Sobering Saturday morning read from Ron Suskind, the man who warned us about Bush's GOP mocking us for being part of “the reality based community” back in 2004. Now he's got a new warning: Trump's loyalty based community:

Many of the officials I spoke to came back to one idea: You don't know Donald Trump like we do. Even though they can't predict exactly what will happen, their concerns range from the president welcoming, then leveraging, foreign interference in the election, to encouraging havoc that grows into conflagrations that would merit his calling upon U.S. forces. Because he is now surrounded by loyalists, they say, there is no one to try to tell an impulsive man what he should or shouldn't do.

“That guy you saw in the debate,” a second former senior intelligence official told me, after the first debate, when the president offered one of the most astonishing performances of any leader in modern American history — bullying, ridiculing, manic, boasting, fabricating, relentlessly interrupting and talking over his opponent. “That's really him. Not the myth that's been created. That's Trump.”

Still another senior government official, who spent years working in proximity to Mr. Trump, put it like this: “He has done nothing else that's a constant, except for acting in his own interest.” And that's how “he's going to be thinking, every step of the way, come Nov. 3.”

The piece goes into some of the worst possibilities on election day, Nov. 3, including attacks/battles at polling places, foreign disinformation and interference, Trump activating the National Guard. It also mentions some of the worst of the public servants who are instead serving Trump, including Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson. He's up for re-election in 2022. There's also a great bit/edit after Trump discovers generals don't just do whatever he says; there's a higher loyalty:

This shock, and his first two-plus years of struggle with seasoned, expert advisers, led to an insight for Mr. Trump. It all came back to loyalty. He needed to get rid of any advisers or senior officials who vowed loyalty to the Constitution over personal loyalty to him. Which is pretty much what he proceeded to do.

[Break]

In February 2019, William Barr arrived as attorney general ...

I laughed out loud even though it's about the furthest thing from a laughing matter. 

Daniel Dale deserves combat pay. 

In this one speech, Trump has:
- Called mask use “politically correct”
- Falsely claimed we're turning some corner
- Falsely claimed spike in cases is just more testing
- Dismissed importance of cases in young people
- Accused doctors of inflating death toll to get “more money”

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 30, 2020

Election day is in four days and Texas has already surpassed its vote total for 2016, while Washington state has already received and counted more than 60% of the ballots it mailed out two+ weeks ago. All good signs.

In other news, I find myself oddly rooting for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 2020 World Series. I should be rooting for the Tampa Bay Rays, the no-money, no-name squad that are massive underdogs and have no World Series titles to their name. In contrast, the Dodgers have some of the biggest names in baseball (Mookie, Cody, Clayton), the second-highest payroll of 2020 (to the Yankees), and six World Series championships.

True, their last title was in 1988, the Kirk Gibson World Series, which happened 10 years before the Rays organization, then known as the Devil Rays, was even born. More important, here's something else the Dodgers have that the Rays don't:

More World Series losses than any team in baseball history. 

I don't know why, but I've never looked at the World Series losses before. Like everyone, I count wins. I count rings, pennants, postseasons. But over the weekend I half-wondered about this hapless squad: Do the Dodgers have more World Series losses than anyone? More even than the Yankees, who have been to the World Series twice as often?

Turns out: Yes. Before this year, the Dodgers of Brooklyn and LA have been to the Series 20 times but won it only six, meaning, for those who learned their math at Burroughs Elementary in Sexy South Minneapolis, that they lost it 14 times. They're 6-14. The Yankees have lost it a lucky 13 times; they're 27-13. The only other team in double-digit WS losses is the Giants of New York and San Francisco: 8-12. 

For the curious, here's how the original 16 teams stack up when sorted by winning percentage:

I guess this could provide some solace to fans of the Pirates, for example. Sure, they haven't been to the World Series since 1979; but they haven't lost a World Series since 1927.

Whatever happens to the Dodgers this year, though, won't move them much in the standings. If they lose Games 6 and 7, they'll be tied with the Phillies for the second-worst World Series Winning Percentage (WSWP). If they win, they'll be tied with the Braves and Indians. That's what victory would mean to the Dodgers overall: a tie with the Indians. Not exactly glamour territory.

So anyway I'm rooting for the Dodgers. 

“As with President Trump's two earlier nominees to the court, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, the details of Judge Barrett's jurisprudence were less important than the fact that she had been anointed by the conservative activists at the Federalist Society. Along with hundreds of new lower-court judges installed in vacancies that Republicans refused to fill when Barack Obama was president, these three Supreme Court choices were part of the project to turn the courts from a counter-majoritarian shield that protects the rights of minorities to an anti-democratic sword to wield against popular progressive legislation like the Affordable Care Act. ...

”It was never about letting the American people have a voice in the makeup of the Supreme Court. That's what Mr. McConnell and other Senate Republicans claimed in 2016, when they blocked President Obama from filling a vacancy with nearly a year left in his term. ...

“It was never about fighting 'judicial activism.' For decades, Republicans accused some judges of being legislators in robes. Yet today's conservative majority is among the most activist in the court's history, striking down long-established precedents and concocting new judicial theories on the fly, virtually all of which align with Republican policy preferences.

”It was never about the supposed mistreatment that Robert Bork, a Reagan nominee, suffered at the hands of Senate Democrats in 1987. ...

“Of all the threats posed by the Roberts Court, its open scorn for voting rights may be the biggest.”

-- New York Times Editorial Board, about yesterday's rushed confirmation of Amy Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court to fill the spot vacated by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg last month. I've said it a zillion times: Hillary Clinton's vast, right-wing conspiracy has been replaced by a vast, right-wing hypocrisy that is out in the open and doesn't give a fuck.

Follow the money. Who gives it to Graham, to McConnell, to the Federalist Society? Follow the money. 

Bo Derek in “10.”

Yes, it's another KNOWN FOR debacle from IMDb. These are fun. Wish I didn't have to do them. I wish Amazon cared about its film site.

So, according to IMDb, what is Bo Derek known for? Wait. First for the kids: Who is Bo Derek?

In the late 1970s, Bo has a supporting role in the Blake Edwards/Dudley Moore comedy “10” as the titular fantasy fixation. That was the first time I'd ever heard of this rating system, by the way. I was 16 and thought: “Wait, what? We're supposed to do what? Rate women on a scale from one to what?” Don't know if I ever used it much, and I doubt young men use it today, but I guess for a time men rated women in this manner, and Bo was supposed to be the pinnacle: the perfect 10. The movie got good reviews, did great at the box office (it was the seventh-biggest grosser of 1979), piqued interest in Ravel's “Bolero,” and made a star out of Dudley Moore. But it was Bo who became the phenomenon. Everyone was talking about her. She was on the cover of every magazine. I'm sure tons of movie offers rolled in.

But she didn't do any of those. Instead, she made movies written and directed by her husband, John Derek.

Also for the kids: Who is John Derek? He was the reason I was looking at Bo's IMDb page in the first place. The other night I was watching Nicholas Ray's “Run for Cover,” starring James Cagney, and Derek has the secondary role, which ... which was him. In the 1950s, he was the cute, lightweight, second. He played Joshua, for example, in “The Ten Commandments” (his own “10” movie), but apparently he didn't like acting much, and in the mid-1960s he traded it in for a directing career: “Nightmare in the Sun” with Ursulla Andress, and “Childish Things” with Linda Evans, among others. These actresses weren't just his stars, either; they were his wives. He was married to Ursula 1957-1966 and to Linda Evans 1969-1975. In 1976, at age 49, he married Bo. She was 19. It was kind of creepy. It was like he kept trading in the same beautiful, high-cheekboned, Nordic woman for a newer model.

It gets creepier. In 1981, in the aftermath of all the “10” attention, a low-budget, soft-core movie, “Fantasies,” starring Bo, and directed by John, was released. Except it wasn't filmed in the aftermath of “10.” It was filmed in Greece. In 1973. Back when Bo was called Mary Cathleen Collins of Long Beach, Calif. And she was 16. 

In the real aftermath of “10,” instead of making any of the studio pics she was offered, Bo played Jane in John Derek's “Tarzan, the Ape Man.” It did OK box office ($36 mil, the 15th highest-grosser of the year), but the reviews were scathing (10% on Rotten Tomatoes). Three years later, John directed her in “Bolero,” about a 1920s movie fan who travels to Europe to lose her viriginity. It made less money ($9 mil, the 83rd highest-grosser of the year), and the reviews were even more scathing (0% on RT). Five years after that, John directed her in “Ghosts Can't Do It,” which made ... $25k? I guess? It's hard to figure its box-office take because the movie was barely released in theaters. It was certainly never reviewed. By then, no one cared. By then, the national “Bo” was somebody else.

And that was that. There went her career. She was in “10,” did crap for her husband, disappeared.

So back to the original question: According to IMDb's algorithms, what is Bo Derek known for? Here you go:

Yes. Not “10.” 

I guess I kind of see it? “Tommy Boy” is there because Farley/Spade are still popular, “Bolero” and “Tarzan” are for the soft-core boys, and “Ghost Can't Do It” because it includes a cameo by Donald Trump. For which he won a Razzie. Back then.

Plus who watches “10” anymore?

But it's still wrong. The chart below is how often her name comes up, historically, on newspapers.com. That peak in 1980 is more than 26,000 mentions. Then the long slog downward. 

The question for IMDb is this: How do you incorporate such historical information into the “Known For” algorithm? Or should they keep the algorithm as it is—about who comes to IMDb—but just change the title? That would be the easy solution. But I expect no solution. Since I doubt they see a problem.

The bigger lesson here is the Hamiltonian one: Don't throw away your shot.

Here's a bonus via newspapers.com: My father's 1984 review of “Bolero.”

(click here for bigger view)

This was kind of fun to put together. Definitely a tale of Haves and Have Nots:

YEARS IN EXISTENCE	138	23
POSTSEASONS	34	6
PENNANTS	21	2
CHAMPIONSHIPS	6	0
FIRST PENNANT YEAR	14th	11th
FIRST CHAMPIONSHIP YEAR	53rd	n/a
OVERALL WIN %	.528	.477
2020 WIN %	.717	.667
PRIOR NAMES	Grays, Atlantics, Bridegrooms, Grooms, Superbas, Trolley Dodgers, Robins	Devil Rays
FANS' QUIRK	Leave before 9th inning	Fans?
BEST HISTORICAL PLAYER (bWAR)	Clayton Kershaw (69.6)	Evan Longoria (51.8)
BEST 2020 PLAYER (bWAR)	Mookie Betts (3.4)	Brandon Lowe (2.1)
RETIRED NUMBERS	1 (Pee Wee Reese), 2 (Tommy Lasorda), 4 (Duke Snider), 19 (Jim Gilliam), 20 (Don Sutton), 24 (Walter Alston), 32 (Sandy Koufax), 39 (Roy Campanella), 42 (Jackie Robinson), 53 (Don Drysdale)	12 (Wade Boggs), 66 (Don Zimmer)
HALL OF FAMERS	Wee Willie Keeler (1939), Dazzy Vance (1955), Zack Wheat (1959), Jackie Robinson (1962), Burleigh Grimes (1964), Roy Campanella (1969), Sandy Koufax (1972), Duke Snider (1980), Walter Alston (1983), Don Drysdale (1984), Pee Wee Reese (1984), Leo Durocher (1994), Tommy Lasorda (1997), Don Sutton (1998)	n/a
GREAT BOOKS WRITTEN ABOUT	The Boys of Summer, Baseball's Great Experiment, Sandy Koufax, Opening Day, I Never Had It Made, 1947: When All Hell Broke Loose in Baseball	n/a
GREAT MOVIES MADE ABOUT	42	The Rookie
ALL-STARS ON 2020 SQUAD	Clayton Kershaw (8x), Mookie Betts (4x), Kenley Jensen (3x), Cody Bellinger (2x), Corey Seager (2x), Alex Wood, Blake Treinen, Walker Buehler, Justin Turner, AJ Pollock, Joc Pederson, Max Muncy	Charlie Morton (2x), Brandon Lowe, Austin Meadows, Blake Snell
2020 PAYROLL	$107.9 million  (2nd)	$28.2 million (28th)

How odd is it for the Dodgers to be the Haves? Historically they've been so Have Nots, particularly vis a vis the New York Yankees. At the same time, just add it up. They have the second-most postseason appearances in MLB history (34), and the second-most number of pennants (21), one more than the Giants and two more than the Cardinals. Where they lack? This very thing. Titles. Rings. They have six, nothing to sneeze at, but that puts them sixth all-time, behind the Giants (8), Red Sox (9), Athletics (9), Cardinals (11), and, of course, the damn Yankees (27). 

The Rays have no titles. One of six teams with none: Rangers, Padres, Brewers, Mariners, Rockies. 

I think the saddest of the above comparisons is retired numbers, mostly because the Rays' retired numbers are just sad. Zimmer was a Rays coach for the 11 seasons before he died. And yes, he was great, a flamboyant baseball character, but better known for being on other teams. And ... coach? Not a manager? How many coaches have had numbers retired? But the worst is Boggs. Played all of two seasons with the Devil Rays, his last two seasons, where he accumulated a bWAR of 1.2.

And on the other side? Not just the left-hand of God, Sandy Koufax, but Jackie Robinson, a player whose impact on the game was so great his number has been retired by every Major League team. Including the Rays.

The most important comparison, though? 2020 win percentage. It's kinda close, and that's all that matters. Plus the Rays are younger and better rested. Plus they're the team that took out the Yankees, so ... respect.

I'm rooting for 7.

ADDENDUM: I guess I'm rooting for Clayton Kershaw, the best pitcher of his generation who stumbles in the postseason. Last night, during Game 1, he didn't stumble. He gave up a hit to the first batter he faced, a walk to the third, and a homer in the Xth, but that was it. Good line: 6 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 8-1 K/BB. Trouble is, he's had a lot of good lines in the post. Then the eruptions. I'm hoping for none the rest of the way. 

“Since Donald Trump entered politics, he has surrounded himself with grifters and figures of gross incompetence. [Secretary of Labor Eugene] Scalia is part of a smaller cohort: distinguished conservatives who have joined the Administration to advance their own ideological goals. A graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, where he edited the law review, and a partner at the white-shoe firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, where he has specialized in labor-and-employment law and administrative law, Scalia has an intellectual pedigree that most members of Trump's inner circle lack. Temperamentally, he has little in common with the bombastic President. Yet, like virtually everyone in the Republican Party, Scalia has chosen to view this Administration chiefly in opportunistic terms. His longtime agenda has been curtailing government, and at the Labor Department he has overseen the rewriting of dozens of rules that were put in place to protect workers. As the coronavirus has overrun America, Scalia's impulse has been to grant companies leeway rather than to demand strict enforcement of safety protocols.”

-- Eyal Press, “Trump's Labor Secretary Is a Wrecking Ball Aimed at Workers,” in The New Yorker. And yes, Eugene is the son of. Seriously depressing article. Make sure you read it.  

When I was a kid growing up in Minnesota in the mid-1970s, the most imitated batting stances, in no particular order, were:

• the sudden Killebrew crouch
• Stargell's pinwheels
• the Carew leanback
• Joe Morgan chicken flap

I was in an AL city, there was no interleague play, but I saw Morgan and the Big Red Machine all the time. They were always in the thick of it, and Morgan, who died last Sunday, was one of their in-the-thick-of-it-iest players. Or was he? His overall postseason line isn't good: .182/.323/.348. Cf., Pete Rose: .321/.388/.440. Or Johnny Bench: .266/.335/.527. Both are better than their career numbers, Morgan's is way worse. I do like the leap from his awful BA to his pretty good OBP. That's so Joe. Here's a fun stat: In the 1976 NLCS against the 103-win Philadelphia Phillies, which the Reds swept, Morgan went hitless in three games: .000 BA. Guess what his OBP was? .462. Then he went on to win the 1976 World Series MVP in a four-game sweep of the Yanks, with a .333/.412/.733 line. That may have been one of the few postseason contests where I rooted for the Reds. I didn't like them. I liked Morgan and Bench and Tony Perez I guess, but my antipathy for Pete Rose trumped all.

Did we know how good Morgan was? Maybe a little. He was NL MVP two years in a row, '75 and '76, the stolid, sparkplug center of that insane lineup, so we kind of knew. But OBP wasn't yet a thing. Advanced measures weren't a thing. WAR wasn't a thing. There's a great story about Morgan's first spring training with the Reds after he was traded from the Astros in Nov. 1971 as part of an eight-player deal. He was practicing laying down bunts when Pete Rose yelled at him. “Hey, we don't do that shit here!” They didn't sacrifice. No, they took. Like Paul Muni, they stole, and Morgan wound up second to Lou Brock for most stolen bases in the 1970s. And they hit. And they hit with power. And that kind of atmosphere was exactly what Joe Morgan apparently needed.

Prior to the trade, he'd had some good seasons, particularly his 1965 rookie year (he finished second in the ROY voting) and 1971. But from '72 to '76, this is where Morgan ranked in terms of bWAR for position players in all of Major League Baseball—NL and AL:

• 1972: first
• 1973: first
• 1974: second 
• 1975: first
• 1976: first

By bWAR, he's the 21st greatest position player of all time. He's ahead of Yaz, Clemente, Brett, Griffey Jr., Carew, Boggs, Kaline. He's ahead of Bench and Rose. I think we thought he was good; I just don't think we thought he was that good. 

So it's funny to note, as Joe Posnanski does in his obit, that Morgan hated bWAR. All the advanced stats showed what a great player he was and yet he hated all the advanced stats. You gotta smile.

Tweeted this the other day:

That was ... Thursday? Just two days ago? Wow. Like everything in the Trump era, it seemed like forever. 

Yesterday evening, Friday evening, our ballots finally arrived. I was going to fill mine out with a glass of hopefully celebratory bourbon but instead waited until this morning with a cup of coffee. I remembered Election Night 2016, that horrible evening, when it suddenly seemed clear that Trump would win, and I immediately stopped drinking. I decided I needed to have my wits about me if I was living in a country dumb enough to elect Donald Fucking Trump president of the United States. So I wanted to send him out with that same feeling. This morning, sitting at my desk, The Stranger endorsements up online, and my Covid-era album, George Harrison's “All Things Must Pass,” playing, I had at it. I went federal office first, tackled the rest (maintain ... maintain ... fuck Tim Eyman, man), then walked both my wife's and my ballots over to the nearest ballot drop box—the one at Seattle Central on Broadway. I think I did that a few years ago? Maybe 2014? That one was a weekday evening and no one was around. This was a cool, drizzly Saturday morning, and in the span of two minutes I think I saw a dozen people drop off their ballots. Almost everyone smiling behind their face masks. It was a good feeling. 

Other differences? I added my email address on the back of the envelope in case there were questions. And I kept the “Remove this stub” stub so I can track the ballot and make sure it's counted. I know Washington isn't a focus but I trust nothing about this guy. 

Again, it felt good. Keep it up. Vote. Assume nothing. Seventeen days.

It's not always going to be this gray.

'What the heck were any of us thinking, that selling a TV-obsessed, narcissistic individual to the American people was a good idea?“

Yes. What the heck were any of you thinking? 

For the past four years, Ben Sasse, U.S. Senator from Nebraska, always seemed like one of those potentially reasonable Republicans who might speak up about the damage Donald Trump is doing to the executive branch, the federal government, American democracy itself. Might is the key word there. He always sounded like he might say something ... and then he wouldn't. And disasters would continue apace.

Three weeks before the 2020 election, during a telephone town hall with constituents (Sasse is running for re-election, too), he finally let loose. Highlights:

• On COVID: ”He refused to treat it seriously. For months, he treated it like a news-cycle-by-news-cycle P.R. crisis.“ Trump's leadership during the crisis wasn't ”reasonable or responsible, or right.“
• ”The way he kisses dictators' butts. I mean, the way he ignores that the Uighurs are in literal concentration camps in Xinjiang right now. He hasn't lifted a finger on behalf of the Hong Kongers.“
• ”The United States now regularly sells out our allies under his leadership, the way he treats women, spends like a drunken sailor.“
• ”He mocks evangelicals behind closed doors,“ he added. ”His family has treated the presidency like a business opportunity. He's flirted with white supremacists.“

About fucking time. Imagine holding all this in for years. For years. 

And why is he talking now? Apparently it's the fear of a blue tsunami. It's less the damage Trump is doing to the country, in other words, than the damage he's doing to the GOP:

[Sasse] predicted that a loss by Mr. Trump on Election Day, less than three weeks away, ”looks likely,“ and said that Republicans would face steep repercussions for having backed him so staunchly over four tumultuous years.

”The debate is not going to be, 'Ben Sasse, why were you so mean to Donald Trump?'“ Mr. Sasse said, according to audio obtained by The Washington Examiner and authenticated by The New York Times. ”It's going to be, 'What the heck were any of us thinking, that selling a TV-obsessed, narcissistic individual to the American people was a good idea?'"

Welcome to the party, pal. Looking forward to those steep repercussions. 

WARNING: SPOILERS

I couldn’t help but think of “Public Enemy.” And not because the movies are similar.

In an early scene, Steve Bradford (James Cagney), the CEO of a Detroit steel company, walks through his office and into a board meeting. The area is carpeted, bland, airless, sterile. There’s no life in it. There was always life and grit in the sets of early Warner Bros. movies, and this is the opposite of that. I actually thought of the offices of bosses in ’60s TV sitcoms. It was like Mr. Tate’s office on “Bewitched.” I think of the difference between Putty Nose’s backroom and Mr. Tate’s office and wonder how American went so wrong.

But that’s just the beginning. You really see the difference with the Cagney character.

Before he walks into the board meeting, Bradford asks his secretary who’s in there, and she tells him—to a  man—and he compliments her on her great memory. The exchange is brief but irrelevant. You wonder why they kept it. It moves nothing forward.

Then he’s on an airplane, and an entire high school football team is on the same flight with him, which is odd in itself, and he’s seated next to the guy who, yes, lost the big game by dropping the ball in the end zone (Tom Laughlin, in his film debut). So he dispenses fatherly advice: “You ever hold onto any?” “Yeah. Plenty.” “Try to remember those.” And sure, you get why that’s in there. It’s a metaphor. It’s foreshadowing. Steve dropped a big one 20 years ago when he walked out on his pregnant girlfriend, and that’s why he’s traveling back to his hometown. He’s trying to rectify his mistake. But the airplane conversation is more than that. Because it keeps happening.

From the airport, he takes a cab and sits in the front seat like a regular joe, and he and the toothless cabbie talk, and Steve gives him a big tip so the guy can get himself some new chompers. At the orphanage, he throws a ball back to kids playing in the field, then dispenses advice to Suzie (Betty Lou Keim), the 16-year old pregnant girl: “Don’t cry about tomorrow, he says. “Wait til it’s yesterday.” She takes a shine to him, as does the head of the orphanage, Ann Dempster (Barbara Stanwyck), who should know better. I mean, she should really know better. It’s not just the boy he was, it’s the man he became. Because as determined as he was to leave his son back then, he’s now just as determined to find him. He all but threatens Ann.

Steve: I’ve got a lot of two things: time and money. And I’ll use either one or both. Whatever it takes. You know, I could’ve sent somebody to do this for me. And they’d have gone about it quite differently.
Ann: How?
Steve: Bought it. Bought the records, the court, maybe even this place. Maybe even you.
Ann: What in the world would you do with me?
Steve: Take you to dinner. How about it?

That pivot is such bad writing. He mentions buying her, then segues into buying her dinner? Like it’s charming? But it works, of course. Because movies. At the least, she invites him to her place for dinner, but there’s an emergency so it’s just Steve and Suzie, and … Wait. So Ann Dempster, the head of this orphanage, leaves a 16-year-old pregnant girl alone with a strange man who abandoned his child 20 years ago? That doesn’t seem so smart. But I guess it’s OK because he’s a famous CEO? Suzie gives him a drink and the Evening Gazette but he’d rather hang with Suzie in the kitchen. They talk. He asks her about her, which leads to how she wound up 16 and pregnant, and she cries, and he dispenses more advice, and by the time Ann shows up he’s sent Suzie to the movies while he’s drying the dishes—“Paying for my supper,” he says. A regular joe. And that keeps happening. There’s all these little bits in there, nudging us, until it finally hits you: Ahhh. They want us to like him. And that’s where the real contrast with “Public Enemy” comes in.

In “Public Enemy,” Cagney plays a low-level gangster who shoves a grapefruit in a woman's face and chillingly kills his old mentor, Putty Nose, in cold blood, and yet Warner Bros. constantly has to remind us: You’re not supposed to like this guy. They put up disclaimers before and after. They called him a problem that “we, the public, must solve.” And all for naught. Because we still like him. Martin Scorsese calls Cagney in “Public Enemy” the birth of modern acting because he was so vibrant and real. He has an energy and an honesty. And yet here he is 25 years later, and now it’s MGM, not Warner Bros., but they’re doing everything they can to make us like this guy ... and it doesn’t work. It sets you back on your heels. They tried to get us to like Jimmy Cagney … and couldn’t do it.

What’s the difference?
Why did he make it? Cagney and his wife adopted two children so maybe that’s partly why this story appealed to him. His biographer, John McCabe, also mentions that Cagney liked his experience with MGM in “Tribute to a Bad Man” and quickly agreed to follow up with this one. He also gets to play white collar rather than blue, and rich rather than not, and contrite rather than sneering, so maybe all that appealed, too. But I doubt he thought much of it. It’s one of the few movies of his he doesn’t mention in his memoir. At all. Not a whisper. 

It’s his only movie with Barbara Stanwyck. It’s kind of funny watching Public Enemy and Baby Face being the upstanding adults in postwar America. The ’50s were the era when Hollywood discovered teenagers—parents were staying home with the TV—and here they pair stars from the previous generation with the up-and-comers. The movie is the debut of not only Laughlin but Michael Landon, as well as the first credited role for Dean Jones. Most of these guys have bit parts, though. I didn’t even catch Landon, to be honest. The up-and-comers are Keim and Don Dubbins as Mark, Steve’s 20-yeaar-old son, who’d also been in “Tribute to a Bad Man,” and wound up with a good journeyman career: 123 credits until his death in 1991. Keim, though, didn’t make it out of the ’50s. She nabbed a few more roles, than nabbed a husband—Warren Berlinger, who also had a good journeyman career—and she called it quits. Her last role was in the TV series “The Deputy” in 1960.

So, dilemma: Cagney wants to see the son he abandoned, Stanwyck is polite but reminds him, “The adoption laws are very strict”; and that’s the battle for most of the movie. And for all the effort of director Roy Rowland and screenwriters Ralph Wheelwright and Frank Fenton to show us Cagney’s a regular guy, they never give him reason enough for abandoning the boy or seeking him out now. The opposite:

Ann: Why did it take you so long?
Steve: Because it took a long time to get what I wanted.
Ann: And now you’ve got what you wanted.
Steve: Yeah. I got it. And something else. I got older. And I got lonely.

That’s it? Good god, Tom Powers is a picture of responsibility in comparison. Steve is even worse when explaining to the high-powered SCOTUS lawyer he brings in. James Rayburn (Walter Pidgeon) asks the same question, “What took you so long?” and at first Steve simply replies “What’s the difference?” before adding, impatiently, “Shall we say, I was busy? That enough?” The lawyer then finds a loophole, they take Ann to court, and Steve plays the victim. For a scene or two. This forces Ann to produce the original 1936 adoption papers in which the younger Steve turns out to be a major asshole:

Mr. Bradford said he would not assume any responsibility toward Emily Haver or the baby. That he would not marry the girl. He said he would not pay anything toward the expense of her confinement and that it was none of his business how she got along. He said to the welfare representative and before the witnesses, “Why do you say I’m the father of the child? It could be any one of 16 other guys.”

Classy. Pidgeon in his last MGM role is even-toned and well-cast. I like what he says to Steve after the judge dismisses the case: “You gambled that there are people who wouldn’t do unto you what you would do unto them.” But it’s Stanwyck who gets the best lines: “We all make our beds and have to lie in them, whether we sleep or not. Isn't that all there is to it?” And when Steve seems to dismiss her as an idealist dreamer who has sacrificed her life, she responds, “No, I didn’t. This is my life.”

Forgive me?
After Steve is foiled in court, the rest of the movie tumbles into place. Outside the courtroom, Ann tells him that Suzie had an accident and is in the hospital asking for him. Because he’s such a great guy, I guess. So he goes, helps out, she has the baby, and in the afterglow of all that he does what any man would do: He goes bowling. And that’s when Mark shows up; and in the bowling alley, then the adjacent café, then out on the street, the two have several long, pained conversations, in which Mark admits to hating him at times and admiring him at times, and Steve looks variously uncomfortable and tortured and apologizes without apologizing. He says: “Look, what does a man say? What do I say? I’m sorry? Forgive me?” Sure. But try it without the question mark, dick.

It’s not just that he’s not a good person; Cagney’s acting isn’t good, either. Or it’s not interesting. You used to never be able to say that about him. In the end, Steve asks if there’s anything Mark needs, and Mark, the calm, responsible one, says “I needed this tonight. Just this,” and sticks out his hand. I like that Steve looks pained here, as if thinking: “Goodbye? So soon?” Or that he wanted to hug him but has to settle for a handshake. And then Mark walks away, while Steve paces, head down, and finally looks up to see his biological boy walking away in the distance and says quietly, “So long, son.” And the camera pulls back so we see a lone man on a lonely street corner. 

And we have six minutes left in this thing.

What happens? Why he adopts Suzie, of course. Or I think that’s what happens. Seems odd, since I don’t think her parents have cut her off or anything. But he goes home with her and the baby—a man who’s suddenly both father and grandfather all at once.

It’s definitely a movie of its time: a weepy ’50s melodrama—Douglas Serk without the artistry, and without a person in color in sight. Among its working titles were “Somewhere I’ll Find Him,” “All Our Yesterdays” and “All Our Tomorrows.” All bad. They went with “These Wilder Years,” says John McCabe, “for no discernible reason.”

Read the body language: Chapman: Uh oh; Brosseau: Oh, yeah.

And here endeth the lesson. And the Yankees' season.

And the Tampa Bay Rays have joined the pantheon! 

I don't have cable, because Comcast, and I don't subscribe to MLB TV because it's not user-friendly and doesn't allow you to watch your home team. So in normal years I usually go to my local bar, Quarter Lounge, and watch postseason games there. It's a fun crowd. Well, this isn't a normal year, and if Covid hadn't ended the Quarter Lounge then redevelopment already would have. It was scheduled to go under the wrecking ball in August. Not sure when I was last at the QL. February? I left not knowing I would never be back.

Long way of saying I “watched” the do-or-die Game 5 of the ALDS between the Tampa Bay Rays and the New York Yankees via ESPN.com's play-by-play gamecast. I expected to watch just a little of it, but I was editing copy, and it was a good background image, and oddly riveting. The Yankees' $324 million pitcher, Gerrit Cole, aquired in the off-season, started on three-days rest for the first time in his career and seemed to be flubbing it. In the first innning he scattered two walks and a HBP to load the basess but got out of the jam. Still I was looking at his pitch count—something like 26 pitches that inning—and was hoping for a quick exit. But he settled down. Bottom of the second, he struck out the side. Bottom third, 2 Ks and a popout. You went back to the first and realized nobody had hit the ball out of the infield yet. That wouldn't happen until the bottom of the fourth, which would've been another 1-2-3 inning save an E-6. So he still had the no-hitter going. 

Meanwhile, in the top of the fourth, Aaron Judge sliced a leadoff homer to right. 1-0, Yanks. 

The Rays answered in the bottom of the fifth: Austin Meadows hit one to right, Judge had a bead on it, leaped, and crashed his head into padding that was overhanging the wall. Home run! I'm no Yankees fan, by any means, but the overhang thing seems way stupid. Guys have been leaping and bringing back homeruns forever, and it's a great highlight, and this impedes that. It's dangerous. I hope the Judge is OK.

But that made it 1-1. Rays kept using pitchers for two, two-plus innings. Their no-name squad. Someone really needs to do a “Moneyball” on the Rays org. Year after year, with no money and barely a fan base, they compete and thrive. Would love to see how they do it. (Here's the beginning of an answer from Eno Harris at The Athletic.)

In the sixth, Yankees got two on but didn't score. In the sixth, Rays chased Cole and got two on and didn't score. Just one baserunner in the seventh (Mike Zunino, E-5) for both teams. Top of the eighth, Judge walked but didn't move. And that set up the bottom of the eighth.

With one out, while Mike Brosseau battled Aroldis Chapman, I thought, idly, hopefully, “Hey, a run here and the Yanks will be three outs from the end of their season. Wouldn't that be great?” Brosseau wasn't even a starter. He's 26, this is his second year in the Majors, and he's had fewer than 250 plate appearances career. I guess he's brought in to face lefties. He's got exactly as many plate appearances against lefties as righties (120 for each) but his OPS against lefties is higher by 200 points. He's got 11 career homers—eight against lefities.

Chapman is a lefty. 

If Brosseau was known for anything it was a Chapman incident last month. The Yankees had been losing to the Rays all year, but they had a 5-3 lead with two outs in the ninth on Sept. 1 when Chapman threw a 101-mph at Brosseau's head. Yes, at his head. It was a punk move, and when Brosseau struck out to end the game, apparently the Yanks engaged in some trash talking—another punk move—and benches cleared. It wasn't the beginning of the bad blood but it was a nasty part of it.

So that was the background; that was the history. Friday, Chapman got him 0-2 quickly, then Brosseau worked it to a 3-2 count, and kept battling. Here's the full at-bat, the 10-pitch at-bat. Chapman was battling, too. Only one of the balls was obviously a ball. The others were just off the plate. A worse umpire might've called them strikes. But Brosseau worked it and worked it and worked it. And on the 10th pitch he went deep. As longtime Yankee left-fielder Brett Gardner positioned himself to grab it if it bounced off the wall, it landed and rattled around about two rows deep in the empty Covid-era seats. If I'd been at the QL, I would've been going crazy. I would've been high-fiving guys. Instead, I just walked into the living room, where Patricia was watching one of her shows, and said, with a stupid smile on my face, “The Rays are ahead.” 

But still the ninth. The middle of that lineup. Giancarlo Stanton, who's had, what, six homers this postseason, led off, and reliever Diego Castillo started out 2-0. Yikes. Then three straight strikes. All looking. Shades of Carlos Beltran. Next up, Luke Voit, who led the Majors in homers this year. K inserted, as a famous, departed announcer once said. That left Yanks 3B Gio Ursella, who'd had a good season and a bad postseason. And he didn't throw away his shot. First pitch, he rifled it toward left field—but 3B Joey Wendle leaned to his right and speared it. And the celebrations began. These kids deserve more. They deserve crowds. Maybe next year.

Biut now we can add the Rays to the pantheon of teams that have knocked out the mighty New York Yankees and helped us all sleep a little better. Since 2001:

• D-Backs, Angels, Marlins, Red Sox, Angels (2)
• Tigers, Indians, n/a, 27, Rangers
• Tigers (2), Tigers (3), n/a, n/a, Astros
• n/a, Astros (2), Red Sox (2), Astros (3), Rays

Welcome to the party, pals. Carey, start spreading the news. 

“When our leaders encourage domestic terrorists, they legitimize their actions. When they stoke and contribute to hate speech, they are complicit. And when a sitting president stands on a national stage refusing to condemn white supremacists and hate groups, as President Trump did when he told the Proud Boys to ”stand back and stand by“ during the first presidential debate, he is complicit. Hate groups heard the president's words not as a rebuke, but as a rallying cry. As a call to action. ... 

”Instead of uniting the country, our president has spent the past seven months denying science, ignoring his own health experts, stoking distrust, and fomenting anger and giving comfort to those who spread fear and hatred and division. He has proved time and again that he is more focused on his chances in the upcoming election and picking fights with me and Democrats across the country than he is on protecting our families, front-line workers and small businesses from covid-19.

“As a result, at least 212,000 Americans are dead. More than 60 million have filed for unemployment. And still, the president has not developed a national strategy on testing, protective medical equipment or masks.”

-- Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who was the target of a plot by 13 men to kidnap and kill her because she tried to keep her state safe during the COVID-19 pandemic, and was demonized by Trump and right-wing media for doing so. In an Op-Ed in The Washington Post 
encouraging unity.

Twenty-four days away from Nov. 3.

“A contest of ideas shouldn't be used to legitimize disinformation. ... At great news organizations, the mission really should be to introduce fact to disperse doubt—not to sow doubt, to obscure fact.”

-- James Murdoch, son of Rupert, on why he left Fox News, in Maureen Dowd's article “James Murdoch, Rebellious Scion” in The New York Times.

Dowd buries her lede. This is the eighth graf but hugely important. Attorneys do this, by the way. If they have a losing case, if the facts are against them, they do what they can to sow doubt. I think for 30 years or longer, the facts have been against the right-wing in this country but they're very good at sowing doubt. That should be the discussion. Or a discussion.

I wish we'd gotten specifics, examples, of Fox sowing doubt. Don't know if Dowd tried or if she was too busy writing about the lunch in her garden or talking about “Succession.”

And now Whitey Ford. Good god.

Have so many legendary baseball players died so close to each other before? In five weeks we've lost Tom Seaver, Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, and now Whitey Ford. Plus Gale Sayers if you expand to the NFL. This in the midst of a horrific year in which Don Larsen, Al Kaline, John Prine, John Lewis, Curly Neal, Chadwick Boseman, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Olivia de Havilland, and Eddie Van Halen have all died. 

Whitey lived longer than those other baseball legends, which is partly why he wasn't a first-ballot Hall of Famer. The BBWAA was a bit chincey until the late '70s. It took Ford two goes, which means he didn't get inducted with fellow pitcher Warren Spahn but had to settle for going in with his great friend and teammate Mickey Mantle. Ford debuted before the Mick (1950 vs. '51), went 9-1 in 12 starts, pitched 8 2/3 shutout innings in the final game of the 1950 World Series, then lost two years to the military. He, Mantle and Billy Martin were big booze buddies, and after one particularly egregious outing at the Copacobana that made noise in the press, the Yankees looked at the trio and quickly traded Martin. Sorry, Billy. (He made his way back.)

Here's how hard it is to win 300 games: Ford pitched 16 years for one of the winningest teams of all time, and posted the lowest complete-career ERA for any starting pitcher since World War II, and he won just 236 games. I guess he was oft-injured? He didn't win 20 until 1961, when he won 25. He led the league in wins three times, ERA twice, innings pitched twice, complete games once, shutouts twice. Never in Ks. He wasn't a K machine and his career K-BB numbers aren't HOF-worthy: 1,956-1,086. Not even two-to-one. But he's much better than I thought. For a while, with a bit of an anti-Yankees bias (cough), I dismissed him as a beneficiary of those great Yankee teams rather than a great pitcher on his own. But a 2.75 ERA doesn't lie.

He owns most World Series pitching records: wins, IP, GS, Ks. After winning Game 1 of the '62 Series against the Giants, a 6-2 complete-game victory, his record stood at 10-4. He started four more World Series games and lost them all. Then the real fall. The Yankees went from unstoppable pennants winners in 1964 to bottom dwellers in '66, and two months into the '67 season, injury plagued, he hung up his spikes for good. If you look at his W-L, he was done: 2-4. If you look at his ERA, he wasn't: 1.64. His last game was the first half of a double-header in Detroit on May 21, 1967. In the bottom of the 1st, he gave up a double, a groundout, a sac fly to Al Kaline, a walk and then a groundout: P unassisted. Then he called it quits. 

Elston Howard dubbed him the Chairman of the Board and the name stuck. When his retirement was announced, his longtime manager Casey Stengel told longtime New York Daily News columnist Dick Young: “I'll tell you about Mr. Ford. He was quiet, egotistical and witty. He was my banty rooster. He'd stick out his chest, like this, and walk out on the mound against any of those big pitchers. They talk about the fall of the Yankees. Well, the Yankees would've fallen a lot sooner if it wasn't for my banty rooster.” 

He died Thursday night. Here's the Times obit. 

Backstory for the tardy: In December 1930, in her nationally syndicated column, Louella Parsons touted a “young film comer” who had just snagged the lead in the new Warner Bros. gangster pic “The Public Enemy.” His name was Edward Woods. He eventually lost the part to James Cagney, of course, who was way better suited for it, and apparently Parsons wasn't happy—less for the now-inaccurate column than for Woods, who was, at the time, engaged to her daughter, Harriet. I wrote about some of this in my review of “Mothers Cry,” Woods' first movie. 

In my research for that, I came across other mentions of Woods in Parsons' columns. This is from May 1931, the month “Public Enemy” was releaased to general acclaim.  

Follow-up:

1. I can't find any reference to “The Blue Moon Murder Mystery” on AFI's film site, which includes working titles of Hollywood films. So not only was it not made with Cagney and Woods, apparently it wasn't made at all. 
2. Cagney and Blondell do star in “Larceny Lane”/“Blonde Crazy,” but not Woods. I wouldn't even know what part he would have played. Maybe the Ray Milland role?
3. In fact, Woods never made any other movie with Cagney or Blondell. I don't think he ever made another Warner Bros. picture.

I guess the big question is how true any of it ever was. Or was Parsons simply simply pimping for her daughter's fiance? 

A year later, in August 1932, there was this item in Parsons' column:

 Follow-ups:

1. “Not Saturday”? Did she mean “Hot Saturday”? That was a movie that both Carroll and Woods were in, and it was released that fall; but while Carroll was the leading lady Woods was fourth-billed. The star was a relative unknown named Cary Grant. Woods kept getting billed down from future legends. 
2. Paramount told Woods to “come back home; all was forgiven”? Paramount was never his home. And forgiven for what? Was this a kind of secret message? The engagement to Parsons' daughter was broken off this year, not sure when, and probably because Harriet was gay. Is this Louella's attempt to bring hime back into the fold? Is it her telling him this? 

No answers. As usual, history is a Hyrda head. Answer one question, two more pop up. 

WARNING: SPOILERS

“San Francisco,” which garnered six Oscar nominations, including picture, director, story and actor, and was the No. 2 box-office hit of 1936, is really two stories. One is aimed at men and was seen a lot in the 1930s. The other is aimed at women and is the most successful movie framework of all time.

The story aimed at men is this: two childhood pals wind up on opposite sides of the law. That’s “Manhattan Melodrama,” “Dead End,” and “Angels with Dirty Faces.” Here, Blackie Norton (Clark Gable), who runs the disreputable Paradise saloon along the Barbary Coast in 1906 San Francisco, is still good friends with Father Tim Mullin (Spencer Tracy), the original fightin’ priest, who knows Blackie’s got a good heart even if he doesn’t believe in all that God hooey. They spar at the local gym and eat chop suey together. Blackie donates an organ—the musical kind—to Father Tim’s church. They’re just on opposite sides of the Big Question. 

The most successful movie framework of all time is this: a woman has to choose between two men against a backdrop of historical tragedy. That’s “Gone with the Wind,” “The Sound of Music,” and “Titanic.” (Also, in more cartoonish form, the “Twilight” movies, “Hunger Games” and “Frozen.”) Here, Mary Blake (Jeanette MacDonald) must choose between Blackie and Jack Burley (Jack Holt) against the backdrop of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. If she goes with the man she loves (Gable, of course), she’ll get the career she doesn’t want (singing in his saloon). If she goes with the other guy, she gets her dream job (the Tivoli Opera House), plus respectability (Nob Hill money), plus a straight-talking mother-in-law (Jessie Ralph, who’s fantastic). So every instinct is against choosing Gable. But then there’s Gable. As a result, we wind up with a lot of tortured looks and flip-flopping from MacDonald.

You know what decides for her? The earthquake. It kills Jack Burley, destroys the Paradise Saloon and helps Blackie find God. Think about that: It gets rid of the man she doesn’t want and the place she doesn’t want to work. And the big problem with the man she loves? His Godlessness? Solved. Modern smart weaponry should be so precise.

1930s CGI
Question: Is the earthquake also God’s judgment on the wickedness of turn-of-the-century San Francisco? Early on, Father Tim warns Mary, a parson’s daughter from Benson, Colorado, about her new home:

You’re in probably the wickedest, most corrupt, most Godless city in America. Sometimes it frightens me. I wonder what the end’s going to be.

And the end was the earthquake. Because of the city’s licentiousness? Or maybe God just couldn’t stand one more rendition of “San Francisco …open your golden gate/ You’ll let nobody wait outside your door…”

Kidding. I like that song. 

You know what I liked about the earthquake? It comes out of nowhere. For most of the movie, the drama is elsewhere. Not just in the decisions Mary doesn’t make but in the battles Blackie fights.

The movie opens with a fire on the Barbary Coast and a demand from local leaders for fire-safety reform. So they ask Blackie to run for supervisor and he seems a natural candidate. Jack Burley, who owns those fire-trap tenements on the coast, objects, and the two men battle for both Mary and power. At one point, to fill his political coffers, Blackie is hoping to win the “Chicken’s Ball” talent show, as his saloon usually does, with its $10k prize, but that very night he’s raided by cops at the behest of Burley. At the last instant, though, Mary—who at this point is Burley’s betrothed—agrees to sing for the Paradise. She goes with “San Francisco,” of course, and wins. Except Blackie’s not having it. He throws the trophy on the ground and stomps off. Mary is upset. Jack Burley is leading her outside when the earthquake hits. And all that drama about Blackie running for supervisor gets lost in the cracks and fissures. We don’t hear one thing about it again. It’s like Marion Crane’s machinations before she shows up at the Bates Motel. Which feels like life to me. What we think is the story isn’t necessarily the story.

I expected to be disappointed by the quake. I mean, it’s nearly 100 years old. How good could the special effects be? Answer: pretty damned good. Audiences at the time must’ve been wowed. Example: There’s a brilliant scene where Blackie, dazed, stumbles through the streets amid the aftershocks; and then the earth cracks open, one person falls to his death, another nearly does the same, but, even as the slab of earth he’s standing on heaves upward, and a water main below bursts, Blackie pulls the man out. It’s just this constantly moving chaos. I guess if there’s one thing people in LA know, it’s what an earthquake feels like.

I like the first meeting, or non-meeting, between Blackie and Mary, too. They’re on a busy street, New Year’s Eve, and she’s walking several paces ahead of him, oblivious to him as he is to her. He’s faster but keeps getting stopped to greet friends and acquaintances. Eventually he catches up … and passes her without a glance, kind of annoyed that she’s in his way. Good bit. 

Her destination turns out to be his, the Paradise, where she wants to audition for his stage show. In his office we get the following exchange: 

Blackie: Well, sister, what’s your racket?
Mary: I’m a singer.
Blackie: Let's see your legs
Mary [confused]: I said, I'm a singer.
Blackie: I know. Let’s see your legs.

So out of sight of the camera, she hoists her dress demurely. It would be interesting to compare this scene with Margot Robbie’s dress-hoisting audition in “Bombshell,” about sexual harassment at Fox News. Why is the Fox scene icky and this not? Because Fox president Roger Ailes tells her to keep going, gets a sad, sexual thrill out of it, and looks like Roger Ailes/Jabba the Hutt? Yes. Meanwhile, for Blackie is all about business: Will her legs draw crowds? Plus he looks like Clark Gable.

Perishing with a cry
Is this my first Jeannette MacDonald movie? She’s beautiful but not a great actress. I couldn’t even tell if she liked Gable—the actors apparently didn’t like each other at all—so Gable has to underline it for us: “How does it feel,” he says, as she remains stone-faced after his umpteenth advance, “to feel like a woman and be afraid of of it?” Ah, so that’s what’s going on. I thought he was just a creep.

Overall, there’s too much melodrama for me in “San Francisco,” but it has its moments—like the non-meet cute. I also like the opera scene. Blackie goes to the Tivoli Opera House with his right-hand man “Babe” (Harold Huber, another great character actor of the period) to stop her debut because she’s under contract to him; but he winds up so amazed by her singing, and by the opera itself, that he lets it ride. It’s the lowbrow guy getting culture. That was the MGM way, wasn’t it? They were the Tiffany of movie studios and Gable was their Warner Bros. guy. But he had to learn.

The movie, as mentioned, is the two childhood pals story, and the woman choosing between two men against a backdrop of historical tragedy story. But is it something else? This is the opening title card:

San Francisco—guardian of the Golden Gate—stands today a queen among sea-ports: industrious, mature, respectable. But perhaps she dreams of the queen and city she was—splendid and sensuous, vulgar and magnificent—that perished suddenly with a cry still heard in the hearts of those who knew her, at exactly:

5:13 A.M.

April 18, 1906

“San Francisco” was released two years after the Production Code Administration under Joseph Breen ended the glorious “Forbidden Hollywood” era of skin and sin. So is 1906 San Francisco a kind of stand-in for Forbidden Hollywood itself? Maybe even MGM, with its highbrow pretensions, misses the studio she was—splendid and sensuous, vulgar and magnificent.

The above shot is from Camera Day, 1970, and Twins relief pitcher Ron Perranoski is asking me what was going on with my two missing front teeth. I was 7 and thought the world I encountered was the world as it had always been and always would be, so I remember almost a sense of betrayal when I found out Perranoski had been with the Dodgers earlier in the decade. And that he was better known for being a Dodger? What the? But he was. He led the league in saves two years as a Twin, but with the Dodgers in '63 he went 16-3 with a 1.67 ERA and saved Game 2 of the World Series against the Yankees that the Dodgers won in four. He appeared on a Chuck Conners' TV show. He pitched in the '65 Series against us and gave up some runs—mostly to opposing pitcher Jim Kaat, whose two-out single opened up Game 2 for him. And us. Before he became us. Every post-season after that he faced the Baltimore Orioles ('66 WS, '69 and '70 ALCS), that great Orioles team, one of the best of all time, and it was a tough row. His career ended in 1973, before free agency and increasing wealth, but he stayed in the game, first as a minor league pitching coach for the Dodgers organization, then as the Dodgers pitching coach, then as the San Francisco Giants pitching coach.

My older brother just reminded me that we did have another encounter with him. At Met Stadium we often sat on the wooden benches along the third base/left field side, but one game we wandered the stadium and wound up in the right field stands. We were right above the bullpen, where Perranoski sat with the other relievers. I don't know how he did it but my older brother wound up dropping his glove for Perranoski to sign, and when he pleaded that he was penless, Chris dropped a green marker, too. He signed it on the back of the finger side, in green ink, and my brother had it for years. I remember being very, very jealous.

Perranoski died Friday. I heard about it a day after Bob Gibson's death, which came on the heels of Gale Sayers' death, which came on the heels of the deaths of Lou Brock and Tom Seaver. That's just sports. A one-word tweet from SABR president Mark Armour after the news about Perranoski says it all: STOP! Amen.

RIP, RP.

I practically cried when I heard about this Friday night. Why in this awful year did this latest awful bit of news make me almost break down? Was it the pile-on aspect of it all—not just the horror of Trump, not just the horror of Covid, not just wildfire smoke blanketing my city, but the loss of so many towering figures: from John Prine to John Lewis; from Chadwick Boseman to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In the last month alone, in the world of sports alone, we've lost Tom Seaver, Lou Brock and Gale Sayers. It wears you down. I think of Shakespeare: When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions.

I also think it's partly this: Bob Gibson doesn't die. No. Bob Gibson stares you down and then comes at you. He brushes you inside. He plunks you in the ribs without a thought. He was so well-known for it, other players named the message pitch for him: 

Dave Johnson would sometimes run in from 2nd base and say give them the Bob Gibson! I’d say, there is only 1 Bob Gibson. Wasn’t that the truth.Talented, competitive ,a warrior on the hill!So glad I got to know him. Will dearly miss him #RIP @masnOrioles

— Jim Palmer (@Jim22Palmer) October 3, 2020

So many stories. He brushed back Reggie Jackson in an Old-Timers game because the previous Old-Timers game Jackson had the temerity to hit a homerun off him. He was so competitive he wouldn't talk to fellow National Leaguers during the All-Star Game because they were the enemy and he didn't want to lose his edge. The New York Times obit mentions he lost two months of the 1967 season when a line drive off the bat of Roberto Clemente broke his leg, but not the fact that he kept pitching in that game for three more batters. He had a broken leg and kept pitching.

This may be my favorite Gibson story. I read it in the New York Times 25 years ago. It was for a department called “A Question for...” and this question went to Gibson's former battery mate Tim McCarver, who had since become a loquacious color announcer:

What's the most boring part of baseball?
When the pitcher gets on base and they stop the game to bring him a jacket—so the guy's arm won't get cold. That's boring. What does he need a jacket for? His arm's not going to get cold. Another boring part is the small talk a first baseman will make with a base runner. They'll ask: “How ya hittin' 'em? How's the family?” And they could care less. It's the “Have a nice day” syndrome. I hated it, and Bob Gibson really hated it. One time, against the Expos, Bob got on and [ first baseman ] Ron Fairly told him, “Hey, you're throwing well.” Fairly came up to bat a couple innings later and Gibson hit him square in the ribs. I think more players ought to retaliate like that.

I laughed so hard at that. By then, Ron Fairly had become our loquacious color announcer, so all the elements were perfect. Everyone acted as they do—Fairly gabbed, Gibson plunked—and the result was comedy. One wonders if Fairly got the message. I doubt it. I assume everyone kept acting the same. 

I didn't know all this at first. Gibson was in the NL, I was in an AL city, and I didn't start watching baseball really until 1969 or '70, a year or two after his great 1.12 ERA season, and the record-setting 17 Ks in the first game of the 1968 World Series. From 1964 to 1968 he won seven World Series games in a row, and for most of that he was unhittable. From Game 1 in '67 to Game 4 in '68 he started five games, completed five games, and went 5-0 with a 53-8 K/BB ratio and a 0.80 ERA. Yes, that's right: 0.80. In 45 innings, he gave up just four earned runs. The opposition batting average against him was .199. Sorry, that's the oppositiion on-base percentage. And in the most important games of the year. He dominated October—but the Octobers before I began to watch. The Cardinals didn't make the postseason when I was first watching. 

No, my first impression of him was via one of those story booklets that came with Topps baseball cards in 1970. Topps made 24 of them—one for each team?—and you got a bit of a player's life but without their personality, really. Everyone had the same personality. Think Bazooka Joe:

(Thanks to RoundtheDiamond87)

The Globetrotters thing was true, and so incongruous once you realized who he was. Later, I read a quote from him dismissing his time with the Globetrotters. He said there was too much “clowning around.” That, too, made me laugh.

I think I got to know his true personality via Roger Angell and Roger Kahn and Joe Posnanski. It was from the stories the other players told. In his countdown of the greatest 100 players of all time, Posnanski put Gibson at No. 45, in honor of his number, and because it kind of felt right. He tells a story about Gibson's older brother, LeRoy, called Josh for no apparent reason, that should be made into an HBO movie. 1947 opened doors for Black Americans, and Josh saw an opportunity for his kid brother, and drilled him every day in the basics to make sure when the time came he'd bust through those doors. “It wasn't a prophecy,” Posnanski writes. “It was an order.”

Poz also told the other stories, the stories that apparently Gibson tired of, because he felt it overshadowed the other aspects of his game. But that's what happens. Who can keep the whole equation in mind? Sometimes not even friends and family. Posnanski quotes advice that Hank Aaron gave to a young Dusty Baker about Gibson and turned it into a poem. Or it was already a poem and Poz just recognized it was and broke it into lines:

Don't dig in against Bob Gibson.
He'll knock you down.
He'd knock down his own grandmother.
Don't stare at him, don't smile at him, don't talk to him.
He doesn't like it.
If you happen to hit a home run, don't run too slow.
And don't run too fast.
If you want to celebrate, get in the tunnel first.
And if he hits you, don't charge the mound.
Because he's a Golden Gloves boxer.

Baker has his own beautiful quote about the man: “The only people I ever felt intimidated by in my whole life were Bob Gibson and my daddy.”

That's the sadness of it. Even Bob Gibson. He was 84.

Thursday night at around 8:00 PM I tweeted the following:

It's Oct. 1 and our “October Surprise” so far has been:

• The president's son's girlfriend (Kim Guilfoyle) lost her job at Fox because she sexual harassed her female assistant
• The president's wife is caught on tape being an asshole
• The president's aide caught COVID

Stay tuned.

Two hours later, Trump tweeted that he and Melania had both tested positive for Covid.

I didn't want this to happen. Not because I'm concerned about Trump. You kidding? No, Trump is a horrific human being who appeals to the worst instincts in people, undermines the rule of law, undermines American democracy itself, embraces dictators and dictatorships, is probably corrupt as hell in his finances, and has bungled the Covid pandemic from the get-go. In January and February, he said it was all going to be fine, he praised President Xi for his actions in China, he claimed that it would go away with the warmer weather, and he called it a hoax and blamed the Democrats and the news media for hyping it. And that was just at the beginning. That was before he began pimping for hydroxychloroquine and bleach. And all the while, he dismissed mask-wearing. He refused to do it, then did it once in a blue moon, then mocked anyone who wore a mask. He accused them of being politically correct. As if it was a matter of politics rather than science. So it's almost karmic that he got it. It's Biblical: As you sow, so shall you reap. This is the reap.

But no, I didn't want him to get it. Because it changes the narrative—slightly. Yesterday, Trump was a horrible human being and everyone knew it. Today, Trump is a horrible human being but let's not say so. He's sick after all. He's at Walter Reed, after all. 

Republicans are already playing to this strategy. Or they're accusing Democrats of low blows even as they're administering them themselves. Joe Biden, of course, has been classy and empathetic throughout, and for the moment his campaign has pulled negative Trump ads. The Trump campaign, no surprise, has not followed suit. They're still assholes. The Republican “R” stands for Ruthlessness. When it's not standing for Racism, Rich Bastards and Russia. 

Under Trump's watch, I'd guess Trump is about U.S. Covid case No. 7,279,109, while more than 200,000 Americans have died from it. I sincerely hope he's not one of them. I hope he gets well soon, so he can get back on the campaign trail and open his piehole and lose votes and lose the election. So we can begin to get back to being a country again. 

WARNING: SPOILERS

A lot of firsts with this one.

It’s the first Cagney movie to be nominated best picture (there would be others), his first with Irish Mafia pal Pat O’Brien (there would be eight), and his first set in the military. The closest he’d come to the military before was singing and dancing the “Shanghai Lil” number in Navy blues at the end of “Footlight Parade,” but such films would soon become a Cagney staple: the malcontent learning to be a team player. 

“Navy” was also the first Cagney movie released after the Production Code Administration was created. I actually think that first informs all the others.

In the 1920s and early ’30s, Hollywood movies were regulated by the Hays Code, under former Postmaster General Will Hayes, but the moguls kinda ran amok over Hayes and the result was the glorious pre-code “Forbidden Hollywood” era of sin and skin. But by 1934, there was mounting pressure to clean up from both the Catholic clergy, which instituted successful boycotts of scandalous pictures, and the U.S. government, which, under FDR, was creating new regulatory agencies, and there were rumors Hollywood might be next. To prevent this, and to win back Catholic moviegoers, the moguls appointed their own watchdog: the PCA under the leadership of Joseph Breen, an Irish Catholic and no pushover. And there went that glorious era.

The dividing line for Cagney is stark. After he became a star in “The Public Enemy,” Warners would occasionally toss him into a “sports” picture (“Winner Take All”), but mostly he played grifters (“Blonde Crazy,” “Hard to Handle,” “Jimmy the Gent”), and low-level gangsters (“The Mayor of Hell,” “Lady Killer,” “He Was Her Man”). With the creation of the PCA, that went away. Now he was a G-man, a family man, or the aforementioned rebel in the military. And now he was teamed with Pat O’Brien to show him the way, rather than Joan Blondell, who showed him another way. From 1930 to 1934 he made seven films with Blondell but “He Was Her Man,” released earlier in ’34, was their last. At that point, almost as if they tagged off, O’Brien became his partner.  From 1934 to 1940, they made eight pictures together.

I actually like Cagney’s pre-code grifters better. Pre-code, he had a code. With the Production Code, he just became an asshole. Way to go, Catholics. 

Live and don’t learn, that's our motto
I guess I don’t mind Chesty O’Conner too much. He starts out as a smart-ass riveter in a Navy yard in Bremerton, Wash., who tries to take some of the starch out of officer Biff Martin (O’Brien), and does, but then gets quick comeuppance. At the big dance, at which he’s bringing and presenting the dance trophy, which he expects to win, he: 1) loses an alley fight with Biff, who then 2) wins the dance contest, with 3) Chesty’s girl. Gets a kiss, too. Chesty is so angry, he decides to enlist to get back at Biff. No one told him about the 90-day training period, nor the fact that it’s highly unlikely he’ll be assigned to Biff’s ship: The U.S.S. Arizona.

But he makes it through training and even makes a friend along the way, Droopy, played by third Irish Mafia pal Frank McHugh. There’s a running gag about Droopy needing money so his mother in Walla Walla can get a new set of teeth. It’s not a great bit, but at least they say Walla Walla.

Oh, and of course both men are assigned to the Arizona.

Another thing Chesty didn’t think through: Biff is now his commanding officer. “From now on,” O’Brien says with a rare sneer, “call me Mister!” There’s another girl, too, Dorothy (Gloria Stuart), of whom Droopy says, “Holy smoke, look at the trim lines on that Destroyer.” Does Chesty go after her because he thinks she’s Biff’s girl? She isn’t. She’s his sister, and initially the complication is Biff forbidding her to see Chesty—but, no, that’s never really the complication. She stands her ground. The real problem is that Chesty jumps ship to see her, then, after she admonishes him for going AWOL, tries to jump back. For that he’s court-martialed, gets two months confined to ship, etc. But that’s not the real problem, either. It’s that he badmouths the Navy and everyone in it, calling them whipped dogs, “bootlicking to a flock of mugs in uniforms who push you around like a lot of rag dolls.” After that, he’s persona non grata on ship—“a wrong guy,” as one Navy extra says.

When does he realize the error of his ways? He doesn’t. Instead, he shows bravery by smothering a fire and is awarded the Navy Cross, which he dismisses as a “tin lavalier.” The higher-ups don’t like this so he gets transferred to the Navy’s dirigible outfit; and when the dirigible U.S.S. Macon visits his old unit in high winds, Biff, trying to secure the airship with a mooring line, is swept up with it and clings for life. It’s up to Chesty to shimmy down and parachute them both to safety. After this act of bravery, he finds out—in the midst of his wedding ceremony to Dorothy—that he’s been promoted to boatswain, making him Biff’s superior. Biff is aghast, Chesty is amused. “And whenever you speak to me,” he says with a laugh, “call me Mister.” Then the ceremony continues with Droopy’s mom, dentures slipping, singing an off-key version of “Oh, Promise Me,” whose lyrics are tattooed on Droopy’s body. The end. 

So: Lesson unlearned, Chesty never really changes at all. He just shows he’s worthwhile by showing courage. Basically he’s a courageous asshole. Cf., “Fighting 69th” when he plays a cowardly asshole.

Anyway, these plot points aren’t what makes “Here Comes the Navy” (working title: “Hey Sailor”) interesting.

”Make it shine, sailor. I want to see my face in it." Precursor to men riding rockets. 

Military tragedies and the other kinds
First, there’s the doom of it. The film is a favorite of Navy vets and military historians because it was filmed in Navy locations with Navy hardware that was tinged with tragedy. The U.S.S. Macon, apparently our biggest helium-filled airship, crashed off the coast of Santa Barbara less than a year after the movie was filmed, more or less ending the Navy’s experiment with “fabric-clad rigid airships.” (Headlines at the time praised the crew but included warnings such as: “Navy Has Spent $40,000,000 on Four Dirigibles: All Have Crashed.”) But the Macon has nothing on the Arizona, which was sunk by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941. More than 1,000 crewmen died. There’s a memorial marker to this day on the spot where it sank. It’s sacred.

Even the mooring line incident is based on Navy tragedy. In May 1932, the airship U.S.S. Akron suddenly jerked upwards with three men clinging to mooring lines; two died. A year later, the Akron was destroyed in a thunderstorm off the Atlantic coast, killing 73.

I like the scene of Chesty’s first act of courage. I don’t even have the language to describe it properly. In an enclosed space, Chesty, Biff and the other men, stripped to the waist, are loading shells (wrapped in cloth?) into the back end of naval guns. As the guns angle high in the air, the floor drops away, so the men crowd along a ledge opposite the guns, which stays put. After the guns fire, the floor elevates again and they repeat. It’s like a dangerous dance routine. One time, a piece of paper, or cloth, aflame, is pushed back into the room, gun powder is spilled on it, and that’s when Chesty cries out “fire!” and smothers the flames with his own body.

I also like Stuart. She was a one-and-done Cagney leading lady but she’s got a bemused quality about her. She seems smarter than the boys but not above them. She was versatile, too, starring in horror films (“The Invisible Man” with Claude Rains), comedies (“Roman Scandals” with Eddie Cantor) and musicals (“Gold Diggers of “1935” with Dick Powell), but stopped acting in movies in the 1940s and went on to stage work and oil painting. Thirty years later, she returned to screen acting. She danced with Peter O’Toole in “My Favorite Year,” and was first-time Oscar-nominated at the age of 78 for playing the aged Rose in James Cameron’s “Titanic.” In this way, she’s connected to two of the most famous ships to sink in the 20th century.

For all the military history, it’s the racial history that will shock 21st-century viewers the most. Not only do we get Cagney in blackface, we also get one of the most demeaning Black stereotypes in a Cagney film: Fred “Snowflake” Toones, playing Cookie, who wears a stupid, droop-lipped expression with his hair out of place. This is the AWOL scene. Chesty doesn’t have liberty but wants to go ashore to see Dorothy, and he and Cookie have the following conversation—with Cagney using his usual rat-a-tat delivery, and Toones horribly slow in comparison:

Chesty: Hey Cookie, you got liberty tonight, ain’tcha?
Cookie: Sho is! Yessuh.
Chesty: Wanna make some dough?
Cookie: How much!
Chesty: Three bucks for your liberty card.
Cookie: I’d like to obligate you, Mr. Chesty, but I got a date.
Chesty: Well, I’ll make it five. That’s a lot of dough for one night’s liberty.
Cookie: Doggone! I almost come. But I just cain’t disappoint my hone.
Chesty: She won’t be disappointed.
Cookie: Yessuh, she will.
Chesty: Well, look, I’ll make it ten bucks…
[Gives him a new $10 bill]
Cookie [smiles]: You know, this thing does things to me. I guess you got me!

So is it an act? Cookie seems like an idiot but he talks our hero up from $3 to $10. So is he playing the fool in order to fool? Or is the fool he’s playing so repugnant, so embarrassing (in the words of film historian Donald Bogle), that it doesn’t matter what he wins? Because he loses too much in the process.

Anyway, it’s why Cagney winds up in blackface. He’s got Cookie’s liberty so I suppose he has to look like Cookie. He doesn’t look at all like him, of course, but he gets away with it. White people don’t see him—including Biff, who straightens his tie. That’s interesting. The only ones who pay attention are the other Black servicemen—kitchen help, one assumes, since the military wasn’t integrated until after World War II. On ship, they do double-takes while Cagney smiles and cackles; on land, they crowd around, puzzled, as Cagney talks up and then leaves with Dorothy. It’s played for comedy but there’s a lot buried there. Imagine if others noticed a black-faced Cagney leaving with a white girl. Imagine they tried to stop him. Damn, you could’ve had a whole other kind of movie. But it would’ve required a whole other kind of Hollywood. And a whole other kind of America.

Playing the fool in order to fool?

Some legit news organizations have figured it out. They've realized that bending over backwards to “both sides” an issue or event, particularly where one side is extreme, egregious or just plain dumb, isn't doing anyone any good: readers, viewers, participants, accountability, American democracy, the truth. Even The New York Times is improving: 

 And others, like Rachel Martin and “Morning Edition,” still haven't figured it out. 

The morning after the first presidential debate of 2020, in which Donald Trump shat all over decorum, the debate format, and—again—American democracy, she began her report this way:

The first presidential debate between President Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was unlike any other. The orderly 90-minute debate format broke down into chaos quickly. Despite moderator Chris Wallace's warnings, debate decorum was thrown out the door. Instead, there were interruptions, cross-talking, name-calling, shouting.

I recall a Louis CK standup routine from a few years ago: a friend said something to his girlfriend “and then she got her feelings hurt.” He said a thing, she got her feelings hurt. Louis' line: “Could you more remove yourself from responsibility?” Let me ask that question: Could Rachel Martin and NPR more remove Donald Trump from accountability? There were interruptions? Who was doing them? Who created the chaos? Who threw decorum out the door? Both men? Of course not. It was just one. One major asshole.

And then Martin has the nerve to suggest that voters who wanted “a clearer understanding of the candidates' policy positions” were out of luck. Right, Rachel. Same with listeners of your broadcast.

Later in the segment, in which she talks with a Democrat and a Republican strategist, they do clarify things a bit. You know who does it? The Republican strategist. Martin is opaque, the Democrat waffles, but the Republican attacks Trump head on: “He went from being on offense to being offensive.” At least someone has the guts to say it.