Winter Hill Root Brew

In a somewhat surprising move, I recently took my first stab at non-alcoholic brewing. About three weekends ago, KJ and I made a trip to the local home brew store with the intention of attempting to make root beer. This was her idea, so she basically took the lead with most everything, but I was totally on board with the concept. She did most of the research and developed the recipe, borrowing ideas from other concoctions of course, while I lent my relative expertise in the areas of sanitation procedures and determining the ideal temperature for the pitching of the yeast.

As it turns out, root beer takes considerably less time to make than alcoholic beer, mostly owing to the fact that it doesn't have to ferment. The yeast is added for the sole purpose of carbonation, although the combination of yeast and sugar must mean there's at least a little fermentation. Needless to say, the wheels are now spinning inside my head.

We recently tasted our finished product—which we're naming Winter Hill Root Brew after the Somerville neighborhood in which it was made—for the first time, and it was pretty good. Judging by the smells that were emanating from my place during the time since we brewed it, I thought it was going to be much sweeter than it turned out, so we'll have to make some adjustments the next time around. Overall, though, we're fairly pleased with the results.

There is still an update pending on my latest alcoholic brew, for which my brewing partner and I labored over the naming process before finally settling on a moniker. I'm going to save that for a subsequent post, though, as I recently ordered labels and am excited to see how they turn out. I'll include a photo with that update.

Coke-Aceves Redux

Last year, I was pretty high on two pitchers who made their major league debuts for the Yankees in 2008. In fact, I wrote five posts tracking the progress of Phil Coke and Alfredo Aceves during the final month of the season, because that was basically all there was to get excited about. Following their strong debuts, I had high hopes for both of them, especially Coke.

This year didn't start out quite the way I envisioned. Coke gave up more runs on opening day—two in 1 2/3 IP—than he did in the 14 2/3 innings he pitched last year. Whatever chance Aceves had to begin the year in the rotation all but vanished when the Yankees signed free agents C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett. Instead, he started the season at AAA Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and spent the entire first month there.

Coke's struggles lasted through the season's first two months, as he ended May with a 4.79 ERA, allowing 16 hits, nine walks and five home runs in 20 2/3 innings. From June 1 on, though, he's been just as good as the brief glimpse we saw of him last year, giving up just one earned run on five hits and four walks, while striking out 16, in 15 2/3 innings. For the year, Coke has an ERA of 2.97, a WHIP of 0.94, seven holds and one save, and has held opposing batters to a .172 average. He has ably stepped into the role of the Yankees' top lefthander out of the bullpen, and has been just as effective against right-handed hitters as he's been against lefties.

Of course, as I'm wrapping up writing this, Coke has surrendered a solo homer to Joe Mauer in the bottom of the 7th of tonight's game against the Twins, cutting the Yankees' lead to 4-3.

Aceves was recalled from the minors on May 4 and has served as the utility man out of the Yanks' bullpen since. He's made 21 relief appearances, going two or more innings 12 times, and three or more on four occasions. Aceves is 5-1 with one save and three holds, and has allowed just 37 baserunners (30 hits and seven walks) while striking out 34, in 40 IP. Further proving his versatility, he gets the call tomorrow in his first start of the season, filling in for the injured Chien-Ming Wang.

Both Coke and Aceves still qualify as rookies this year, as do three other players—Brett Gardner, Ramiro Pena and Francisco Cervelli—who have earned significant playing time in the first half of the 2009 Yankees season, although only Pena is the only one to make his major league debut this year. So, while there still may be a "rookie watch," it won't be quite the same as last year's tracking of several players getting their first ever taste of major league competition.

Future Rivals?

On Wednesday night, I made my first trip to the outer suburbs of Boston to visit LeLacheur Park, home of the Lowell Spinners, the New York-Penn League Class A affiliate of the Red Sox. Despite the consistent rain that this area has been getting of late, and a torrential downpour just before game time, they managed to play a full nine innings.

The weather did seem to keep a lot of fans away though, as the stadium was only about half full, and I had actually purchased online the last remaining ticket two days before the game. How do I know it was the last seat in the house? Because their web site allows you to view available seats by section, and since there are only 20 sections in the entire place, it isn't too difficult to go through the entire stadium to find the best spot. In this case, the best spot was the only one.

As is the case with most relatively new minor league parks, LeLacheur is a cozy place to watch a game up close and personal. Nothing made this park stand out as any better or worse than Dutchess Stadium, the home of the Hudson Valley Renegades, the New York-Penn League team for which my dad is a season ticket holder. Both stadiums are simply well designed.

The Spinners' opponent was the Staten Island Yankees, which got me to thinking about what the chances are that, in the future, any of these players will be facing each other in the major leagues, as Yankees and Red Sox. Keep in mind, of course, that this is short-season A ball, four steps away from the big show. I went to the Renegades game with my dad last night, and he told me they estimate that one out of 13 of the players on the current squad will make it to the majors.

Based on my knowledge of the players who have passed through the Hudson Valley in the team's 15-year history, I think this is a conservative estimate. Even if I'm right, this most likely means that no more than three guys from each of the current rosters of Lowell and Staten Island will get to the majors. The fact that some of them may have changed organizations in the process decreases the chances even further that they'll play against each other as Yankees and Red Sox. So, I would say that maybe one day the big clubs will square off, and there will be one member of each of the current editions of these minor league teams involved.

I've written a couple of posts about the perceived bad luck that I've brought the Yankees in their recent matchups with the Red Sox. It hadn't even occurred to me that it might actually carry over to minor league games as well, but the Spinners defeated the Yankees 11-0. In fact, I left in the bottom of the 6th, with the score already 11-0, so once I was gone, the Yankees performed much better, relatively speaking.

Particularly woeful was the performance of Staten Island pitcher Sam Elam, and his manager's handling of the situation. Five walks, two wild pitches and a hit batter resulted in four runs allowed on no hits in one inning of work. Making matters even worse, in my opinion, was the fact that Yankees' manager Josh Paul—most famous as the catcher involved in the botched third strike on A.J. Pierzynski in the 2005 ALCS—didn’t even have a pitcher start warming up in the bullpen until after the fourth walk.

The most impressive performance was turned in by Spinners starting pitcher Jose Alvarez, who gave up hits to the first two Yankees he faced, then proceeded to throw six scoreless innings, allowing only one hit and a walk thereafter. Listed at 5'11" and 150 lbs., the Venezuelan hurler is probably not one of the Red Sox hottest pitching prospects due to his size, but he's now allowed only one run on 9 hits and a walk, while striking out 15, in 18 innings for Lowell.

The Pride of Dutchess County

The county where I grew up in New York happens to be the birthplace of two of the 289 members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. I'm not sure if that's a record, but in his book, Baseball in Dutchess County: When it Was a Game, Joseph V. Poillucci reports that he asked that question of the Hall of Fame itself and received an uncertain response. He was told that the Hall's records only include the city, and not the county, where its members were born, but it is known that at least one other county can make the claim, since both Paul and Lloyd Waner were born in Harrah, Oklahoma.

They also sent him the birthplace information for all of the Hall of Famers, but it's unclear as to why he didn't follow through with their suggestion to determine this for himself. However, it's likely that Dutchess County is one of no more than a few counties that can boast of having as many as two native sons in the Hall. It might take a little time, but I'll eventually do the research to figure out the answer for myself.

The two Hall of Famers in question are Wappingers Falls' Dan Brouthers, one of the greatest hitters of the 19th century, and the Columbia-educated Eddie Collins of Millerton. On Sunday, KJ and I went on a mini-tour of the various tributes to the two greatest players that Dutchess County has ever produced.

Our first stop was the final resting place of "Big Dan" Brouthers, St. Mary's Cemetery in Wappingers Falls. Brouthers was actually born in the nearby town of Sylvan Lake, but his family moved to Wappingers when he was just a youngster. Widely considered to be the Babe Ruth of the 19th century, he played 18 seasons in the majors from 1879 to 1896—plus a brief comeback at age 46 in 1904—and is still 9th all-time with a lifetime batting average of .342.

St. Mary's wasn't a large cemetery, but we still had a little difficulty finding his grave. In fact, despite finding the stones of three others named Brouthers, we didn't find his until we phoned a friend for help.

Our next stop was just down the street to a field dedicated to Brouthers. I first discovered this field about 20 years ago, when I umpired a Little League All-Star game there. I immediately notified my friend Joe, who is an even bigger baseball history fanatic than I am, and neither of us had any knowledge of the existence of this field less than 10 miles from where we both grew up. The field was dedicated in 1971 with an impressive monument to the pride of Wappingers Falls.

You'll have to visit a site called BallparkReviews.com to see what I'm talking about, because unbelievably, the field and the monument were no longer there. It may not be so obvious if you compare the following photo to the one on the site, because they're taken from opposite directions, but I assure you this is the former location of Brouthers Field.

When I informed Joe—who also happens to be the friend I phoned for help in locating Big Dan's grave—of the disappearance of the field, he emailed the mayor of the Village of Wappingers Falls to inquire. Stay tuned for more information on that.

Dan Brouthers was the reigning major league leader in career home runs in 1887, the year that Eddie Collins was born about an hour northeast of Wappingers—as far as one could travel from there without leaving Dutchess County—in Millerton. Eddie "Cocky" Collins, so named not for his arrogance, but for his extreme level of confidence in his sheer ability to play the game, is generally considered to be—along with Joe Morgan and Rogers Hornsby—one of the three greatest second basemen in history.

Collins is also known for being one of the clean players on the 1919 Chicago White Sox, commonly referred to as the Black Sox for the fact that eight players—including Joe Jackson—conspired with gamblers to throw the World Series, and were subsequently banned from baseball. In 1964, the good people of Millerton honored their hometown hero by dedicating the local park to him, building a beautiful stone archway at its entrance. This was our final stop on a day of paying tribute to the two players who share the distinction of being considered, in my opinion, the pride of Dutchess County.

Frequent Spins (2009.4)

The Boy Least Likely To - The Law of the Playground
I've been fascinated by the term "twee pop" ever since a friend and former co-worker described this particular indie rock sub-genre to me several years ago. I'm still not 100% sure about what music qualifies for this description, but if this isn't twee, then I don't know what twee is. As their name implies, this band's songs mostly revolve around a young man with a poor self image. I'll admit that the subject matter can be a bit much to take at times—and it remains to be seen how much staying power this album will have—but excellent songs like "The Boy with Two Hearts," "I Keep Myself to Myself" and "A Fairytale Ending" manage to keep me coming back for more.

Buddy and Julie Miller - Written in Chalk
This is actually only the second album the alt-country husband-and-wife team have released as a duo, although they both have fairly extensive resumes as solo artists and in support of other artists. In fact, there is quite the supporting cast here, including Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin and Robert Plant. An intimate and heartfelt affair throughout, the major highlight turns out to be a duet with Buddy and Emmylou, the Leon Payne-penned George Jones classic "The Selfishness of Man," which closes the record out perfectly.

Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
The etymology of the word maudlin is that it's derived from the name of Mary Magdalene, based on her portrayal as a weeping penitent. Camera Obscura's latest effort, however, isn't as sad as the use of that word in its title would seem to indicate. In fact, sweet melancholy is one apt description that I've read, and that sentiment is expressed in the lyrics, "My maudlin career has come to an end — I don't want to be sad again," on the title track. On album closer and standout track, "Honey in the Sun," the upbeat nature of the song effectively masks its bittersweet lyrics, but it still serves to leave the listener with the sense that optimism reigns.

Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band - Outer South
Conor Oberst wants to be Bob Dylan, and it couldn't be more obvious than on choice moments of this album, particularly on the rousingly political "Roosevelt Room." On the other hand, he's an unusually egalitarian bandleader, as evidenced by the fact that his bandmates take songwriting and lead vocal duties on six of Outer South's 16 songs. It's the Oberst-written material that stands out, though, with other highlights including "Nikorette," "Spoiled" and "I Got the Reason #2" on another fine release from the Bright Eyes frontman.

Tinted Windows - Tinted Windows
This unlikely super group—consisting of Taylor Hanson (Hanson), James Iha (Smashing Pumpkins), Adam Schlesinger (Fountains of Wayne) and Bun E. Carlos (Cheap Trick)—delivers 35 minutes of unadulterated pure power pop pleasure. It's not ground-breaking—in fact, it may not even be good—but it's thoroughly enjoyable. I may throw the term "guilty pleasure" around somewhat liberally, but this album simply defines it. If they can keep writing songs like Schlesinger's "Kind of a Girl" and "Dead Serious," Iha's "Back with You," and the Hanson/Schlesinger collaboration "Take Me Back," I know of at least one person who will keep listening.