never talked about ‘Pride of the Yankees,’ probably because he didn’t get credit for it. He had a fairly bad falling out with Goldwyn, not the least because of my conception, which caused my mother to default on several projects. He blamed my father.”

News source：
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/sports/baseball/11gehrig.html?_r=1&ref=baseball

A special moment at the Stadium

A few weeks ago, I would wager that very few people knew Lou Gehrig was the franchise hits leader of the Yankees. Breaking that record was not something Derek Jeter had on his radar until he heard about it from the media.
我敢打賭，在幾個星期之前，很少有人知道Lou Gehrig是洋基隊史上的安打王，在隊長從媒體得知自己已經慢慢追上這項紀錄之前，對於這件事，他也一直沒放在心上。

But what this record has done is give everybody — fans, teammates and even the media — a chance to celebrate Jeter the individual.
然而，達成這項紀錄對於所有人（球迷、隊友甚至是媒體）來說，都是一個慶賀隊長個人榮耀的機會。

Jeter has never won an MVP. He has never led the league in hitting or had the most RBI. He scored the most runs once, but that was back in 1998. He is a player defined by team accomplishments and his own consistency of effort and performance. What speaks better to that than having the most hits?
隊長從來沒有拿過年度MVP獎項，他也從未拿過美聯的安打王或是打點王。他曾經拿過一次得分王，但已是早在1998年的事情了。他被公認為洋基隊史上最有成就的球員，他對於球隊穩定的貢獻與績效也是令人稱道，但，有什麼比得到隊史上安打王這項榮耀更值得大家談論的呢？

Sure, Jeter has more at-bats than Gehrig. But that record had stood since 1939. It took somebody special to come along and break it and Jeter was that person.
的確，隊長的打席數比Lou Gehrig要來的多，但是，這項紀錄自從1939年就已經高懸在那。這項紀錄是設立給某位特別的球員來打破的，而那個人正是隊長。

You know what stuck with me from tonight? Seeing the Rays on the stop step of the dugout applauding.
你們知道今晚哪個畫面一直停留在我腦海中嗎？就是看到光芒隊的隊員們站在休息區的階梯上替隊長鼓掌喝采。
PS：有影片有真相http://mlb.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=6560995

“I’m very happy for him,” Tampa Bay manager Joe Maddon said. “He carries himself in a manner that’s worthy of passing Gehrig.”
「我真很替他感到開心。」光芒隊總教練Joe Maddon這麼說，「他利用這個方式證明了自己有能力超越前輩Lou Gehrig的成就。」

Maddon speaks for everybody in baseball when he says that.
Maddon當著所有人的面發表了這次的言論。

It also was fitting that Derek’s buddy Jorge Posada won the game with a home run. That enabled Derek to really enjoy the night. One would think that the Stadium would be packed on Friday night and wouldn’t it be just like Jeter to poke a single into right field in the first inning?
這項紀錄的喜悅加上隊長的好哥兒們厚黑擊出致勝全壘打幫助球隊取勝可以說是配的恰恰好。這也讓隊長真的可以好好享受今晚美好的時光。大家可以想見星期五晚上一定又是滿場的球迷，而隊長會不會又在第一局的時候，就來支右外野的安打破紀錄呢？

News source：http://yankees.lhblogs.com/2009/09/10/a-special-moment-at-the-stadium/