Talk Bronx New York

Nothing less was expected. Nothing less was delivered. These are the Yankees. This is New York. They are the best, and that’s what this town mints: winners. If you don’t get it, enjoy your visit anyway.

Meanwhile, we’ll be out by the tens of thousands for a wild romp of a parade, an exuberant beat of the city’s great big heart.

Plenty spectacular it is that The Bombers inaugurated their handsome new Stadium by winning the 2009 World Series, the team’s 27th, before a home-field crowd.

And history doth repeat. The team won the first of its championships in the opening season of the old Stadium, way back in 1923. Ever since, the Yanks have topped baseball at an average of once every three years.

No one else comes close. Hell, add up the Series wins of the teams in each Major League division, and the only division with more than the Yanks is the one they are in, the AL East. The team has won more than a quarter of the World Series ever played. And it’s a thrill every time. Read more..

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Pedro Martinez faces the New York Yankees on the biggest stage of them all tonight, as he tries to give the Philadelphia Phillies a commanding two games to none lead in the World Series at Yankee Stadium.
Hated by Yankee fans during his time with the Boston Red Sox, then later with the Mets, Martinez, is no stranger to the Bronx. In 32 regular-season starts against the Yankees, he has a record of 11-11 with a 3.20 earned run average.

“I think in every aspect, the way you guys have used me and abused me since I’ve been coming to [Yankee] Stadium,” said Martinez on being cast as the villain to Yankee fans. “I remember quotes in the paper, ‘Here comes the man that New York loves to hate.’ The man? None of you have ever eaten steak with me or rice and beans with me to understand what I’m all about as a man. You might say the player, the competitor, but the man? You guys have abused my name. You guys have said so many things and have written so many things [about me].”

The veteran right-hander had been 8-4 in the old stadium and pitched perhaps his best game there back in 1999 when he allowed one hit and struck out 17 in a complete game win.

This, though, will be his first appearance in the new ballpark. Read more..

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First lady Michelle Obama hugs a veteran as Dr. Jill Biden greets other veterans at the James J. Peters Veterans Administration Medical Center.

 First Lady Michelle Obama swooped into New York on Wednesday to catch the legends of Yankee Stadium, but first she took time to honor some real heroes: Wounded U.S. veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama spoke at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center in the Bronx, where she visited with vets along with Dr. Jill Biden, the wife of the vice president, in advance of last night’s World Series Game 1 match-up between the Yanks and the Philadelphia Phillies.

The First Lady’s message: We can all do a little something to honor the men and women in the U.S. military. And please, she emphasized, don’t forget the families they often have to leave behind while serving overseas. Read more..

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In the end, all that mattered to the Red Sox [team stats] was that rookie right-hander Junichi Tazawa pitched his team to a 14-1 victory over the Yankees on a furnace-hot afternoon at Fenway.

The bonus, for connoisseurs of baseball, is that the kid happened also to provide an endless amount of entertainment, with Yankees batters hitting his best stuff so hard and so often that the whole thing began to look and sound and feel like one of those Rocky Balboa [trailer] fights.

There was, for instance, that shot off the Monster by Robinson Cano in the second inning. Alas for the Yankees, left fielder Jason Bay gunned down Cano trying to stretch it into a double.

There was that vicious line drive by the next batter, Eric Hinske. That was hit right smack into the glove of first baseman Victor Martinez.

The Yanks had two on and one out in the first . . . didn’t score a run. A walk and the Cano single in the second . . . no runs. Single by Nick Swisher in the third? Wasted. First and second, one down, in the fourth? No problem: Tazawa struck out Hinske and then got Melky Cabrera on a bouncer to first.

In the fifth, with two out, Mark Teixeira singled to center and Alex Rodriguez followed with a single to left. This brought up Hideki Matsui, who swung so hard and missed so hard at Tazawa first offering, screwing himself into the ground in the process, that the whole endeavor had Reggie Jackson stamped all over it. The showdown lasted six pitches, Matsui seemingly setting up Tazawa for a cannon shot somewhere, and then it ended, just like that, with a harmless pop fly to third.

“There was some pretty solid contact,” Red Sox manager Terry Francona said of Tazawa outing. “But he executed pitches, especially when they had runners on base, and had a way of dialing up that fastball a bit, locating it with a little extra on it.” Read more..

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Algenis Perez Soto in ‘Sugar’: from the Dominican Republic to the Bronx

Local filmmakers Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden step up to bat with ‘Sugar’

 One of their early films, “Gowanus, Brooklyn,” won the shorts prize at the

 Sundance Film Festival in 2004, and three years later their first feature-length film, “Half Nelson” earned an Oscar nod for star Ryan Gosling. Now, Brooklyn-based writing-directing team Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden have a new project, “Sugar,” about the unlikely journey of an aspiring minor league baseball player, Miguel “Sugar” Santos (newcomer Algenis Perez Soto), from his humble home in the Dominican Republic, to the corn fields of Iowa, to the melting pot that is the Bronx.

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