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| "Are you what you seem to be?" |
ONE DAY DURING his last season as general manager of the Chicago Cubs, I trekked over to Mesa, Arizona and interviewed Jim Hendry. The setting was perfect, old-time baseball: walking around the spring training facility under the morning Arizona sun, hearing the pop of dozens of baseballs into catcher's mitts echoing across the facility, never quite far from the back of one's mind that back home everyone was digging themselves out of their parking spaces, staking their territory by digging out their parking spaces and placing a folding chair in the cleared spot, a modern sign of medieval intentions, or just clicking their electric car starters, counting the days, while we, the gilded, sat at a picnic table discussing on the record how if things just went right the Cubs could win, and then off the record how this fucking team didn't have a chance. It was the good life.
Jim was a particular pleasure to talk to, not because he was a baseball genius but precisely because he wasn't. Like managers who actually had authority, Hendry's people, the baseball men who did not have MBAs from Ivy League schools and did not resemble young Wall Street sharks, were out of time. The image of Theo Epstein, Blackberry (now iPhone) glued to the side of his face, suggesting his rise was the product non-stop work (as well as a self-important shield against being approached) would soon replace Hendry knocking back a gin and tonic as the front-office archetype.
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| Jim Hendry: A good man out of time... |
While walking across the back fields with my old friend Marty Lurie, Marty's phone rings. Marty talks for a few minutes and hands me the phone.
"He wants to talk to you."
I take the phone.
"Howard," the voice said. "HE MADE ME LOOK LIKE A FUCKING ASSHOLE!"
It was Art Howe, former manager of the Oakland A's.
"He" was Billy Beane, still GM of the Oakland A's.
"He" was also the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, who portrayed Howe in Moneyball.
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| Art never sported a prodigious gut like that underneath his windbreaker. |
Art Howe was the first manager I covered in the big leagues. It was April 1998 and I was the beat man for the San Jose Mercury News. The A's were not a good team and nor were they expected to be. They were, however, expected to have a bright future. Two players, Ben Grieve and A.J. Hinch, were to contribute immediately. Grieve even won Rookie of the Year, and after every big game, Billy would say, "He's got a swing like Tiger Woods." Two other kids, Miguel Tejada and Eric Chavez, would be called up that year. Two more, Mark Mulder and Tim Hudson would arrive the next year. In 2000, the year Hudson won 20 games, Barry Zito would be next and beat Roger Clemens at Yankee Stadium in the playoffs that fall.
Art was a solid baseball man. In his office was a newspaper clipping of his finest moment as a pro, when the Houston Astros won their first division title. One-game, playoff, October 6, 1980, at Dodger Stadium. Howe went 3 for 5 with a home run and four RBI in a 7-1 win. Howe kept the banner headline of the Houston Chronicle the next day above his desk. It read:
"HOWE THE WEST WAS WON."
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| "I may look like Kandy Korn, but I can play." |
Perhaps most importantly, it would be in 1998 that GM Sandy Alderson would step aside and his heir apparent, Billy Beane, would take over, become a famous baseball innovator, innovations made famous first by Michael Lewis' runaway best seller Moneyball and then by Brad Pitt playing Beane in the film. Beane was also innovative in tormenting Art Howe every chance he got, making him the first real casualty of the coming analytics war. The coup de grace came on the big screen. While Pitt's Beane was sharp and quick and three dimensional and human, Hoffman's Howe was sullen and unlettered, selfishly obsessed with his contract as the team won, representative for all America to see of a man whose sport Beane in real life believed had passed him by. The only greater indignity would've been if Hoffman, while portraying Howe channeled his inner Scotty from Boogie Nights and asked, "Billy, can I kiss you on the mouth?"
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| "I'm such a fucking idiot!" |
Before meeting Art Howe, I did not know the word “Monkeyfucked”
existed in the English language, nevermind know it was a verb. We were in
Detroit, in old Tiger Stadium. Grieve misplayed a fly ball in right by
hesitating, stepping back, then charging a ball that would clang off of both
his shin and glove before ricocheting past him. A four-run inning ensued, and
the A’s would lose again.
Afterward, when the cameras left and it was just the
writers, the tape recorders turned off, Art summed up the evening.
“We had a chance until Ben monkeyfucked that ball.”
Art Howe was not only responsible for adding to my
vocabulary, but he also took me to my first big-time steakhouse. Once a season,
Art took the beat writers out to dinner. In 1999, he treated us to Ruth’s Chris
in Toronto and it marked an appreciation of the American steakhouse that exists
to this day.
Flying 56,000 miles on American produced its own share of monotony, but it was there, up in the air, where I noticed the ad for the great independent steakhouses across the country and began the journey of sampling many, from Bob's in Fort Worth to Plaza III in Kansas City to Berns in Tampa to Manny's in Minneapolis and Gibson's in Chicago. The enjoyment of the steakhouse even forced the repeated violation of HB Food Rule No. 2: (No chain restaurants unless completely necessary).
Having visited the Boston (the old Newbury Street location),
New York, Philadelphia and Hartford locations, The Capital Grille represented
one of those repeated violations and also one of the great conflicts.
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| A Capital Grille burger with Parmesan truffle fries - and a sidecar. |
Rules, however, were NOT meant to be violated and the price
of Capital Grille deliciousness is the face-to-face collision with morality and
worldview. The Capital Grille is a high-end continuation of the homogenizing of
America - a Capital Grille is not a bonus for being in a city, as is Manny's or
St. Elmo's in Indianapolis, but part of the ubiquity of Anywhere, USA, the
corporatocracy at full octane.
As the Lexus is really nothing more than a Toyota, the Infiniti is a Nissan and the Audi a Volkswagen, the
Capital Grille is the top of a chain, but still a chain. Its family of restaurants includes Red Lobster and Olive Garden and the defunct Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse, and that is the problem with chains, they have too many links.
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| All the pieces matter. |
The links are perilous: supporting the Capital Grille is essential to the pursuit of a high-quality gastronomy. Its existence also stands in complete opposition to how I view the world. It's like shopping at Home Depot (which I have been known to do) or eating at Subway (which I do not).
Maybe there is no stopping the dismal tide, but understanding America is understanding who signs the checks, of knowing that money may be power but knowing where the money is going and controlling that flow is even more power.It has always surprised me how surprised people are to discover ESPN is owned by Disney. Darden Restaurants Inc., owns the Capital Grille, so supporting them means supporting Olive Garden and its cookie-cutter nothingness, LongHorn Steakhouse, Bahama Breeze, Seasons 52, Eddie V's and the sports pub Yard House. To know is to be forewarned.
Art Howe was right about many things. While ridiculed on the silver screen, he was ultimately right about Grieve. During Grieve's sensational Rookie of the Year campaign, Art would privately say, "He can't hit a breaking ball. I mean, not even a bad one. I have no idea why anyone throws him a fastball."
At first it sounded like typical baseball-speak. The game of failure also produces a language of failure and managers, coaches and scouts all tend to concentrate on what a player cannot do instead of what he can.
Art was right, though. Opponents caught on and the amount of fastballs he saw slowed slowed to a trickle. Grieve would never be as good as he was that rookie year, but still lasted nine seasons in the big leagues.
He was also right in his choice of restaurants. Ruth's Chris, too, is a chain with 136 franchised locations, the largest luxury steakhouse chain in the country, but it is still of high quality despite its expansion. Oddly, I've never gone back to a Ruth's Chris since Toronto.
The Capital Grille, meanwhile, is a spectacular dining experience coupled with the gnawing dilemma of resisting my politics and patronizing the chain. Perhaps it is incumbent upon me to forgive the chain for top service in return. Peace is made in such ways, but so are slaves. Mel Gibson said so in Braveheart. Thanks a lot, Art.
The Capital Grille, meanwhile, is a spectacular dining experience coupled with the gnawing dilemma of resisting my politics and patronizing the chain. Perhaps it is incumbent upon me to forgive the chain for top service in return. Peace is made in such ways, but so are slaves. Mel Gibson said so in Braveheart. Thanks a lot, Art.
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| Gorgonzola-topped filet mignon in red wine sauce with potatoes Oscar |
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