Sour Freakin Grapes

Foxsports.com recently reprinted an article from the Post, unfortunately not signed, that claimed the Yankees-Sox rivalry was not what it used to be. “[T]his series has lost a good deal of its juice the past few years….” Why did that happen? According to this pundit, the “big thing” is that the “Red Sox win now. Not just games and series, but championships. The great backstory to this matchup evaporated along with that three-games-to-none lead the Yankees let slip away in the 2004 ALCS….The Curse defined The Rivalry.”

So let’s see if I have this straight. According to the Post, this was a great rivalry only when, at the season’s conclusion, the Yankees prevailed. It stopped being a great rivalry when the Sox beat the Yankees in 2004, and presumably, the rivalry became insignificant when the Sox won a second championship last year. Is that so? And who are the Yankees’ great rivals today? The Devil Rays, and Jonny Gomes?

First of all, the crowds in Boston and New York have given no indication that the rivalry has, as this genius proclaims, evaporated. Nor have the two teams suggested, either by their words, or their play, that the annual matchups no longer have much meaning. Really, this preposterous column is nothing more than the window into a small mind. What kind of putz would define a rivalry as a competition that, in the end, always turned out the same? How is the rivalry enhanced by a predictable outcome? Or speaking only from the Yankees’ perspective, what’s the value of beating the Red Sox, if it’s all preordained?

And speaking of putzes, if the Post, or this nitwit, or anyone else wants to place blame for tarnishing the rivalry, look no farther than Hank Steinbrenner. Sox fans don’t want a rival led by a buffoon. If the Yankees are sports’ greatest franchise, and the Sox are dominating the rivalry of late, the Yankees past only brings credit to the Sox success. But Hank Steinbrenner’s shenanigans bring no credit, nor any respect, to the Sox, or any other team, that manages to best the Yankees. Not that we wouldn’t take some pleasure from seeing a Steinbrenner, of all people, injure that franchise. But we just don’t look forward to a time when our most dramatic AL East confrontations are with the Jays or the Rays. Hank Steinbrenner is a disgrace, and his buffoonery demeans not only his team, but the game as well. As much as we love to hate the Yankees, and revel in their misfortune, this guy is a disgrace, and he demeans the rivalry.

Manny Being Manny - the 2008 Version

In 2008, Manny’s been being Manny, by being contented, by predicting that he will finish his career in Boston, by meditating, by verging on the philosophical, even by talking to the press. (This new relationship with the media had actually begun last October, when Manny provoked a ton of press attention before Game 5 of the ALCS with his “Don’t Worry, Be Manny” discourse, which of course turned out to be a zen koan of sorts, a paradoxical prediction of the intensity and focus that Manny, and the rest of the Sox would bring to the remaining seven games of the post-season.) Content and talkative, that’s the new Manny. But the old Manny is still with us, as last night’s game demonstrated.

The old Manny was a hitting machine, an RBI machine. Remember when the Angels walked Papi to pitch to Manny in the ninth inning of Game Two of the ALDS? And Manny sent K-Rod’s fastball into orbit? That’s the old Manny. The one the Nation loves, and the one the haters only begrudgingly give their due. This old Manny has singlehandedly won three games in April. And this is a tough April. First, the crazy season opener in Tokyo; then five games against the Yankees, three against the Tigers, and two in Cleveland. No nights off in April. And the Sox having to cope with much of this schedule without Lowell and Schilling, with Papi in the worst slump of his Boston career, and with the starting pitching seemingly unable to find the strike zone. In part it’s the weather. Last night in Cleveland looked colder than October; someone was playing recently in the snow; and the Yankees played the Royals last week in a downpour. This is baseball? Maybe it’s jet lag; I recall the Yankees starting slowly after a trip to the far east. Maybe the pitchers are just rusty, who knows? In any event, even a healthy lineup would have had its hands full against this April schedule.

But three times this April, Manny has won games for the Sox pretyy much by himself. Opening day in Japan, four RBIs, including a two-run double in the top of the tenth inning. Last Saturday against the Yankees, with Mussina looking pretty good on the mound, Manny knocked in three of Boston’s four runs. And then last night, in the top of the ninth, Manny capped a late-inning rally with a two-run homer, and the Sox were able to steal the first game from the Indians. So far this year, he has fourteen RBIs, one for each game, and ten extra-base hits. He’s now tied Lou Gehrig for home runs, and will soon be in the top twenty-five all time for career homers and RBIs.

Now, with Manny being Manny, all we need is Papi to begin being Papi, and Beckett to begin being Beckett, and the 2008 version of the Sox might turn out to be pretty good.

The Wager

As I write this, the Sox and Yankees are playing the rubber match, in their first series of 2008. I read today that since division play was begun in 1969, the Yankees have beaten the Sox 293 times, and the Sox have prevailed 286 times. Before 2004, despite this parity in regular season play, the rivalry would have seemed lop-sided, mainly by reason of the Yankees’ post-season success. But now, 1978 and 2003 are balanced by 2004, and we’re just focused on baseball, without the specter of the curse.

Last night’s game had its signature moment, one that Sox fans will relish all year – Papelbon striking out A-Rod on three pitches. It was in the eighth inning, with two men on base, the moment for which Pap was most needed. For years, Sox fans were haunted by Rivera, and the thought that if the shoe were on the other foot, no one stood much of a chance in the ninth inning. Of course, that changed in 2004, thanks in large part to Bill Mueller, but also thanks, in some measure to A-Rod, who instigated the famous brawl of July 2004, which gave way to a furious Sox comeback that afternoon, and Mueller’s walk-off into the right field stands. Many people said that the brawl ignited the whole Sox resurgence that year. But then in 2005, John and I were sitting in Fenway when Schilling came out of the bullpen to an enormous roar from the fans, filling in for an injured Foulke, and before the arrival of Pap, only to surrender a ninth-inning two run homer to A-Rod, with Rivera then getting the save. A-Rod on both ends of the rivalry it seems.

So whether you take a long look at the rivalry, over the span of 40 years, or whether you look for the little details, the matchups, the hits that dropped among three fielders, the fact that Dave Roberts was safe by about six inches, the rivalry has been, of late, about as close, and as intense as any in sports.

Which brings me to the subject of this year’s wager. The terms of the wager were negotiated here in Rochester, back in early December, on the night that G-Man met Danny at Max. I think we need to memorialize it, before the season progresses any further, and in fact, while the two teams are essentially tied, both in the standings, and in the head-to-head play. Best regular season record wins the wager. And this year, the losers buy dinner for four – the four being John and me representing the Nation, and G-Man and Danny on behalf of the Yankees, -- at Keens Chophouse. Now we left open the possibility that we could go three and three, the other two being Mike and Tunic, but I think we need commitments all around if we are going to take that additional step. All parties can indicate their interest or consent in a comment. As G-Man likes to say, let the games begin. Actually though, the games have begun, so how about, let the games continue.

Opening Day

No, not that opening day, which took place in Tokyo, as we were on our way to Israel. And I’m not even referring to today’s home opener, where the Sox will receive their 2007 rings. For those who have forgotten how that works, because it’s been so long, after a team wins the World Series, which is what we call the Major League baseball championship, the players and coaches, and even the staff, all receive commemorative rings. And unlike the T-Shirts that are being worn in the beer soaked locker room, or even on the visiting mound, as everyone begins the celebration, and are somehow ready immediately after the conclusion of the Series, all without managing to jinx the winning team, the rings are not ready so fast.

Instead, the rings are made sometime over the winter, and get presented in a long ceremony that precedes the next season’s home opener. That’s today; and for the second time in only four years, after never having witnessed this ceremony previously, the Fenway faithful will enjoy a joyous parade, probably starting with Tim Wakefield, who has been with the team the longest, and finishing, ironically, with Eric Gagne, who joined the team at last summer’s trading deadline, and then did his best to undermine the Sox stretch drive. Maybe they should give the last ring to Ellsbury, who was called up after the Gagne trade, and who would make for a better conclusion to today’s procession.

But that being said, I’m still not referring to baseball. Rather, I mean opening day at the barbeque pit. Yesterday was warm and sunny, so I fired up the Weber twice, once for lunch and once for dinner, and cooked variations of the Israeli food we had been eating for the previous ten days. Just about the only thing we brought home from this trip was a variety of Israeli spices, two of which are combinations made for cooking meat. The one we used on Sunday has an indecipherable Hebrew name, one that meant nothing to us, but was loosely translated as kabob spice. We ate some great kabob on this trip. My favorite was at the little Arab restaurant in K’Far Kana, the kabob being served traditionally, cooked on a skewer, served so hot you had to be careful not to touch the burning end of the metal skewer. Susan’s favorite was a kabob patty that she ate at a Café in Tel Aviv’s renovated port district, looking out over the Mediterranean as the sun set. They served the kabob on the spongy Yemenite bread that Gidon makes, the name of which I can never recall.

I tried the kabob spice on two meats; first I used some ground Buffalo a friend had given us, mixed that up with chopped garlic and onions, and a spoonful of seasoning. Buffalo burgers, Israeli style. Very good, although not nearly as spicy as the authentic product. Perhaps it’s the lamb they use over there; perhaps I needed more of the spice. Who knows? Dinner time I marinated chicken strips in the Cornell chicken barbeque sauce, but flavored with kabob spice. Once again they were tasty, but the flavor was a shadow of the real thing. Still it was noteworthy, both for the season’s opening of the pit, and for the effort to cook with Israeli accent. With all the trips over the past year, I don’t know how long it will be before we return. But in the meantime, I’d like to keep a taste of Israel close by.

Fast Days

After another ten days in Israel, I have come to understand better why the Jewish people established fast days for their calendar. It's to give everyone some relief from the incessant eating. We've been here first traveling around with Andy & Peggy, and then more recently staying with Hilla and Boaz, our friends from Modi'in, and it seems as though we haven't had five minutes when we weren't eating.

Something new for me this trip was the Arab coffee. Coffee in Israel used to be lousy; anywhere but the best hotels, they served instant coffee, and told you that was the way Israelis drank coffee. Sometime over the past couple years, coffee culture has come to the holy land. Now everyone makes decent coffee; several coffee shop chains have sprouted up (not Starbucks; instead, they have their own homegrown chains); and the old Nescafe is rarely found anywhere. For some reason on past trips, even though the local coffee was not particularly good, I hadn't indulged in Arab coffee, but this time we tasted it all over. In the old city of Jerusalem, at some little Druse village where we stopped for pastries; even at Moshav Tzipori. Arab coffee is what I would have previously called Turkish coffee - real strong, and brewed by boiling the grounds repeatedly - seven times is the old-fashioned recipe- but it's also flavored with Cardomom. Little cups, the size of an expresso. Excellent.

Early in the trip, when we were driving through the Galilee, I raved to Peggy about the local pastries, and then for around three days, we seemed to eat baklava morning, noon and night. The Arab and Druse villages always feature little pastry shops, not the local bakeries, but shops where the sweets are made and sold. And while we are familiar with one kind of baklava, these shops must sell a dozen different kinds - some walnut, some pistachio - different flavored honeys- some with filo dough, and some with this shredded wheat dough - some square, some triangle, some round. I couldn't always discern the differences among them, although Peggy could immediately figure out what was what.

Then, of course, we ate humus at every possible opportunity. We ate it for breakfast in the hotels; we ate it at every lunch; we didn't always eat it for dinner, only about 75% of the dinners. They have all these styles of humus here - some with a big pile of chick peas in the center - some with tahini - some with oil and spices. I think Andy personally, all by himself, ate fifteen or twenty pounds of humus in the five days we spent together.

Shakshuka. We had tasted Shakshuka previously, because Gidon makes it, and because Mike loves it. It's a sephardi breakfast dish - eggs poached in a spicy tomato stew. But for some reason, it never seemed to captivate us on previous trips. This time, we went crazy for the stuff, perhaps because our hotel featured it on the breakfast buffet, and everyone seemed to like it. So we tried it all over the north, either for breakfast or lunch. No two people seem to make their Shakshuka the same. Sometimes it's spicy hot; once we got it with ground meat in with the tomatoes; once it had some unique spice that no one could identify; our hotel made it spicy and sweet.

And I can't discuss food in Israel without giving credit to Gidon for his medley of Yemenite breads. I wont even try to remember their names, but I can at least describe a couple of my favorites. There is Galube, which is Yemenite fried dough, more or less. No powdered sugar, and best eaten when it's hot, right out of the oil. It was part of our huge Yemenite Shabbat dinner. Then there is the spongy flat bread, which is very light, with a soft mild taste, and is really quite unlike any other bread with which I'm at all familiar. Hilla knew of it; and we actually found it at a cafe near the Tel Aviv harbor one afternoon.

We didn't eat as much Halvah as, for example, baklava, but if I'm going to discuss food is Israel, I have to mention the Halvah. I'm not talking about the pre-packaged stuff one finds at Fox's; nor even the big slabs from which a pound piece can be carved. I'm talking about two dozen different flavors and textures. Marble, pistachio, chocolate, walnut. We stopped in a spice shop in Ra-ananah the very first day, and after tasting at least six different flavors, bought a couple pieces to share. They barely lasted a few minutes. The next day, in the Jerusalem shuk, we found an even more impressive display, but by then we were already overwhelmed by the pastries, by the baked goods, by the dried fruits. But if you wanted to focus solely on Halvah, you could spend all week tasting it, and still not sample everything.

Red wine. Israeli wine is getting better all the time; and I was insistent throughout this visit that we only drink Israeli wine. We ate Italian food in Herzliya one night, and they featured some fine Italian wines on the menu, but we drank Gamli Pinot Noir. For shabbat, we stopped in a liquor store near the shuk, and Fran suggested buying some Zinfandel from California. No way. We settled on a Cab-Shiraz blend, but I cannot recall the winery. Last night, we had a fabulous bottle of Tulip Syrah, perhaps the best bottle of Israeli wine we'd ever tasted. Their reds, even the Syrah, are light, much lighter than the Malbec, and Shiraz we normally drink. But even so, they are often great, and clearly seem to be improving on each visit.

We'll be heading home soon, and we saw some wonderful places on this trip. But if one thing made this visit stand out from the others, it was the food and drink.

The Land of Milk and Honey

A couple days ago, traveling through the Galilee with Andy & Peggy, Fran and Gidon, we stopped for the night at Moshav Tzipori. It was our first night on the road. That morning we had driven north, and had stopped to see the mosaics at Tzipori. Tzipori became the center of Jewish culture after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. The Sanhedrin had been moved to Tzipori, and the Mishnah was edited there. Tzipori is unique in ways, on account of its accomodation with the Romans. For example, the shul (B'et K'nesset) housed mosaics depicting the Jewish zodiac (!), and many biblical scenes, including the Akeidah. Of course, seeing the tableau of Abraham, Isaac, and the ram gave me a chance to hold forth on the genius of Abraham, and the real story of the Akeidah, as expounded earlier on this very blog. How Abraham ended human sacrifice, and changed the world.

Once done with the mosaics, and after dining to excess in the tiny Arab village of K'Far Kana, we found our way to the bed & breakfast in Moshav Tzipori, just a stone's throw from the ancient ruins. The Moshav was the stillest place I could ever remember in all of Israel. In the Golan, even when we were all alone, and far from any civilization, the wind was blowing constantly; and I can't recall any particular noise in the Negev, but maybe because we were riding around in a jeep, or hiking over rocks, but I don't have any impression of stillness in the desert. Here in the Galilee, at this tiny inn on a Moshav nestled among several hills, the only sound was the birds and the frogs. From the inn we had a view down into a neighboring valley where another Arab village sat, but far enough away that we could barely hear the call to prayer.

The folks who ran our inn also made olive oil, honey, and red wine. At night we drank the wine, as we sat in the Galil with old friends, and tried our best to solve most of the world's problems. In the morning, we had the olive oil as part of our breakfast. We never actually tasted the honey.

In the late afternoon, before we drank the wine, Susan and I hiked up to the top of one of the surrounding hills. The hill wasn't really steep,and it flattened out on top, where we found a working dairy farm. Couple hundred cows all waiting to be milked. And then I realized, we were in the land of milk and honey. My mental picture of biblical Israel is always arid and stark - a desert dotted with oases - tents pitched close to some well where the only water could be found - and in the background, the Dead Sea. But here, in the Galil, Israel is nothing like that. Here the land is lush and green. And to be here in the spring, with everything so green, with all the wildflowers in bloom, with the fruit orchards blossoming, it really did seem like paradise. For me, it was more than another beautiful sight in the ancient land. It was one more epiphany. Finding myself in the land of milk and honey gave me a further chance to understand why this land has meant so much to my people, for so long a time.