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Thursday October 31, 2024

Dodgers Score 5 in 5th to Win Series in 5

What's that sound? That's the news being spread, Yankees fans.

Five. That seems to be the magic number. 

The Dodgers were down 5-0 in the fifth, then scored 5 to tie it, then took the World Series in five games. 

That top of the 5th deserves looking at. I'm sure the Yankees and their fans will be staring into its abyss for a long time to come. 

Remember, at that point, the Dodgers didn't have a hit. Two walks (Lux in the 3rd, Betts in the 4th) were their only baserunners. No one got to third. 

Then Kike Hernandez did the Kike Hernandez thing by starting the Dodgers off—with a single. NLCS MVP Tommy Edman followed with an easy fly ball to center that Aaron Judge somehow dropped, doink, Charlie Brown fashion, so now there were runners on 1st and 2nd with nobody out. Will Smith followed with a slow roller to the right of shortstop Anthony Volpe, who opted to go to third for the force. Not a bad move. But Kike was fast and Volpe hurried a low throw that newbie hot-corner man Jazz Chisholm Jr. couldn't dig out. Bases juiced. 

And even then the Yankees nearly escaped unscathed. Gerritt Cole, probably the best starter on either team in this Series, apparently decided he couldn't trust his fielders anymore and did it on his own, striking out No. 9 hitter Gavin Lux and leadoff hitter Shohei Ohtani—who hasn't been himself since he dislocated his shoulder in Game 2. Then he got Mookie Betts, all-world Mookie, to hit a slow roller to first ... and Cole didn't cover the bag. Replays show he began to jog over but stopped. Did he think Anthony Rizzo had it? Well, he didn't. Betts beat him to the bag and it wasn't a contest. If Cole had made the play, it would still be 5-0 heading into the bottom of the fifth. Instead, it was 5-1, and all-world Freddie Freeman followed with a single to center to plate two; and then Teoscar Hernandez, the former Mariner who hit .350 for the Series, followed with a double in the left-center gap that a speedier centerfielder might've nabbed. And suddenly the game was tied.

A triptych of a tripup: Yankees pointing fingers.

Confession: I didn't watch any of this. I was doing work-work. I could've watched it—in fact, my wife was watching it in the next room—but I was suddenly stricken with too much anxiety. Why? Because the Yankees might win their 28th World Series? Nah. If the Yankees had won the Series I wouldn't have been happy but I would've just shrugged. Oh well, 28, what are you gonna do? No, it was the pathway they were taking, and it was a pathway through something that meant more to me than I realized: the 2004 Boston Red Sox, the only major sports team to ever come back from a three games to none deficit in a best-of-7 series to win it all. The Red Sox, of course, did it against the Yankees—the team that bought their best player, Babe Ruth, in 1919 and then became the Yankees. Back then, the Red Sox were the best team in baseball, winners of five World Series titles when the Yankees hadn't even been. How about them apples? After the trade, the Yankees would become the most successful franchise in sports history while the Red Sox wouldn't win another World Series for the rest of the century. Indeed, the next time the one-time super-successful BoSox won the pennant, 1946, the Yankees already had 14 pennants to their name and 10 championships. By the time the BoSox next won a pennant, 1967, the Yankees had 29 pennants and 20 championships. Excruciating. That's the Curse of the Bambino right there. 

That's what was so brilliant, so beautiful, about the 2004 ALCS. It was kismet. It was payback. It was history closing the loop in the most exquisite fashion possible. And it began with the smallest of things: a stolen base in the bottom of the 9th by a bench player they'd traded for midseason: Dave Roberts. Who was now the Dodgers manager. 

That was what was causing the anxiety. I'd seen a stat flashed on the screen during Game 4, with the Yankees down three games to none: All the other twentysomething times the World Series began with one team taking the first three games, it was usually a sweep, a handful of times it went to five games, but no team had ever taken it to six. The Yankees would be doing this if they won Game 5. And could they go further? Could they reopen the loop, and the wound, that history had so beautifully and exquisitely closed? By beating the team managed by the guy who had stolen that base? God, no. Please, no. So I couldn't even bear to watch it. I did sneak peeks at the score via ESPN.com and it wasn't good: 2-0, 3-0, 5-0. And then that fifth. But I couldn't even watch it then because I didn't want to screw it up. Baseball fans will understand. If something is working, you need to stick with it, even if it has nothing to do with you, even if you're the most peripheral thing within its universe. So I stayed away. I got a lot of work done. Until my wife opened the door to my office and told me, “You can come out now.” Ya putz.

I would've loved a sweep. The Yankees haven't been swept in the Series since the Reds did it in '76. Before then, Koufax in '63, the year of my birth. Losing in five, though, is actually rarer for them. The Yankees are now 27-14 in World Serieses and this is how they lost the 14:

  • In eight games: 1921 (when it was best of nine)
  • In seven games: 1926, 1955, 1957, 1960, 1964, 2001
  • In six games: 1981, 2003
  • In five games: 1942, 2024
  • In four games: 1922*, 1963, 1976

* That one in 1922 was actually five games, but one ended in a tie and I don't even know how to count that. Because as the man said, “There's no tying in baseball.”** 

** The man in question is my friend Mike Busick, Mr. B, channeling Tom Hanks after that All-Star Game that ended in a tie.

I shouldn't overlook that 8th inning. The Dodgers came back in the 5th, fell back again in the 6th, and went ahead in the 8th on solid baseball. Again, Kike started them off with a sharp single. Then Edman with the seeing-eye kind that Volpe smothered but couldn't make a play on. Then a walk. Pitching change. Luke Weaver on no day's rest. Bottom of the order. But Gavin Lux hit one to center, and not only did Kike score from third but Edman advanced to third—a key play. Ohtani, with the chance again, wound up on first because of catcher's interference. So it was Mookie who hit the deep sac fly to center to put the Dodgers on top. And that's where they stayed. And that's where it ended. 

Interesting that the Dodgers won Game 5 without a homer. Before then, they'd lived and died (mostly lived) on the homer. Of the 18 runs they'd scored in the first four games, 13 had come on the long ball. This game, none. Just a lot of two-out thunder.

Freddie Freeman was the much-deserved, no-brainer MVP of the Series. He hit .300 and slugged 1.000. He hit homers in each of the first four games, including that walkoff Grand Slam to end Game 1, which set the tone for what followed. He drove in 12 runs, which ties the Series record setting by Bobby Richardson in 1960. Except Richardson did it in seven games. I love what Freddie said when they brought all those ribbies during the postgame ceremonies: Well, these guys kept getting on base.

Both Teoscar and Tommy Edman had .900+ OPSes. Shohei, no: 2-19, a single and a double. Over on the Yankees ledger, I'm glad Aaron Judge finally broke through with a 2-run homer. In the end, despite his struggles, he had the second-best OPS on the team, .832, just ahead of Giancarlo Stanton's .832. Eight of the nine Yankee regulars hit World Series homers (Stanton hit 2). The one missing? Rizzo.

The Dodgers still needed great relief work from Blake Treinen, who came in during the 6th and stuck around until the end of the 8th. Dodgers starter Jack Flaherty lasted 1.3 innings, threw 35 pitches and gave up 4 runs. Treinen lasted 2.3 innings, threw a Jackie Robinsonesque 42 pitches, and gave up zero runs. Joe Posnanski mentions that the last time Treinen threw more than 2 innings? 2018. Then, in the 9th, he handed off to starter Walker Buehler, who had never closed a game during his MLB career, and who was facing the bottom of the Yankees order: five pitches to Volpe, who grounded to third; seven pitches to Austin Wells, who struck out; and four pitches to Alex Verdugo, who struck out to end the ninth, the game, the Series and the season. And Walker Buehler spread his arms wide, “Gladiator”-like, as if to say, “Are you not amused?” 

I am. Very. Thank you, Dodgers.

Buehler, amused.

Posted at 03:37 PM on Thursday October 31, 2024 in category Baseball   |   Permalink  

Wednesday October 30, 2024

One With My Genome

“Only 2 percent of the human genome codes for proteins, which is to say only 2 percent does anything demonstrably and unequivocally practical.”

-- Bill Bryson, “The Body: A Guide for Occupants,” which does for biology what he did for other sciences in “A History of Nearly Everything.” Most of it, of course, is going over my head or is tough to grasp: “Unpacked, you are positively enormous. Your lungs, smoothed out, would cover a tennis court, and the airways within them would stretch nearly from coast to coast. The length of all your blood vessels would take you two and a half times around Earth.” And it gets worse. Or we get bigger. Stuff inside us could go to the moon and back. Here's another line, by the way, that I am one with, that helps explain me to me: “What is perhaps most remarkable is that nothing is in charge. Each component of the cell responds to signals from other components, all of them bumping and jostling like so many bumper cars...” Explains all of humanity, really.

Posted at 08:14 AM on Wednesday October 30, 2024 in category Books   |   Permalink  

Monday October 28, 2024

Movie Review: Bell, Book and Candle (1958)

WARNING: SPOILERS

The movie begins with Gillian Holroyd (Kim Novak) sitting bored in her shop, and I quickly found myself bored by the film. Because of that? Is watching a bored person boring? I’m trying to think of a fascinating movie that focuses on a bored person and coming up blank.

“Bell, Book and Candle” seems like a great idea for a film. Kim Novak plays a witch who seduces “Vertigo” pal Jimmy Stewart on the day he'll get married. My local theater, SIFF Egyptian, played it on a recent Sunday as part of its Halloween program. I didn’t know much about it so decided to check it out. “Maybe there’s a reason it’s being resurrected,” I thought. “Maybe there’s something there.”

There isn’t.

Catty
Gillian runs a shop full of African artifacts on the ground floor of a Manhattan apartment building where both her aunt (Elsa Lanchester, Bride of Frankenstein), and publisher Shepherd Henderson (Stewart) live. She doesn’t have many customers but she doesn’t seem to mind. She just minds the boredom. These are the first lines of the film. It’s Gillian talking to Pyewacket, her Siamese cat: 

What's the matter with me? Why do I feel this way? It’s such a rut. The same old thing day after day. Same old people. I know I’m feeling sorry for myself but it’s true. Why don't you give me something for Christmas, Pye? … What would I like? … I'd like to do something different. I’d like to meet someone different.

She decides that Shepherd is that someone. Coincidentally, her aunt already has a hand in. She shows up at his place uninvited, and after he tells her to leave she casts a spell on his telephone, requiring him to borrow Gillian’s phone to call the phone company.

Stewart’s Shepherd is mostly an innocent in this movie, but you gotta wonder: Did he knock on Gillian’s door because Kim Novak was on the other side? Sly dog.

Plus he keeps showing up. It’s Christmas Eve, and though Shepherd is meeting his bride-to-be, Merle Kittridge (Janice Rule), Gillian offhandedly mentions a pub she and her fam will be at, and guess what? Shepherd shows up! With Merle! Then it gets catty. In college, Gillian and Merle didn’t like each other, so Gillian cast a spell to make Merle … what was it … frightened? Of thunder and lightning? In the present day, Gillian casts a spell to make Shepherd fall in love with her.

Could anything be more perfectly Hollywood patriarchal than that? Kim Novak having to cast a spell to make a 50-year-old man fall for her? 

It works, of course. He breaks it off with What’s-Her-Name and sets to canoodling with Gillian. Oh, right. She also casts a spell to send a big-name author, Sidney Redlitch (Ernie Kovacs), to Shepherd, and thank god. Kovacs is a breath of fresh air in this thing. Redlitch is interested in the supernatural but mostly interested in his next drink. At one point they offer him bourbon or whiskey, he downs whatever they give him and asks what it was. Told whiskey, he requests the bourbon. Everything Kovacs does works in a way that the rest of the film does not. Kovacs is off-kilter and perfect.

For his next book, Redlitch is sussing out—coincidence alert!—witches in New York, and guess who helps? Gillian’s bongo-playing warlock brother Nicky (Jack Lemmon). For some reason, he’s willing to give up the ghost, and admit everything, to get a few bucks. Apparently blinking money or gold into existence isn’t a thing for these witches. 

The bongo-playing makes me wonder, though, if the whole witches enclave idea didn't spring from, I don’t know, someone checking out Beatniks or homosexuals or some other in Greenwich Village. Fifties culture was staid and bland but there were subterranean movements that would soon shift everything. Was this movie a bland harbinger of all that?

Admittedly, it most just feels like 1950s floof, and the last half is pretty convoluted. Gillian confesses about the spell, Shep doesn’t believe her. Then he does believe her and breaks up with her, and goes to another witch to have her spell removed, but he can’t convince Merle about the spell so she'll take him back. Meanwhile, Gillian is falling apart, particularly since Pyewacket keeps running away from her. Because she’s no longer a witch. You lose your witchiness, apparently, if you fall in love, which she’s done with Shep, and the proof is when she cries. Witches can’t cry. When Shep realizes this, he takes her in his arms and kisses her. Happy ending.

Unmentioned is the fact that she cries not when Shep leaves her but when Pyewacket does. That’s the true love story.

Broomsticks
Given the talent in the room, the thing’s a slog. It had some success. It got Novak (and Pyewacket) on the cover of Life magazine, and it (along with “I Married a Witch”) inspired the successful 1960s TV sitcom “Bewitched." But it wasn’t the success they thought it would be. It certainly didn’t last—the screening at SIFF notwithstanding.

Apparently Stewart thought he was awkward in the lead, was tired of romancing women half his age, and stopped taking romantic lead roles thereafter. His next, “Anatomy of a Murder,” was actually perfect for him.

The title is a reference to exorcising a witch—“ring the bell, close the book, quench the candle”—but it’s a bad title. I keep wanting to go “Bedknobs and Broomsticks.” Which, come to think of it, is a better title. For this. Even if we don't see bedknobs.

Posted at 09:43 PM on Monday October 28, 2024 in category Movie Reviews - 1950s   |   Permalink  

Sunday October 27, 2024

What to Call the Fourth Indiana Jones Movie?

Per Brian Jay Jones' “George Lucas: A Life,” these were some of the options they considered over the years, particularly as Lucas and Steven Spielberg debated whether there should be aliens in the thing (Spielberg was against it, initially), and if so, how much?

  • Indiana Jones and the Saucermen from Mars
  • Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods
  • Indiana Jones and the Atomic Ants
  • Indiana Jones and the Destroyer of Worlds
  • Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls

Eventually they singularized the last one and went with that. Shame. The first and third options have a fun 1950s vibe to them. All that schlock Lucas and Spielberg grew up on, then regurgitated back to the masses with A-production values.

Posted at 03:59 PM on Sunday October 27, 2024 in category Movies   |   Permalink  

Saturday October 26, 2024

Freddie 'Shazam!' Freeman Hits the First Walkoff Grand Slam in World Series History

I paused before celebrating, before shouting with joy, because last night for some reason I was misjudging a lot of fly balls. I'm usually better at that. I usually know, before anyone else at Mariners Park, for example, when it's gone, and, more importantly, when it's not. Crack of the bat, people around me are all “Ooohhh!” and I'm like, “Nah, can of corn.” And it's a can of corn. Tougher when I'm sitting in a different seat than my usual, and last night I wasn't sitting in my usual TV-watching seat, so maybe it was that. I was mostly misjudging Dodgers' batters so maybe it was pure wish fulfillment, too. Dodgers also hit more to the warning track than the Yankees did. Except ... Was it Kike Hernandez's fly out to left in the ninth? Again, it seemed a mighty wallop off the bat but it barely went anywhere. A pop out. Mid-range. Maybe he broke his bat. Maybe I'm just getting to that age.

So that's why I paused even though all signs pointed to YES. But I wanted to see it go out first. And then I wanted to see it go out again. And then I wanted to watch it a billion-zillion times.

In a game in which no one could break through—the Yankees kept stranding runners while the Dodgers kept hitting it to the warning track—the Yankees, the bad guys, took a lead in the top of the tenth on a line single by Jazz Chisholm Jr. (who, if he's not taunted as “Jism” in enemy ballparks, someone's missing a beat), and Jazz promptly stole second, and then third, and then scored when Dodgers shortstop and suprise NLCS MVP Tommy Edman dove for a grounder but couldn't get it out of his glove in time to start the double play to nullify the run. 3-2, Yanks.

Bottom 10, and it was 7-8-9 hitters up, and I'm sure everyone was thinking what I was thinking: Someone has to get on so Shohei can come up. And someone did get on: With one out, Gavin Lux walked. Which brought up Edman. And I'm sure everyone was thinking what I was thinking: Don't ground into a double play, don't ground into a double play, don't ground into a double play. And he nearly did! Except defense replacement at 2B Oswaldo Cabrera overdove for the ball and everyone was safe. Now it was one out, two men on, and the top of the Dodgers lineup due up, Ohtani, Mookie, Freddie, maybe the three best players at the top of any lineup in baseball history. First and third were lefties. And Yankees manager Aaron Boone had two lefties in the bullpen: Tim Hill, a superskinny sidewinder with a wisp of a moustache, who looks more accountant than baseball player—he looks less like a Yankee than any Yankee I've ever seen—and Nestor Cortes, a starter who went 9-10 this season with a 3.77 ERA and a solid 162-39 strikeout-walk ratio, but who hadn't pitched, a TV graphic told us, since Sept. 18 (against Seattle!) because of a flexor strain in his elbow. But postgame Boone said he thought Cortes was looking good. He liked that matchup better, he said. And that's the matchup he got. 

Cortes threw only two pitches.

The first, Shohei popped up into foul territory in left field, and Alex Verdugo made a great catch, tumbling into the seats, and recalling that Jeter catch from 20 years ago. Apparently it wasn't a great pitch. Apparently it's the type of pitch Shohei usually eats for breakfast. Not this time. And a collective groan was heard throughout this great land.

Then the Yanks did the automatic-walk thing to Mookie Betts to get to the other lefty, Freddie Freeman, who'd injured his ankle in late September, but kept playing postseason baseball on it, limping around the bases. He'd hit a triple earlier in the game but he obviously wasn't 100%. And Mookie had been smashing the ball.

Even so, we were questioning that intentional walk. “Isn't he putting the winning run in scoring position?” I said to Jeff and Patricia. Jeff agreed. He didn't think much of the strategy. At this point, I was hoping for a single.

Earlier in the game, RE: Freddie, my friend Tim texted, “It just occurred to me how appropriate it is that Freeman has a bum leg,” and then included a link to Freddy Freeman, the “crippled newsboy,” as they used to say, who with one magic word could turn himself into one of the mightiest of mortal beings: Captain Marvel Jr.!

Fifteen seconds after Cortes threw his second pitch, Tim texted me that magic word: SHAZAM!

Fifteen seconds after that, I thought of the obvious precedent: hobbled Dodger comes to the plate in the final inning of Game 1 of the World Series, two outs, one run behind, and hits the walkoff homerun. It's Kirk Gibson all over again. Not quite, of course. Gibson was so hobbled he couldn't play, he was pinch-hitting, and Freeman wasn't facing the best closer in the game, and Gibson had only one man on. The bases were juiced for Freddie; Cortes couldn't walk him. But I doubt he wanted that first pitch to be a midrange fastball middle in. In his stroll toward first, Freddie raised his bat high in the air, as if saluting the game, as if offering a benediction, and then let it roll off his hand and drop to the ground, its mighty work done.

The Dodgers mighty work isn't done yet. They have three games to get to their eighth title and prevent the Yankees from getting to their 28th. But this was a helluva opening act.

Posted at 10:58 AM on Saturday October 26, 2024 in category Baseball   |   Permalink  

Friday October 25, 2024

'Slider, Low and Away': Michael Schur Gives Pitching Advice Before Game 1 of the 2024 World Series

MICHAEL: Before we wrap this up here, can I just put something out into the universe—like the secret? I just want to put something out into the universe. I just want to remind anyone who might be listening who works in the Dodgers organization of a truth about the universe, okay? Giancarlo Stanton has never once in his entire career made contact with a slider. If you throw Giancarlo Stanton a fastball, he will hit it 520 feet. So in my opinion, in my humble opinion, it would be a better idea to throw Giancarlo Stanton sliders. It would be more optimal for the Dodgers to throw him sliders low and away than it would be to throw him fastballs belt high on the inner half.

JOE: What would you think about throwing two sliders low and away that he swings at and misses and then throw three balls out of the zone and then throw a fastball? How would that work?

MICHAEL: I was with you until you got to the point where you throw him the fastball. Here's the way I would suggest you approach Giancarlo Stanton. I would throw him a slider low and away.

JOE: Yep.

MICHAEL: Then on the next pitch, I would throw him a slider low and away.

JOE: OK, good.

MICHAEL: And then as a change up, as a way to like throw him off balance ... I would throw him a slider low and away.

JOE: And then what would you do if he just said, “No, I'm not swinging.”

MICHAEL: It's a great question. I would throw him a slider low and away.

JOE: OK.

MICHAEL: Followed by two sliders low and away.

JOE: Yes.

MICHAEL: And then a slider low and away. And let me say one other thing. At some point, Dodgers pitchers, you may be thinking to yourself—because this is how you were trained as a pitcher—“I need to,” and I quote, “establish the fastball,” end quote. And what I would say to you, Dodger pitchers, “No, you don't.”

JOE: Right.

MICHAEL: You don't. You do not need to establish anything. What you need to do is throw a slider that starts at the knees on the outer half and breaks out of the zone. And if it doesn't work, you should do it 50 more times.

-- Michael Schur and Joe Posnanski, on the latest Poscast, with midseason vaudeville comic timing. It's an exchange that made me very, very happy.

Posted at 04:11 PM on Friday October 25, 2024 in category Yankees Suck   |   Permalink  

Friday October 25, 2024

The World Series Matchup Everyone But Michael Schur and I Wanted

I guess I'll have to take down my sign: 

THE WORLD SERIES: YANKEE-FREE SINCE 2009

They were so close to breaking their own record, too! No one's talking about that. Since they acquired Babe Ruth in 1920 and made the World Series for the first time in 1921, and then became the most successful, insufferable and loathed team on the planet, the New York Yankees have had the following gaps in terms of pennants:

  • 2 seasons (1924-25)
  • 3 seasons (1929-31)
  • 3 seasons (1933-35)
  • 1 season (1940)
  • 3 seasons (1944-46)
  • 1 season (1948)
  • 1 season (1954)
  • 1 season (1959)
  • 11 seasons (1965-1975)
  • 2 seasons (1979-80)
  • 14 seasons (1982-1995)
  • 1 season (1997)
  • 1 season (2002)
  • 5 seasons (2004-2008)
  • 14 seasons (2010-2023)

Another season and they would've broken their own post-Babe Ruth record for futility!

Although ... maybe they did? Shouldn't the 1982-95 dearth eliminate '94 since no World Series was played? In which case, that era went pennantless for 13 seasons, and the Hal Steinbrenner group did 14. We have a new WEINER! And it's pinstriped!

This is the match-up the networks wanted, and some fans wanted, but it's not what I or Michael Schur wanted. The Yankees won their 41st pennant, the Dodgers their 22nd—and the Dodgers are second in all of Major League Baseball. That's how much the Yankees are ahead of everyone.

Actually this is how much the Yankees are ahead of everyone. The Dodgers have a chance to win their eighth World Series title, which would tie them with the Giants for fifth all-time, behind: the Red Sox and A's (nine each), the Cardinals (11), and the Yankees ... who have 27. Twenty-seven. Nearly three times as many as the second-place team. Rooting for them is like rooting for Jeff Bezos to get a tax cut.

Anyway, I'll be rooting for Shohei and the LA Dodgers, and hoping that my new sign, “THE WORLD SERIES: YANKEE-FREE SINCE 2024,” will have a long, long, long life.

Posted at 10:54 AM on Friday October 25, 2024 in category Yankees Suck   |   Permalink  

Saturday October 19, 2024

John Amos (1939-2024)

John Amos (with Esther Rolle) in “Good Times”: the very definition of a man.

When I was a kid in the 1970s, John Amos seemed the very definition of a man to me. He was forceful and joyous, stern and affable. He put his best face on, and fought as best he could, and usually it wasn't enough—but he was still strong. If you'd asked me what a man was, I would've said that guy: James Evans, Sr., Gordie the weatherman, Kunta Kinte.

I guess I saw him on “Mary Tyler Moore” first, but he made the bigger impression on “Good Times,” and the show was never the same after he left. For some reason, I thought he'd left it, but I guess it was the opposite. The show couldn't sanction his public criticisms of its most popular character, his son, J.J. “Dy-no-MITE” Evans (Jimmie Walker), and let him go. History has since backed up Amos on the matter—though, in a perfect world, where groups controlled their own narrative, and there was much representation rather than a few characters against a sea of white, you might argue that J.J. wasn't dissimilar from what Barney Fife was doing on “Andy Griffith.” But it wasn't a perfect world.

After the dismissal, Amos played one of the most central roles in one of the most watched and impactful miniseries of all time: “Roots.” There was that strength again, to keep running, to be free, only to have his foot chopped off. More heartbreaking, for me, was a later scene. He and another slave, Bell (Madge Sinclair), have a daughter, and he suggests they name her Kizzy, which means “Stay put” in his language. That makes Bell happy because she's tired of Kunta running. But once Kizzy is an adult, now played by Leslie Uggams, a series of unfortunate circumstances (being taught to write by a stupid white girl, then using those skills to help her boyfriend escape, and then him giving her up), all of that lead to her being sold to a man who rapes her. I remember her being tied up in the bag of a wagon that's being pulled away from her crying mother and distraught father, and the father, after she's gone, does something with the dirt, an old African ritual so she will return to them. The wife looks at him with contempt and says:

“I thought her name was supposed to do that!”

The look of utter defeat on the man after that. Was it the last we ever saw of Kunta Kinte in the miniseries? I think it was. That awful moment. (Apologies if I misremembered anything. It's been nearly 50 years.)

It's odd when an actor will be in your field of vision constantly and then, though they keep working, not at all. Amos appeared in stuff I knew about—“Love Boat,” “The A-Team,” “Trapper John, M.D.,” “Hunter”—but those weren't shows I watched. To be honest, they seemed a step down from MTM and Norman Lear productions. Did he get a bad rep from the J.J. complaints? And relegated here. I don't think I saw Amos in anything until “Coming to America” 10 years later, when he played the overly ambitious restauranteur Cleo McDowell. Then he was in “Die Hard 2” ... as a villain! That was a shocker. James Evans Sr.—the bad guy? And then maybe I saw him on “West Wing” 10 years after that? We just kept missing each other. But during my formative years, John Amos was formative. He meant something. 

Posted at 06:02 PM on Saturday October 19, 2024 in category TV   |   Permalink  

Friday October 18, 2024

One Strike Away: It's Christmas in October in Cleveland

Bottom of the 9th, 2 runs down, 2 outs, nobody on, 0-2 count. In a best-of-7 series where you're already down two games to none. Against a team you never beat. That was Cleveland last night.

Not enough has been made of the pain the New York Yankees have caused the Cleveland Naps/Indians/Guardians through the years. Cleveland was the first American League team to integrate, second only to the Brooklyn Dodgers, promoting Larry Doby in July 1947 and continuing with others throughout the late '40s and early '50s. The Dodgers, buoyed by such Negro League greats, became perennial pennant winners in the NL during this time but that didn't happen with the Indians. Why? The Yankees. Yes, the Indians won the World Series in 1948, only their second ever, and a third pennant in 1954, winning 111 games during the regular season but losing to the Willie Mays-led New York Giants in the World Series. Otherwise? They kept finishing second. They finished second in 1951, 1952, 1953, 1955 and 1956—all to the Yankees. They could've been a dynasty. But for the Yankees. The racist Yankees.

So instead they became a symbol for such ineptitude that Hollywood had to make a movie, “Major League” in 1989, about how they beat the Yankees and won the pennant. (Shades of Douglass Wallop!) Because after '54? They didn't win the pennant for another 40 years. And in the division era they didn't come close, never finishing higher than fourth in their division between 1969 and 1993.

Ah, but then the mid-90s! Great team! They had talent everywhere: Belle, Lofton, Thome, MannyBManny, Hershiser, Omar, Baerga. They looked to be a dynasty. Instead, the Jeter-led Yankees became the dynasty. The Indians went to the Series twice and lost both times. The Yankees went to the Series four times (1996, 1998-2000) and won every time.

I could go on. George Steinbrenner came to embody the Yankees but where was he from? Cleveland. Superman came to embody a New York-like Metropolis but where was he created? Cleveland. The only player killed in a Major League baseball game was Cleveland Indians shortstop Ray Chapman, who was hit in the head by a fastball in the helmet-less days of 1920. Who threw the pitch? Joe Mays. A pitcher for the New York Yankees.

In 2017, the year after losing to the Cubs in the World Series, Cleveland got knocked out in the Division Series, 3 games to 2, by the Yankees. In the 2020 Wild Card Series? Lost 2-0 to the Yankees. In the 2022 Division Series? 3-2 to the Yankees.

Last night seemed more of the same. They were finally taking a lead into the late innings, and had the best closer in the world, Emmanuel Clase, at the ready. And with two outs in the top of the eighth, Hunter Gaddis walked Juan Soto on four pitches and so Clase was called for and got two quick strikes on Aaron Judge, but who, on the fourth pitch, hit a line shot to the opposite field. Anyone else hits that, it's an out, or a double at best. Judge is so strong it went over the wall. Tie game. And while Cleveland fans were probing this new bruise, Giancarlo Stanton gave them another one, hitting a homer to center to take the lead.

The Yanks added another in the top of the 9th, and had their new all-world closer, onetime Mariner Luke Weaver, at the ready. Jose Ramirez got on via an error but was erased in a double play. Which brought up Lane Thomas, the epitome of a journeyman. He'd been drafted in the fifth round of the 2014 draft by the Toronto Blue Jays, who, after several years in the minors, traded him to the St. Louis Cardinals for (get this) “international bonus slot money.” I didn't even know that was a thing. In three years barely playing with the Cards, he was a .100/.200/.300 player before being traded to the Washington Nationals, where, for four years playing more regularly, he was a .200/.300/.400 guy. Mid-season he wound up in Cleveland, where he was so-so. He's also the guy who hit the grand slam off of Tarik Skubal to send Cleveland here, to the ALCS, to face the Yankees yet again. But he worked the count. Down 0-2, he didn't bite, and got it back to 3-2. And then he hit a double off the top of the wall in left-center. Life!

Jhonkensky Noel? Called Big Christmas by his teammates. Another midseason player, this one a call-up. DR, 23 years old, apparently signed by Cleveland in .... 2017? When he was ... 16??? Is that legal? Big strong kid, built like a tank, but with a tendency to strike out. Not even 200 plate appearances for the season and 63 Ks. But 13 homers. Against Detroit in the ALDS he got some playing time but went 0-15. He started Game 1 of the ALCS in right field, went 1-2, but was replaced by a pinch-hitter in the seventh. He didn't play in Game 2. This time, he was the pinch-hitter, and on the second pitch sent one screaming into the chilly Cleveland night 404 feet away. And Cleveland erupted. And his bat flip! It wasn't the showy kind. He didn't hold onto it, linger over it. The opposite. He swung ferociously, and then, as if on a rubber band, snapped it back to dismiss it. He's saying This is over. It's a thing of beauty.

So now it's a tie game. Setting up the bottom of the 10th. I was almost hoping for a bloop single, to be honest. One of the Naylor brothers, Bo, led off and singled, was sacrificed to second, and would've been thrown out after a come-backer to one-time Yankees closer Clay Holmes, but Holmes opted for the certain out at first. If David Fry had singled, all of New York would've wanted Holmes' head. I could imagine the hand-wringing, the Daily News and Post headlines calling for Holmes' head. Instead, Fry sent it into the Cleveland night as well. Who is he? Not even a journeyman. He's 29 next month and this is just his second MLB season, both with Cleveland. He did well, .800 OPS, and even became an All-Star. And now this. He'll always have this. We'll always have this.

I'm not holding my breath. Momentum, as Earl Weaver famously said, is the next day's starting pitcher, and Cleveland is throwing out Gavin Williams, a 25-year-old who went 3-10 this season with an ERA near 5.00. He's another midseason guy who strikes out nearly one an inning. We'll see. Either way, it's fun now. There's life. All we want is life. And for Yankee fans to suffer crushing defeats for 100 years. 

Posted at 08:31 AM on Friday October 18, 2024 in category Baseball   |   Permalink  

Thursday October 17, 2024

Movie Review: Nightmare (1956)

WARNING: SPOILERS

The movie poster kind of gives away the goods, doesn’t it? Not that there’s much good in them.

At the outset, Stan (Kevin McCarthy), a big-band clarinetist, is having a nightmare. He’s in a small, mirrored room, where a man is attempting to open a safe with a blowtorch, while a beautiful blonde (Marian Carr), first seen as a floating head, stands nearby. Then the man tries to choke Stan. They go round and round, and the blonde hands the man an icepick, except, oops, she hands it to Stan who sticks it in the other guy. Cue Nelson Riddle-like blare of music. The girl flees, Stan hides the body, steps outside and falls, and falls, and falls…

And wakes up. Whew!

Except! What are these odd bruises around his neck? Why the bloodstains on his sleeve? And where did he get this odd-shaped key?

He calls in sick to work (with Billy May and his Orchestra) and wanders the town. “I had to get out of my room,” he tells us via voiceover. “Out into the sunshine. I had to stay out of the shadows.“

A lot of the movie is this kind of voiceover. It gets old fast. One generation’s arty is the next generation’s eyeroll.

Eventually he goes to see his brother-in-law, Rene (Edward G. Robinson), who’s in the garage working on his boat, but during the day is a New Orleans homicide detective. Whereas earlier Stan was confused about whether the murder was in a dream or not, now he’s certain. “It happened, Rene, it happened!” he insists. Rene tells him to take a vacation. “C’mon, kid,” he says. “Let’s wrap ourselves around some chow.”

So Stan investigates on his own. In his dream, he remembers a slow, melancholy tune, a dirge, but he can’t place it, and goes around town playing it before bandmates and famed New Orleans musicians—such as Meade “Lux” Lewis making a cameo. “Sorry, Stan,” Lewis says. “I guess I lose the $64,000.”

But guess who he spots at Meade’s bar? The blonde! They drink rye, she suggests going back to her place, they neck for two seconds, and then he sees the reflection of their reflection in the mirror—his back, her front—things get wavy, and he begs off, learning nothing.

Days go by. More fretting and frustration. Then Rene shows up with his wife, Stan’s sister (Virginia Christine, who played Mrs. Olson in Folgers commercials for decades), and Stan’s songstress girlfriend Gina (Connie Russell), for a picnic in the country. Stan relents, then suggests Bayou Lafourche, but doesn’t know why; and when a thunderstorm sends them scattering, Stan tells them where to drive: over this bridge and toward that mansion. It’s like he’s been there before! Nobody’s home, but Stan finds the spare key ... in the flower pot! Then they go in and make themselves at home—as one does.

For some reaason, Rene now believes Stan really did murder someone. “You didn’t have the guts to say, ‘Look, Rene, I went to such-and-such a place and killed a guy!’” he shouts. “You had to cook up a dream!” As they argue in the kitchen, guess who walks in? Deputy Torrence (Rhys Williams), who’s been watching the place, the Belknap mansion, because, yes, a double homicide was committed there. The more they look into it, the more all signs point to Stan. And when Rene drops him back at his place, this is his parting advice: “Run out. I’m giving you that one last chance. When they catch up with you, I want you to meet your finish somewhere else, not here.” Geez, thanks, bro-in-law.

After a suicide attempt that Rene foils, Rene finally asks the question he should’ve asked back at the garage: “Tell me everything that happened that night.” The key to it all? His kooky neighbor, Britten, at the Hotel New Orleans, who foists cough drops and daiquiris on him, and who that night showed up with a candle to say his lights were out, then retreated, telling Stan over and over: “You’re tired… you’re tired.”

Yes, two-thirds of the way through we finally get to the hypnosis that the movie poster spills at the outset.

Nightmare, I did
Britten, Rene figures out, is actually Mr. Belknap (Gage Clarke), and he hypnotized the notoriously suggestive Stan into … I guess showing up at the Belknap place and standing around until someone tried to choke him? And hopefully the girl would hand him an icepick by mistake? Seriously, what was Belknap’s plan? And who did he want killed—safecracker Bob Clune (Sol Gorss) or his own wife, whom we never see, and who is run over by a car even though Stan can’t drive? Or was the blonde his wife? And the pickup at Meade’s bar was in fact a case of mistaken identity? Which makes you wonder why she couldn’t keep her hands off Stan. Was she a prostitute? No offense, Kevin.

As for the dirge no one recognizes? That’s a familiar tune played at a slower speed. So did Belknap play it at a slower speed to aid with the hypnosis, or did Stan hear it at a slower speed because of his hypnotic state? And if Belknap can hypnotize Stan into, whatever, showing up during a safecracking, why doesn’t he hypnotize him into sticking around at the scene of the crime? Or into writing a confession? Think of the work that went into this idiot plot. He stayed at the hotel for a week, priming Stan, and only got what he wanted because the icepick wound up in the wrong hands. And then he has to run over his wife with a car.

Apparently all that’s not enough to exonerate Stan—who, after all, did kill the safecracker. So Rene works with the local cops to record Belknap 1) confessing to the crime, and 2) hypnotizing Stan again (to show the law that it could be done).

“Nightmare” is based on a novella, “And So to Death,” by Cornell Woolrich, who was the source material for dozens of films, most notably Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,” and whose work, someone wrote, tends to be heavy on atmosphere and light on plausibility. Checks out here anyway. The movie was adapted by its director, Maxwell Shane, who did five noir features in 10 years: “Fear in the Night,” “City Across the River,” “The Glass Wall,” “The Naked Street,” and this. This was the end of the line.

I like the location shooting around 1950s New Orleans—including a shot of the vertical neon “Hotel New Orleans” sign with the “s” burned out. I also like one bit of dialogue. After Rene’s “Run out” speech, Stan tries to kill himself by jumping out of his 15th floor window. He’s on the ledge, sweating, fretting, and a crowd gathers. Rene sees, and rushes back in. He tells the elevator operator “15th floor!” A few seconds later, we cut back to them.

Rene (frantic): Can’t you go any faster?
Elevator operator (bored): Got it wide open. 

In his memoir, Edward G. Robinson devotes barely a sentence to the film. It was made during the post-HUAC phase of his career, after he’d been accused of disloyalty and made to come hat-in-hand to the likes of Ward Bond so he could keep working. But he’d been relegated to B-pictures, which he did for money and for something to do, hating himself all the while. “Hell on Frisco Bay I did, and it was hell in Beverly Hills,” he writes. “Nightmare, I did, and it was nightmare all around me.”

The car ride to Bayou Lafourche looks like a scene from a failed '50 TV sitcom, “Brother-in-Law Knows Best,” about a New Orleans detective, his coffee-loving wife, her grumpy, twitchy brother, and his big-band-singing girlfriend. Tonight's episode: “Sunday Picnic”!

Posted at 08:23 AM on Thursday October 17, 2024 in category Movie Reviews - 1950s   |   Permalink  

Tuesday October 15, 2024

Times, Times, Times, Look What's Become of Them - III

Noem's face tells us more than the New York Times lede.

What are the facts surrounding the Donald Trump rally last night outside Philadelphia?

  • There were two medical emergencies in the crowd, the first 30 minutes into the Town Hall, the second shortly thereafter
  • The Town Hall was suspended
  • The gathering didn't disperse; instead, Trump called for music (“Hey Justin, how about a couple of really beauties, and we'll sit down and relax”) and stood on stage, listening and bobbing his head for 30 minutes

Here's how The New York Times described it. And let me highlight the areas about which I have questions:

Donald J. Trump was about 30 minutes into a town hall Monday night in suburban Philadelphia when a medical emergency in the crowd brought the questions and answers to a halt. Moments later, he tried to get back on track, when another medical incident seemed to derail things, this time for good.

And so Mr. Trump, a political candidate known for improvisational departures, made a detour. Rather than try to restart the political program, he seemed to decide in the moment that it would be more enjoyable for all concerned — and, it appeared, for himself — to just listen to music instead.

Mr. Trump had his staff fire up his campaign playlist, standing on the stage for about half an hour and swaying to songs as his crowd slowly dwindled.

He bobbed his head through the Village People's “Y.M.C.A.,” his usual closing song. He swayed soberly to Rufus Wainwright's version of “Hallelujah,” watched a Sinead O'Connor video, rocked along to Elvis, watched the crowd during “Rich Men North of Richmond” and then, finally, left the stage to shake hands on his way out during one last song.

This used to be called “sugarcoating,” and in 2016 we called it “normalizing.” For the kids, it's “sanewashing.” But no matter what you call it, the Times is going out of its way to make odd behavior, questionable behavior, seem normal. And they only seem to do it with Donald Trump and the GOP. It goes one way. With the Dems, they hold their feet to the fire for minor missteps. With Trump, he could take a dump on the stage and the one-time Paper of Record would tell us he's a political candidate know for his earthiness. 

To the questions about the highlighted:

  • Why would this derail things for good? Even later in the article, writer Michael Gold mentions that medical emergencies at Trump rallies this summer stopped nothing. “But Mr. Trump generally returns to his planned remarks after medical issues at other events. On Monday, he seemed more uncertain how to proceed.” 
  • “A political candidate known for improvisational departures” is the chef's kiss of normalizing Trump's batshit ramblings.
  • “He seemed to decide in the moment that it would be more enjoyable for all concerned — and, it appeared, for himself — to just listen to music instead.” Too much “seemed” and “appeared” to be this high up in the article. But if you're going to include it, also include the later line: “he seemed more uncertain how to proceed.”

Here's the key to it all: Trump did something that confused everybody. Nobody knew how to proceed: the music guy, Gov. Kristin Noem of South Dakota, who was moderating, nor the audience. This is the third-to-last graf of the story. It should be near the top:

But after “Y.M.C.A.” ended, Mr. Trump seemed a little perplexed. “There's nobody leaving,” he said. “What's going on?” The audience cheered, and so the music kept going, as Ms. Noem stood awkwardly by, and many in the audience seemed unsure about whether the event was over.

Finally, no explanation why Gov. Noem of South Dakota was moderating an event near Philadelphia.

Posted at 10:57 AM on Tuesday October 15, 2024 in category Media   |   Permalink  

Monday October 14, 2024

Times, Times, Times, Look What's Become of Them - II

Saw this on social media over the weekend:

100%. Everything he says. The absolute dereliction of duty by our most respected news sources during the most dangerous time in my American lifetime is something that will not be forgiven. 

Here's the referenced NPR interview with Joe Kahn. Blather. Sure, the Times generally doesn't have to portray that “Donald Trump is an existential threat to our society,” but it should report what he says, without buffing it up, without dragging it toward the sensical; they should give it the same treatment and placement if Kamala or Biden had said something similar. Instead, it feels like there's a very low, almost nonexistent bar for Trump in Times coverage. On the stump, he could state the most atrocious things, and does, and is doing, and it rates nothing. 

This has been making the rounds as well. Kamala is called on ... what exactly? Bobbing and weaving? Because she's not as forthright as the Times demands? Because she focuses on what she wants to focus on? Meanwhile, Trump is not being called on ... what exactly? Overt racism? 

“Long-held fascination” is so awful there. “Yeah, it's just a hobby of his. Like stamp collecting.”

Margaret Sullivan has a SubStack post, “About Those New York Times Headlines,” and writes, of the “long-held fascination” headline:

The article itself got to the heart of the matter — but not until its 11th paragraph.

Trump, it noted, “has a pattern of using dehumanizing language to describe undocumented immigrants. He has repeatedly referred to immigrants who commit crimes as 'animals.'”

And later still, it noted that Trump's insistence that undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country,” evokes “the ideology of eugenics promulgated by Nazis in Germany and white supremacists in the United States.”

This is vile stuff. Cleaning it up so it sounds like an academic white paper is really not a responsible way to present what's happening.

I'd call it an absolute dereliction of duty. I don't know if anyone in the Trump era has disappointed me as much as The New York Times. They should be better. And they are utterly failing us.

Posted at 04:18 PM on Monday October 14, 2024 in category Media   |   Permalink  

Sunday October 13, 2024

Rooting Interests in the 2024 LCSes, Or Why the Yankees and Mets May Be Racist

The 2024 MLB season is down to four teams, and many are hoping for a reprise of the 2000 Subway Series (NY vs. NY), but longtime readers, or short-time readers, or people who barely glance at this blog, will know that that's not me. I want the other matchup (LA vs. CLE), for many, many reasons, and start with the obvious: Yankees Suck.

Here are the familiar numbers again, 40 and 27, the pennants and titles the Yankees hold, which is way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, WAY ahead of any other team. Second place for titles is the St. Louis Cardinals with 11, and no other team is in double digits. And, again, the Yankees have *27*. Comparatively, the Dodgers, who have had their successes, have only seven, while Guards and Mets are at just two apiece. Plus if we keep the World Series Yankee-free another season, I think we'll set a post-Babe Ruth record for pennant futility: 15 straight seasons. C'mon, people, we can do this! We're so close!

But there are other reasons I want LA-CLE. Those teams have the lowest payrolls. I mean, the Dodgers are fifth overall, and I guess Ohtani's contract is mostly deferred and so uncounted, but the two New York teams are 1 and 2. It's easy to forget, too, since they're such underdogs, but the Mets are No. 1 in payroll. The Mets. I guess they're still paying Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer? Yes and yes. They're also still paying Bobby Bonilla, who retired in 2001 and who's getting paid through 2035. Lesson there, kids: get a good financial planner.

But I also want the Dodgers because of Shohei and I want Cleveland because they haven't won it all since 1948—the longest title drought in the sport. Second place is a tie between the Padres and Brewers: est. 1969, never won. Then it's my Mariners: est. 1977, never been. Just think of the distance we've come since 1948. Rock 'n' roll didn't exist. Elvis Presley was 13 and in junior high, Martin Luther King was 19 and graduating from Morehouse College. Donald Trump was just 2! Temperamentally the same, of course.

Maybe best of all, an LA vs. CLE World Series would not only reprise the 1920 World Series (Brooklyn Robins vs. Cleveland Indians), it would be a matchup of the first two teams to break the color barrier. That'd be cool. I'm not saying the Yankees and Mets would be racist if they beat them, and denied us this, but it'd be close.

EXTRA READING:

  • At the start of the season, Joe Posnanski counted down from the worst team in baseball (the Rockies) to the best, and this is where the remaining teams ranked per Joe: Dodgers (1), Yankees (10), Guardians (17), and Mets (18). This is the Poz who predicted great things for the Mariners, remember, to which Michael Schur deadpanned “Really,” speaking for everyone in Seattle. 
Posted at 10:57 AM on Sunday October 13, 2024 in category Baseball   |   Permalink  

Saturday October 12, 2024

What is Edward G. Robinson 'Known For'?

Per IMDb and its dipshit algorithms:

All good movies. But when Robinson (née Emmanuel Goldenberg) died in January 1973, The New York Times ran an obit on page one below the fold, which read:

Edward G. Robinson, 79, Dies; Famed as Films' 'Little Caesar'

Fuckin' A. A few other newspapers put that role in their headlines, too, while most merely said, “Hollywood Tough Guy” which is the same thing. Here's UPI's example:

“His greatest role.” Sometimes the culture changes, of course, and the hidden is elevated and the celebrated lowered, but I don't think that's happening here. I don't think IMDb is tapping into any culture. As the man said: I don't see any method at all. 

Mother of mercy.

Posted at 10:03 AM on Saturday October 12, 2024 in category Movies   |   Permalink  

Friday October 11, 2024

Luis Tiant (1940-2024)

I wish I knew more about this photo. It was taken by my father on Camera Day, August 1970, at Met Stadium in Bloomington, Minn. Tiant was one of a dozen players with whom we got our picture taken that day, and he seems very chummy, not aloof at all, but I don't remember the moment. I do remember liking him. I do remember wondering why he only stayed with the Twins for a little while. Why did he come? Why did he go? 

He came because on Dec. 10, 1969, the Twins traded Dean Chance, Bob Miller, Ted Uhlander, and Graig Nettles*, four players in all, to the Cleveland Indians for pitchers Stan Williams and Luis Tiant. It's an odd trade. We seem interested in pitching but gave up two pitchers in the process, while the pitchers we got were coming off of off-years, Tiant particularly. In 1968, he had a season for the ages, going 21-9 and leading the American League with a miniscule 1.60 ERA. But he didn't even get one Cy Young vote because the Tigers' Denny McLain went 31-6 with a 1.96 ERA and won the Cy unanimously. Tiant's miniscule ERA wasn't even much talked up because Bob Gibson's was minisculer: 1.12 ERA, the modern record. Gibson and McLain not only won Cys but MVPs, while Tiant was all but forgotten. And the next season, after they lowered the mound, Tiant led the league in a bunch of stuff you don't want to lead the league in: walks (129) homeruns allowed (37), and losses (20).

Yes, this was a bad trade or the Twins. Over the next 20 years, Nettles would accumulate 65 bWAR and become a legendary hot-corner defender in the World Series. He should be in the Hall of Fame—or at least have his number retired by the New York Yankees.**

** Yes, his number (No. 9) IS retired by the New York Yankees, except not in his honor. It's for an earlier wearer, Roger Maris, and I guess you can't retire it twice.***

*** Actually, you can, and the Yankees have. No. 8 is retired for both Yogi Berra and his mentor Bill Dickey. Anyway, onward.

I'm curious if Tiant was considered the big get for the Twins in that trade. Stan Williams wound up having the better season, going 10-1 from the bullpen with a 1.99 ERA. Tiant started well, going 6-0 through the first two months of the season with a 3.12 ERA, including a shutout of Detroit in April in which he gave up as many hits (3, all singles) as he got himself (3-4, including a double); but in his last start in May, he heard something pop in his right shoulder and x-rays revealed a fractured scapular. Out for two months. (Who did the Twins call up to replace him? A 19-year-old curveball pitcher named Bert Blyleven. Welcome to the Show, kid.)

So did the Twins lose confidence in Tiant after all that? They outright released him in March 1971, he was picked up by the Atlanta Braves, they released him in May, at which point the Boston Red Sox picked him up, and, into his 30s, Tiant showed everyone what they'd missed. Eventually. That year, 1971, he went 1-7 with a 4.85 ERA, but the next year he again led the Majors in ERA, 1.91, and for the next four years won 20, 22, 18 and 21 games for a Red Sox team that kept challenging for the pennant. He also went 1-0 in the '75 ALCS and 2-0 against the vaunted Big Red Machine in the magical 1975 World Series. That's when Tiant, with his twisting, second-base-facing windup, truly became a legend. He won Games 1 (five-hit shutout) and 4 (CG), and, after several days rain delay, started Game 6. But in the 5th inning, the Reds scored 3, the big blow a triple by Ken Griffey (not yet “Sr.”), and they got 2 more in the 7th. All of which set the stage for blasts by Bernie Carbo and Carlton Fisk. In other words, the only games the BoSox won that Series were games Tiant started. Wait, it's better: the only games the Cincinnati Reds lost in both the 1975 an '76 postseasons were those three Tiant starts. Otherwise they swept the table.

Should he be in the Hall? He lasted with the Sox until 1978, went over to the Yankees for two years, Pirates for one and Angels for one, and retired with a 229-172 record, a 3.30 ERA, an 2416 Ks, at a time when just Walter Johnson and Bob Gibson were north of 3,000. His bWAR is right on the cusp, 65.6, and Joe Posnanski, for one, thinks he should get extra points for character—as in being one: the windup, the cigars, the jovial nature, selling sausages outside Fenway. Part of Pos' argument is that guys get dinged for bad behavior (cf., Curt Schilling) so why not the opposite for good guys? Just look at that photo. If that's not an ambassador of the game, I don't know one.

FURTHER READING:

Posted at 04:28 PM on Friday October 11, 2024 in category Baseball   |   Permalink  

Thursday October 10, 2024

Movie Review: The Office Wife (1930)

Above title credit for the magazine article? Those were the days. 

WARNING: SPOILERS

A publishing giant, Lawrence Fellowes (Lewis Stone), hires Kate Halsey (Blanche Friderici), a cigar-smoking, suit-wearing woman who wants to be the next Ernest Hemingway, Jack London or Jim Tully, to write a book about the phenomenon of businessmen romancing their secretaries, or some such. He has to convince her to do this since she has no interest in the subject. And he does this even though he has no interest in his own secretary—a mousy thing named Miss Andrews (Dale Fuller) forever trying to entice him. In fact, when Andrews discovers the boss is getting married, to someone else, she faints in his office then leaves the firm. 

She’s quickly replaced by Anne Murdock (Dorothy Mackaill), a Constance-Bennett-looker who rose through the ranks via hard work. She’s reminded of this by her fussy office manager, J.P. McGowan (Hobart Bosworth). “Anne, you got this on your work. What I mean is, charm counts, but you got this on your brains. Don’t forget that Anne. … Now run along, fix your face.”

Nice mixed message. So what happens? She tries to seduce the boss, of course: bringing in flowers, hiking her skirt above the knee, showing off those gams. It’s a 180-degree turn that makes no sense. Is she suddenly enamored of him? Was Lewis Stone, the future Judge Hardy of the Andy Hardy movies, considered the Robert Redford of 1930? No clue.

Anyway, very shortly, he’s interested in her, too. Yes, him, the newlywed workaholic. But can they make it work? They can! His wife is already sick of him and fooling around with some other schlub. The whole thing is icky but love wins.

As for the book Fellowes commissioned? Forgotten. Poor Kate and her cigars.

“The Office Wife” is not a good film but it’s been preserved by the Library of Congress—I assume for this reason: it's the feature-film debut of Joan Blondell. A few months earlier, she’d been in “Penny Arcade” on Broadway, Al Jolson saw it, bought the rights, and recommended two of its players to Warner Bros.: Blondell and a short guy named Cagney. Cagney didn’t debut until the screen version of “Penny Arcade” (retitled “Sinners' Holiday”) later that year, but Warners stuck Blondell into a bathtub as soon they could.

Feature-film debut of Joan Blondell: Get that girl into a bathtub STAT!

Playing Anne’s sister Katherine, Blondell is the best thing in it. She shows up every so often to lay down the truth. When her sister, distraught over her love for Mr. Fellowes (or Fellows, it’s spelled both ways), reminds her that she’s never loved anybody so what does she know, Katherine responds, “Nothing. And I hope I stay dumb. One sap in the Murdock family is plenty.” Katherine also says this about Ted, the guy Anne is dating, a real pill who thinks highly of himself and not-so-highly of Anne: “Ted wants a parking space for a couple of babies and free laundry. If you want to learn what the word lonesome is, take him on.”

All the names are wrong, by the way. “Katherine” sounds way too patrician for the straight-shooting, working class Blondell. Anne should be Katherine and Katherine should be Anne (Blondell wound up playing three Annes before 1933), or anything else, really, while McGowan would’ve been better suited with the actor’s real name. “Hobart Bosworth” is too good to just sit there.

I am intrigued by the obviously lesbian Kate Halsey, who doesn’t seem at all like Faith Baldwin, whose Cosmopolitan magazine series the movie is based on. But, as mentioned, she's quickly forgotten. Four years later, she wouldn't even have made the cut.

After various machinations, our principles fall in love, and the movie ends on a moonlit beach with this dialogue:

Anne: Will you do something for me, Larry?
Fellows: Anything in the world.
Anne: Then let me pick out your next secretary.

Was this the first of the “I want to schtup my secretary” movies that became popular in the early 1930s? Cf., “Behind Office Doors,” “Big Business Girl,” “Baby Face,” and “She Had to Say Yes”? And has anyone written about them? Feels like an intriguing area—mixing post-suffragette feminism, the necessities of the Great Depression, and that old standby: sex. Or maybe it was just Hollywood moguls creating movies out of their own wish-fulfillment fantasies. Although, one suspects, given the times, most of the wishes were already fulfilled.

Honey, you're never going to be the next Jim Tully this way.

Posted at 06:24 AM on Thursday October 10, 2024 in category Movie Reviews - 1930s   |   Permalink  

Tuesday October 08, 2024

Russia First

“As the coronavirus tore through the world in 2020, and the United States and other countries confronted a shortage of tests designed to detect the illness, then-President Donald Trump secretly sent coveted tests to Russian President Vladimir Putin for his personal use.

”Putin, petrified of the virus, accepted the supplies but took pains to prevent political fallout — not for him, but for his American counterpart. He cautioned Trump not to reveal that he had dispatched the scarce medical equipment to Moscow, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward. ...

“The unnamed Trump aide cited in the book indicated that the GOP standard-bearer may have spoken to Putin as many as seven times since Trump left the White House in 2021.”

-- “Trump secretly sent covid tests to Putin during 2020 shortage, new book says” by Isaac Stanley-Becker

Posted at 07:28 AM on Tuesday October 08, 2024 in category Politics   |   Permalink  

Sunday October 06, 2024

Movie Review: Slap Shot (1977)

WARNING: SPOILERS

Is this the first in-your-face Minnesota accent in a movie? The kind the Coens would make famous, or infamous, with “Fargo”?

More, the guys who sound Minnesotan are the Hanson brothers, bespectacled enforcers on the ice, the opposite of Minnesota Nice, who help a moribund franchise, the Charlestown Chiefs, become relevant again. They help them win games, fans come out, and at one point we hear the following conversation: 

Woman #1: Aren’t those Hansons something?
Woman #2: Aren’t they, though?
Woman #1: They’re sort of funny looking.
Woman #2: Real funny looking.

No way the Coens didn’t see this growing up.

Bad News Chiefs
“Slap Shot” would make a great double-bill not only with “Fargo” but with the original “Bad News Bears,” which was released about a year earlier: April 1976 rather than Feb. 1977.

There, a disinterested coach takes over a moribund little league club that can’t win a game, but the losing, and the damage it’s doing to the kids, eventually gets to him. So he hires some ringers and does what he can to win. They make it to the championship game, where, halfway through, he realizes what an asshole he’s become and puts in all the lesser players he’s held back; they wind up losing, but poignantly. The ending is joyous.

Here, player-coach Reggie Dunlop (Paul Newman) slowly realizes that when the steel mill in Charlestown closes, the moribund Chiefs aren’t long for this world. He also realizes that the weird nerdy guys the team has hired at a discount, the bespectacled Hanson brothers (Jeff Carlson, Steve Carlson and David Hanson), are ringers who bloody noses and win hockey games. And that becomes Reggie’s mantra. The team becomes nasty and brutish, and they make it all the way to the championship game. Except beforehand, Reggie talks to the owner, Anita McCambridge (Kathryn Walker), who thanks him for making her franchise profitable, but she’s still going to fold the team. Because she can make more money with the Chiefs as a tax write-off than as a championship franchise. So now Reggie decides to go out the right way, and that becomes the mantra. And in the first period they get clobbered. So second period, they come out bloodying noses. Which is when the team’s moral authority, Ned Braden (Michael Ontkean), decides to sell sex rather than violence: He does a striptease on the ice, which so disgusts one member of the opposition that he punches the ref. Meaning that team forfeits and the Chiefs win! Plus Reggie gets hired by the Minnesota hockey club! Happy ending!

It's basically the same storyline except for when the coach sees the light and what happens afterward.

“Bad News Bears” is better to me—more poignant—because it’s one of those “we lose but really we win” movies. In “Slap Shot,” the team wins via technicalities, and Reggie wins via another technicality: an 11th-hour job offer in Minnesota.

But it’s still fun. The shocker? This violent, profane film was written by a woman, Nancy Dowd. She grew up in New England, and her brother played hockey for one of these leagues, and she put it all down. “I used the exact same language that the players do,” she told The New York Times in 1977, adding:

“The world has a weird view of women. People seem to believe that we have to write about divorce or suicide or children—so‐called ‘women's topics.’ But we've been around. … You know, when the script first went out in Hollywood. there was talk around town that ‘Nancy Dowd’ was really a man using a pseudonym.”

Shame she didn’t do more. She went uncredited on “Straight Time,” “North Dallas Forty,” “Ordinary People,” “Cloak & Dagger,” and “White Nights.” She got credits for this, “FTA,” “Swing Shift” “and “Let It Ride.” She won an Oscar for “Coming Home,” which was based on her years as an antiwar protester and living in military-base towns, but she hated how they mangled her original script. “It’s message seemed to be that doves are better than hawks in bed,” she apparently said. “And it was pious as well as sentimental.” 

Redford, Newman, Chase
Newman is great here but the part is definitely not tailored for him. At one point a woman tells him, “You look a thousand years old,” which makes you wonder how the rest of us look. Plus, let’s face it, he doesn’t have the legs of a hockey player. But he makes do. He acts. It’s the kind of role Newman seemed to prize: a dude who wasn’t particularly educated but with some smarts, and some persistence, fighting a battle against the powers that be. Cool seeing Strother Martin, Newman’s bête noire in “Cool Hand Luke,” as the hapless, dead-weight manager of the Chiefs.

“Slap Shot” was directed by George Roy Hill, who directed Newman and Robert Redford in “Butch Cassidy” and “The Sting,” then directed Redford in “The Great Waldo Pepper” and Newman in this. Not a bad run. The ’80s were less kind. After completely reversing course two years later with “A Little Romance,” he had the impossible task of converting John Irving’s “The World According to Garp” onto the big screen, then did a Diane Keaton-led Mossad movie. Four years later, he directed Chevy Chase in “Funny Farm.” He deserved a better end than that. We all do.

Posted at 06:25 AM on Sunday October 06, 2024 in category Movie Reviews - 1970s   |   Permalink  

Friday October 04, 2024

How George Lucas' First Feature Was Greenlit

I read this bit the other night in Brian Jay Jones' “George Lucas: A Life,” about the period in the late 1960s when Francis Ford Coppola was trying to put together his Zoetrope commune, and George Lucas was his protege with a sci-fi script, “THX-1138,” based upon his student film, that had already been rejected by Warner Bros., the studio Coppola was working with:

But the savvy Coppola knew something Lucas didn't: Warner Bros.–Seven Arts was about to be bought out by Kinney National Services, which until 1969 was known largely for its parking lots and cleaning services. “What we'll do is we'll wait until these new guys come on board,” Coppola told Lucas. “We won't tell them [THX] has already been turned down. We'll just pretend that we've already started it.”

Which is how the career of the man who changed Hollywood began.

Posted at 11:26 AM on Friday October 04, 2024 in category Books   |   Permalink  

Wednesday October 02, 2024

Movie Review: Le Samourai (1967)

WARNING: SPOILERS 

This is pretty superficial criticism so bear with me.

When hitman Jef Costello (Alain Delon) leaves for a new assignment, he goes through various machinations to make sure he isn’t followed. He quietly steals a car and takes it to a back-alley garage, where a man with a cigarette dangling from his lips wordlessly changes the license plate. He gets his woman to provide alibi #1 and the poker-playing men in the back room to give him alibi #2. (Though if he hadn’t been there, would he have been picked up in the first place?) Only after all that, does he go to the nightclub to kill the target. All of it is very smart, very careful, very methodical.

So why does he wear the fedora?

I get it: It helps hide his face. But it’s Paris in 1967. The only men wearing fedoras anymore are ancient, not handsome hipsters like Alain Delon. He stands out like a sore thumb.

Yes, there’s that scene in the police station where all the suspects show up with their own trenchcoats and fedoras, but that’s really the only time we see anyone else wearing one. In the scenes in Paris? On the streets or in a nightclub? Nobody’s wearing one. Jef wearing one is like a flashing red light to any passerby. Notice me! I don’t fit in! You expect someone to ask, “You heading to a costume party?”

In a way, he is. It’s the French New Wave, and they want to Bogart up the joint. But it makes everything else nonsensical. 

Ce n’est pas lui
I keep wanting to like the movies the cool kids like, like this one, which was shown in a 4K restoration at SIFF Egyptian last month. And I liked it well enough. “Le Samourai” is a not-bad procedural, and I like procedurals. It’s a procedural from both the criminal end and the cop end. I liked the parrot. I liked the girl. All the girls, really: Jane (Nathalie Delon), La pianiste (Cathy Rosier), La jeune fille du vestiare (Catherine Jourdan).

But did I like Alain Delon? Did I like the cop (Francois Perier playing Le Commissaire)? I guess I liked how unlikeable the cop was. He's not exactly Louis Jouvet in “Quai des Orfevres.” 

So Costello does the hit, he’s seen by both the pianiste and the hatcheck girl, he goes to the card game for his alibi but is immediately picked up by the cops. In the round-robin version of “Is this the guy?” some finger him, some shake their heads, nah, while the pianiste totally refutes what we know she saw: Ce n’est pas lui. Jef is released.

Except the next day, when he goes to collect his payment, he’s nearly killed by the courier. Apparently the bad guys now see him as a liability. And he doesn’t know who the bad guys are. He doesn’t know who hired him.

So he returns home, treats the wound in his arm, returns to the club to meet the pianiste, Valérie, because he figures she didn’t finger him because she knows who hired him. She doesn’t deny it but delays her response. She says call me in two hours. Not sure why he agrees to this but he does. And when he does, there’s no answer.

All this time, people are breaking into his nondescript flat. The police plant bugs, bad guys hole up there ready to ambush him, and his parrot keeps letting him know—by being agitated, losing feathers, etc. The bird is the smartest thing in the film. The bird and Jef’s bird—Jane. The cops try to squeeze her but she ain’t having it. She remains loyal. That’s a good scene.

Eventually, the courier pays him and offers another gig. Instead, Jef forces the name of his employer from him: Olivier Rey (Jean-Pierre Posier). Sure. Jef evades half the Paris police force to go to Rey’s place, which also happens to be Valérie’s place, and kills the guy. Then he shows up at Valérie’s job and seems ready to kill her, too. Was that the secondary job? Except from the get-go it’s more suicide mission: he gives up his beloved fedora, hangs next to Valérie’s piano in full view of everyone, and pulls his gun. After he’s mowed down by half the Paris police force, it's discovered that the gun was empty.

So it was a suicide mission. Because? French shrug.

Trente-neuf
Anyway, it’s got a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and all the cool kids like it. In 2010, it was ranked the 39th greatest film of all time by Empire magazine. In his review, Roger Ebert wrote:

 “Jean-Pierre Melville involves us in the spell of Le Samourai before a word is spoken. He does it with light: a cold light, like dawn on an ugly day. And color: grays and blues. And actions that speak in place of words.”

The light thing is true, and that's a good description of it. But I’m curious if the young cool kids consider the title cultural appropriation. Not to mention Bogie’s fedora—if cultural appropriation goes in that direction.

Posted at 07:53 AM on Wednesday October 02, 2024 in category Movies - Foreign   |   Permalink