Wait, who's Frank Tuttle? That would've been my question last week.

Tuttle was a director in Golden-Age Hollywood, mostly at Paramount, mostly doing genre stuff, who got tagged as a communist after WWII and was blacklisted. He was tagged as a communist because he was a communist—at least he was a party member for about 10 years—but in 1951 he named names before HUAC. Didn't help. Then he went to France and made movies there. Then he returned to Hollywood. He died in January 1963, age 70. His obits often begin the same way:

Frank Tuttle, noted movie director who gave Alan Ladd his first starring role and who directed other big filmland names, died yesterday.

(I love “filmland names.” Gonna have to use that.)

Among the movies he directed that wound up in the obits? “Hell on Frisco Bay” with Ladd, “The Big Broadcast” with Bing Crosby, and “The Great John L.” Also that first film with Ladd, “This Gun for Hire,” an early noir with Veronica Lake.

So—back to the original question—one assumes Tuttle might be known for one of these movies? Unless times have changed?

Something's certainly changed. Here's IMDb's answer:

Sure, “The Cradle Buster,” a silent classic starring Glenn Hunter and Marguerite Courtot. Who doesn't talk about that?

Everyone. Everyone doesn't talk about that. But I guess IMDb's algorithm went with it because Tuttle not only directed it but he's its sole writing credit. Of his 14 other writing credits, he's sharing credit or uncredited. So, since he did more for this one, he must be known for this one. That's the logic. Or illogic.

Again, IMDb might just want to look at the intel on its own website. Here's Tuttle's top three movies by IMDb user rating:

1. Dangerously Yours: 8.3
2. A Kiss in the Dark: 7.4
3. This Gun for Hire: 7.3

Except the first two are based on very small sample sizes: just 18 and 26 votes, respectively. So do any of Tuttle's movies have, say, a high number of user ratings? Which might indicate engagement and known-for-ness?

Yes! One does:

1. This Gun for Hire: 11k
2. Manhandled: 1.2k
3. The Canary Murder Case: 1.1k

As for where “Cradle Buster” ranks among number of user ratings? That would be ... let's see ... tied for LAST. With zero. Zilch. Bupkis. Nada. Nothing. In the entire history of IMDb, no one has seen it and bothered to vote for it. But that's what they say he's known for.

It's the illogic that gets me. It's the lack of caring about their own fucking website.

WARNING: SPOILERS

The blind spots of the Production Code are fascinating. Has anyone written a book on this?

The Code was designed to (among many other things) stop Hollywood from glorifying criminals and undermining American institutions; and yet here, in “The Big Shot” from 1942, when the Code was at the height of its powers, we watch the noblest of cons getting screwed by the police, his lawyer, and the prison warden. He basically hits every crooked branch in our justice system on the way down, and no one at the Hays Office so much as blinked.

It's an odd film in the Humphrey Bogart oeuvre. It’s sandwiched between two classics, “The Maltese Falcon” and “Casablanca,” but Bogart is given the gangster role like it’s still 1938, and he’s surrounded by none of the shining lights of Warner Bros. Lewis Seiler is directing rather than, say, Michael Curtiz, and there’s no Epstein brothers to help with the script, and the supporting players include no Claude Rains, Peter Lorre or S.Z. Sakall. We don’t even get a Ward Bond.

Three raps
The movie begins with the deathbed scene of the titular big shot, Joseph “Duke” Berne (Bogie), who is surrounded by a prison warden (Minor Watson, one of the few faces I recognized), and that early 1940s Warners staple, a bland WASP couple, George Anderson and Ruth Carter (Richard Travis and Susan Peters). She’s tearful because apparently they owe Duke everything.

The rest is flashback, which opens with Duke just out of prison. Apparently they had a four-strike law back then? “Three raps,” he says in voiceover, walking down the street at night. “The next time they’d throw away the key.” He adds this, which is the whole 1977 Dustin Hoffman movie “Straight Time” in one quote:

“You can’t be a crook anymore because you used up your chances. And you can’t be honest because nobody’ll let ya. So what? So you keep moving.”

It’s at this point that his former gang begins to work on him to rejoin. Well, two guys. The dynamic is the same as the two cops trying to work Sam Spade in “The Maltese Falcon.” While good-guy Sandor (Howard Da Silva) understands Duke’s reluctance, and tells his partner to lay off, Frenchy (Joe Downing) is just an asshole, belittling Duke, ordering milk for him because he’s not a real man. They basically go good crook/bad crook. They say the job’s a cinch, that they got Fleming, they’re protected.

So Duke heads to the office of Martin T. Fleming, Attorney at Law (Stanley Ridges). Was his original idea to tell Fleming to lay off with the mugs? Either way, once he sees Fleming’s wife, Lorna (Irene Manning), he’s in. She’s the love of his life, and if she needs fancy hats like she gets from Fleming, then he he’ll get the dough to get them. Afterwards we get a reprise of the scene at the restaurant with Sandor and Frenchy, except this time Bogart acts like Bogart.

The night of the job, though, Lorna shows up and dissuades Duke—at gunpoint. So he’s not involved at all when the heist goes awry.

Even so…

1. A frazzled eyewitness, pressed by the police, fingers Duke.
2. Duke’s lawyer is Fleming. Not smart. His alibi is Lorna, but Duke is a gentleman and doesn’t want her mixed up in it, so he goes with Fleming’s manufactured alibi—a beefy innocent name George Anderson.
3. Except when Frenchy tells Fleming about Lorna—since he saw her hat at Duke’s—Fleming betrays both men. George is sent up for a year, Duke for life.

Got that? Duke has committed no crime, as the man sang, but he still has to do a sentence, as the man also sang. Immediately Duke plans on breaking out. Nothing to lose now. He gets involved with the prison theater, where a mug named Dancer (Chick Chandler) does a cringey minstrel bit with a comic life-sized Black doll. Oddly, this is the moment, with all eyes on them, that they break free. Works for Duke—Lorna is waiting on the other side, revving the car engine—but not for Dancer, who knifes a guard and is shot dead. George isn’t involved—he tries to talk Duke out of it and get cold-cocked—but when he wakes? He’s charged with the guard stabbing, which turns into a murder rap.

Yeah, another miscarriage of justice, and this time it’s not just an ex-gangster. A true innocent is staring at the death penalty because the powers-that-be just assumed. That’s our justice system. And Joe Breen and the Production Code was fine with it? So odd. Maybe they thought George deserved it for lying down with dogs.

At this point the movie gets boring fast. Duke and Lorna hide out in a mountain cabin in the Adirondacks, there’s unfunny comic relief about Duke’s unreadiness for the role, and Lorna plays grating/happy homemaker. But then Duke hears about poor George and decides to do the right thing. Or maybe he's bored, too. Except a bunch of wrongdoers—Fleming and Frenchy—sic the cops on them and Lorna is killed in the getaway. So Duke pays Fleming a night-time visit, guns are fired, Fleming buys it, Duke is wounded.

In the hospital, surrounded, Duke clears George’s name, has a last smoke, expires.

Frenchy endures.

Murder written all over him
Bogart is good. He’s always good. Some of the shots/lighting aren’t bad, either. I’m assuming less Lewis Seiler than cinematographer Sidney Hickox, but I’m hardly an expert in the field. He just has the better CV: “Gentleman Jim,” “To Have and Have Not,” “The Big Sleep,” “White Heat.” He finished doing episodes of “Mayberry R.F.D.”

I don’t think the movie is wrong in depicting miscarriages of justice, by the way, I just find it amusing that the Production Code was fine with it. Also, the miscarriages tend to be dramatic types: crooked lawyers, etc., The most accurate miscarriage of justice depicted, even if it’s presented through a comic lens, is eyewitness misidentification. At one point, asked to finger the man who grabbed her—Frenchy—she picks up a framed photo on the desk. 

Woman: If ever a man had murder written all over him…
Cop: Hold it, lady, that’s the police commissioner!

One of the few faces I recognized was Lorna, Irene Manning, who played Fay Templeton in “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” In that, I thought she was a little too MGM for Warners, but she actually began her career at Republic Pictures in the 1930s before being plucked by Warners for war-time movies (“Spy Ship,” “The Desert Song”), Belle Epoch musicals (“Shine on Harvest Moon”), and noirs like this. Mostly, though, she was used as the girl spread across the movie poster. But at least Warners used her. After the war, MGM grabbed her as a bargaining chip in its contract dispute with Jeannette Macdonald, then dumped her when the ink was dry. In three years with Warners she made eight features, two shorts and appeared in a “Canteen” movie as herself. At MGM, bupkis. She didn’t show up on screen again until 1950s TV. She did Playhouses, Showcases, Hours, and was gone again. She married a lot.

In her IMDb bio, there’s a quote about this picture and director Lewis Seiler, whom she calls mean and nasty. “But Bogie came to my rescue. He told me to completely ignore this man, to play the part the way I wanted to play it and everything would be fine—which it was.” Well, kinda.

Bogie, on the rise, did this one in January-February 1942, then was reteamed with John Huston, Mary Astor and Sidney Greenstreet for the wartime picture “Across the Pacific.” Just as this one was premiering in June, he began filming another wartime pic: “Casablanca.” That's the one that made him a big shot.

Apparently The Chronicle grabbed Duke's mugshot from the Warner Bros. publicity dept. 

“On March 1, 1956, a radical procedure began. It went on for nine hours. The esophagus was entirely removed, along with two lymph nodes and a rib. The vagus nerve, which controls digestion, was cut. Humphrey's stomach was attached to his gullet; food would have a shorter way to travel, he would fill up rapidly—too rapidly—and would never really enjoy eating again. ...

”Humphrey convinced himself that the treatments were working, and in that optimistic spirit he started smoking again, this time filtered Chesterfields. Save for the time spent in the hospital, his liquor consumption never stopped. ...

“Dressed in slacks and a red smoking jacket, he managed to get himself downstairs every evening to receive the special friends Lauren invited for a drink, usually between 5:00 and 7:00 p.m. But as the disease moved into the final stages, he was forced to make his way around in a wheelchair. He weighed a little more than 80 pounds. The dumbwaiter was turned into a makeshift elevator; a butler lifted him from the wheelchair onto a stool, and the contraption brought him up and down as desired.”

-- from “Tough Without a Gun: The Life and Extraordinary Afterlife of Humphrey Bogart,” by Stefan Kanfer. Bogart died January 14, 1957, aged 57.

Two recent quotes for you this morning.

“I could not, would not, in good conscience go to my birth country when there is such an authoritarian bully in the White House, and when the craven Republicans in the House and the U.S. Senate are complicit in their silence.”

-- author John Irving, 83, on why he's not traveing to the U.S. to promote “Queen Esther,” his 16th novel, during an interview with The New York Times. Love the fact that he calls out Republicans. Most don't get it and just say “Congress.” 

**

“[Trump] doesn't have any policies, he has whims. It scares the shit out of me. The ignorance, the hubris, the lies, the perfidy. He knows better, but he's an instrument of the status quo and he's making money, hand over fist, while the world goes to hell in a handbasket. ... I don't know of a greater criminal in history.”

-- actor Harrison Ford in The Guardian.

As a young man, I chose my heroes well.

WARNING: SPOILERS

For a month now, friends and family have been virtually tapping me on the shoulder to ask if I’d seen “One Battle After Another” yet. Everyone urged me to go. K. thought it was great, A. said he enjoyed it, R. said it was the best movie he’d seen in years.

Last weekend, Patricia and I finally saw it at SIFF Downtown. And almost from the get-go I was disappointed.

The movie feels both hugely relevant and comically beside-the-point. We get a fictional continuation of our past amid what feels like our very real, authoritarian present and future. Politically, it damns both sides but does it in a way that feels like each’s attack on the other. Left-wing revolutionaries whining about their personal space? That’s an “SNL” skit. And when was the last time left-wing guerillas blew shit up—The Weather Underground?

That was actually the problem I had from the get-go. We watch as left-wing revolutionaries, self-dubbed French 75, and led by the dynamic and hypersexual Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), liberate prison camps and take on the man, and I’m like: It’s as if the Weather Underground kept going. I didn’t know the title actually comes from the Weather Underground. One of its many manifestoes:

“From here on out, it’s one battle after another—with white youth joining in the fight and taking the necessary risks. Pig Amerika beware. There's an army growing in your guts and it's going to bring you down.”

In real life, of course, when the risks came down, white youth got good jobs, voted for Reagan, moved to the suburbs.

The criticisms I have of the movie, by the way, are couched with trepidation. Whenever I see a Paul Thomas Anderson movie, I’m both impressed and vaguely disappointed, and when I write about it I tend to lead with the disappointment but by the end I want to see the film again. Particularly the So Cal/Thomas Pynchon-inspired stuff: “The Master,” “Inherent Vice.” I want to rewatch “Inherent Vice” now. I barely remember anything about it, but back in the day I wrote the following, which jumps out at me after seeing “One Battle”:

There’s a sense here, and throughout the movie, that this is where we went wrong. During this pivotal moment, the left got stoned while the right got busy.

This dynamic, from the review, also feels relevant to “One Battle”:

They’re led by Lt. Det. Christian F. “Bigfoot” Bjornsen (Josh Brolin, in a standout performance), a crew-cutted chest-thumper, who earned his nickname by beating up suspects, and who has a comic oral fixation with black phallic symbols—mostly chocolate-covered bananas.

Or are such fixations just relevant to PTA? Maybe he's working through some shit. Well, who isn’t?

The Ethan dilemma
Have any black critics weighed in with concerns about the sexualization of black women? It’s not just Perfidia; there’s Junglepussy (Shayna McHayle), who struts along a bank table, mid-robbery, toting a machine gun and wearing the shortest of miniskirts with legs that go on forever. Meanwhile, Perfidia isn’t just the lover of the droopy explosives expert Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio), first seen in hoodie pulling a wagon like he’s some bizarro continuation of Elliott from “E.T.”; no, she also takes it to the enemy, Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn). At first it seems she’s humiliating him? Forcing him to get a hard-on at gunpoint and parading him around? But he digs it, and she digs it, and they wind up lovers; and when she’s caught, she gives up the whole lot of them, all of French 75, while also giving up her daughter and fleeing to Mexico. She’s a dirty rat, to coin a phrase. I guess the clue was in the name.

Then we fast-forward 15 years to a time when the faux Weather Underground is even further underground, irrelevant except in their own minds. It’s the right-wing authoritarian forces who have a strut in their step. Or a stomp.

Lockjaw, no worse for wear, is invited to join the Christmas Adventurers Club, a secret org of wealthy white supremacists; but as they consider his membership, they ask if he’s ever been involved in an interracial relationship. He denies it, of course, in a way that feels just slight off (Penn: chef’s kiss); then he uses his full power and authority to track down and remove evidence of past infidelities.

The true irrelevance of French 75 is that, with the will, which Lockjaw now has, they can be found in a moment; that they weren’t for 15 years indicates how much they didn’t matter. But it’s a horror show that Lockjaw, a mere colonel, can set all of this in motion: high schools are rousted, streets burned, lives lost and upended, all in a search for Perfidia’s daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), a high school student raised by the perpetually stoned Bob.

Got to give it to Penn: Even within the confines of his caricature, a limping, rigid man who often seems more G.I. Joe doll than human being, we still wonder what he’ll do if/when he finds her. It’s an Ethan Edwards moment, isn’t it? Hadn’t thought of that until now. He could pick her up and say, “Let’s go home, Debbie.” But that’s a heroic move and he’s not the hero here.

Who is the hero here? Not Bob. He’s a bathrobed stumblebum, unable to remember his side’s passwords and passcodes as he tries to check in and get safe. He’s Jeff Lebowski caught in the crossfire.

Willa? She’s smart, tough, knows her stuff, can deal with both generations. She’s also hostage for half the film.

I’d go with Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro), Willa’s martial arts instructor. He’s another guy we’re wondering over as Bob shows up at his door, pursued and desperate, but every step of the way Sergio is calm, purposeful and helpful. He keeps his head while the town is engulfed. He’s also, it turns out, his people’s Harriet Tubman. While tempests rage on either side, right wing pursuing left, he’s the still middle getting things done and keeping the underground railroad moving. After he’s saved Bob’s ass yet again, he’s pulled over by the cops, arms raised, bemused, doing a little dance as part of his sobriety test, admitting, with a twinkle, to having had a few beers. It’s such a great moment, it makes the return to the main storyline a disappointment. It’s the last we see him.

The stupidity and the tyranny
Afterwards I asked Patricia who scared her most, and she said the old guy with the Christmas club: one-time “Emergency!” co-star Kevin Tighe. “For me,” I said, “it was the guy who was questioning the high school kids. He seemed real.”

And he is. Per IMDb:

Lockjaw's second-in-command and chief interrogator, Danvers, is played by a non-professional actor: James 'Jim' Raterman, a security consultant and former HSI Special Agent.

Expect to see him in other shit.

During the high school interrogations, a trans friend gives up Willa’s phone, and she’s tracked and found in a nunnery, where Lockjaw hauls her into the chapel to perform a DNA test. Yep, she’s his. He’s no Ethan, of course; there’s no going home for the two of them. But he can’t bring himself to kill her, so he contacts the Native American bounty hunter, Avanti Q (Eric Schweig), who’d set the search in motion. Avanti won’t do it, either—he’s a tracker, not a killer—but takes double the money to deliver her to a right-wing militia. Except the men there hardly acknowledge Avanti’s existence except to call him “Wagon Burner”; and his mind is changed about the whole dirty enterprise. After the gunfight, only Willa lives.

Oh right. The Christmas org has done its own research on Lockjaw, doesn’t like what it’s found, and brings in the completely nondescript Tim Smith (John Hoogenakker), who talks banana pancakes with a Mrs. before being told by the higher-ups to terminate the colonel’s command. He shows up on a lonely desert road and shoots Lockjaw in the face.

Is he also pursuing Willa? Or does she simply feel pursued? Either way we get that great roller-coast shot of Southwestern hills and dales, onto which Willa leaves a gift: Avanti’s car in a blind spot for Tim to crash into. When he doesn’t know the passcode response, she kills him. She nearly does the same with Bob, since he obviously doesn’t know the response, either. But he gets her to stand down and they embrace.

I would’ve ended there. I didn’t need a bloody-faced and disfigured Lockjaw walking back to civilization and into the arms of the Christmas club, who welcome him only to gas him to death in his office. (I do like how plain the office is—the office for which Lockjaw risked everything.) Then we get Bob and Willa in the aftermath. She’s off to a protest in Oakland, he’s trying to figure out smartphones. But isn’t he still a wanted criminal? So isn’t the smartphone dangerous? Or does he no longer feel pursued with Lockjaw dead?

I’ve often complained that PTA’s movies aren’t focused enough, and this one finally is … and I liked it less. So I guess that was never the problem. Plus I’ve reached the end of this review and—save for Benicio—I’m not gungho to revisit “One Battle.” Sorry.

But I am gungho to rewatch PTA. His movies often feature conflicts between two men: a stern one tending toward tyranny and a lost one tending toward chaos.

• Daniel Plainview vs. Paul Sunday
• Lancaster Dodd vs. Freddie Quell
• Bigfoot vs. Doc Sportello
• Col. Steven J. Lockjaw vs. Bob

In most, the two men share the screen. Not here. I think it’s just the one scene? In the supermarket? Question: In the other movies, is there a middle-ground figure, the space occupied by St. Carlos? Or did Benicio carve that out for himself?

I’ll give “One Battle” this: It tackles the horror and absurdity of the world today—no mean feat. It's also comforting to know that, amid the stupidity and the tyranny, there may be a calm man somewhere, doing a bemused jig in the police lights, getting shit done.

FURTHER READING:

• My nephew Ryan's review on Letterboxd.

DiCaprio as Bob: lost, tending toward chaos.

The Dodgers mob Yamamoto, the first pitcher to win three games in a World Series since Randy Johnson in 2001.

At the start of this World Series, I had a hail mary of a wish: If at all possible, I wanted Toronto Blue Jays fans to feel some of the heartache that Seattle Mariners fans had felt after the Blue Jays came back from a 3-1 deficit in Game 7 to take the ALCS from us.

I guess I got my wish.

Seriously, I can't remember a moment where the universe said so profusely to me, “Here. Here's exactly what you want. In fact, here's more of what you want.” To the point where I was like, “Yeah, no, that's plenty. No, I'm good. No, please, stop.” I just couldn't have imagined a better Game 7. 

OK, I could have. Shohei Ohtani, as pitcher, looked shakey from the outset, and that's not something I want. Like almost everyone, I love Shohei. But it did set up the rest. You needed the Blue Jays ahead early to make the rest of it work.

As hitter, Shohei actually led off the game with a single but was stranded. Ditto George Springer in the bottom half. But in the second, the BJs sent six men to the plate and would've scored, but lead runner Bo Bichette was running on one leg, and he couldn't score from second on a two-out single by Ernie Clement—who has been Ernie Clemente this postseason. He actually set the record for most hits in the postseason with 30. Yeah, there are more games in the postseason now, but dude's been redhot for an entire month. In the ALDS against the Yankees he hit .643, against the Mariners in the ALCS, .321, and in these World Series .387. This for a career .260/.295(!!!)/.376 hitter. He got hotter than he's ever been at the exact right moment. 

Hell, the whole of the Blue Jays did. Six of their starting nine hit over .300 for the Series. The Dodgers? One. Shohei. Almost everyone on the Blue Jays hit better, and much, much better, than they had during the regular season.

You almost want to test their drinking water. You want to see if Springer brought over any trash-can lids from Houston.

And they still lost! That's the amazing thing. To this team, who hit way, way worse than they did during the regular season:

You could probably win some bar bets by asking fans to name the top three hitters by batting average on the Dodgers for this Series. Top two, people would get. But Teoscar? He was third best? The last two games he just seemed lost at the plate. Whatever the opposite of the eye of the Tiger is, he had it. He had as much confidence at the plate as me asking Margot Robbie out on a date.

In the third, BJs broke through in a big way. Another Springer single, sac bunt by Lukes leading to the inevitable IBB to Vladdy Jr.; and then the first pitch to Bo Bichette was launched. And Rogers Centre, already nuts, went certifiable. 

Top 4, defense saved the BJs: double, single, pop out by poor Mookie, walk to load the bases, and then Teoscar, poor Teoscar, finally came through with a line drive up the middle. Daulton Varsho, whose name sounds like a James Spader character in a 1980s John Hughes movie, or the name I'd come up with in a Creative Writing 101 class (also in the 1980s), made a Superman catch to prevent multiple runs, but Will Smith still tagged up from third. Then Tommy Edman ripped one to right, a potentially bases-clearing double/triple in the corner, but it never made it out of the infield. Vladdy did his own Superman bit. 3-1, Jays.

Oh right, in the bottom half, we nearly had that benches-clearing brawl. God, almost forgot that. With one out, Justin Wrobleski, who looks like Timothee Chalamet's less-handsome brother but throws 100 and totally saved the Dodgers' ass this World Series, hit No. 9 hitter Andres Giminez on a 2-2 pitch. And Giminez had words. And Wrobs had words back, which the slow-mo cam captured perfectly: Fuck you, motherfucker. Benches cleared but heads prevailed. Has their ever been a knock-down-drag-out in a Game 7? Curious.

Dodgers again got two on with less than two out in the 5th but couldn't score. But in the 6th: walk, single, fielder's choice, sac fly, 3-2. BJs immediately wagged their finger, “Uh uh,” as Ernie Clemente led off the bottom half with a single, stole second, and came home on Giminez's double. Two-run cushion again.

We had friends over, Jeff and Sullivan, and I was in the kitchen tidying up when Jeff shouted, “Muncy homer!” in the 8th. One-run cushion again. But the faithful at Rogers remained faithful. I'm sure there were people with my sensibilities, thinking “This is too fucking close,” but the fans the TV kept showing kept roaring their approval. They looked happy and pumped. BTW, did anyone else keep seeing the Bobby Ayala-looking dude sitting behind homeplate in a pink cap, no expression on his face? Once I saw him I couldn't unsee him. Everyone's long wondered where Bobby Ayala is. Well, there he is! On international TV!

BJs almost got that one back: Ernie Clement kept being Clemente and led off the 8th with a double but was stranded at the drive-in.

To the ninth! Muncy's homer, Jeff immediately calculated, meant Shohei would bat in the 9th. He was due up third. Jeff was rooting for the Jays, like a normal person, but not emphatically, and he wanted the drama of a Shohei at-bat. Meanwhile, I was foreseeing an end like the Mariners ALCS Game 7 end against the Jays: the 8-9-1 hitters, with 1, the franchise guy, Mr. Everything, Julio Rodriguez in our case, striking out to end the season. I didn't want that fate for Shohei, too. And Shohei didn't suffer that fate. Because by the time he came up and flied out it was 4-4. With all eyes on Shohei in the on-deck circle, including, maybe BJs closer Jeff Hoffman's, weak-hitting middle-infielder Miguel Rojas took a 3-2 hanging slider and hit it harder than he's ever hit a ball in the Majors, per Joe Posnanski, despositing it in the left-field bleachers and taking all the oxygen out of Rogers Centre. Even I was stunned. I literally gasped. And I'm someone who, during the ALCS, had texted my friend Dave B. RE: postseason heroics: “It's always who you least expect.” It's the Mark Lemkes of the world, the Ernie Clements, and now the Miguel Rojases. Why did I gasp? Because I've been watching World Serieses for 50+ years and ... had I ever seen anything like that? A homerun in the 9th inning of Game 7 to tie it up?

The stats people soon let me know: No, I'd never seen something like that.

Players to hit game-tying or -winning home runs in the 9th inning of the 7th game of the World Series:

• Bill Mazeroski, 1960
• Miguel Rojas, 2025

Beware the light-hitting middle infielder. 

Even so, the BJs had a great chance of wiping that away in the bottom half. Vladdy flied out to deep, deep center (you could tell from his body language, nah); but then Bo Bichette singled, and now they had to pinch-run for him. He represented the season. After a walk, Blake Snell, who was pitching on fumes, was relieved for Game 2 and Game 6 hero Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who was also pitching on fumes, and who promptly hit catcher and life-sized Weeble Alejandro Kirk to load the bases and bring the game- Series- and season-winning run 90 feet away with just one out. Varsho up, Dodgers playing in. Post-HBP, Roberts subbed in Andy Pages in center. Roberts has his issues, but that might've been a season-saving managerial move.

First, though, Daulton Varsho hit a grounder to—who else?—Miguel Rojas, who stabbed it off-balance, steadied himself, and threw a strike home to nab pinch-runner Isiah Kiner-Falefa by inches. Much has been said, some by Joey Poz, that IKF wasn't leading off far enough, but IKF has said that's how he was instructed to lead off, which makes sense. The BJs lost Game 6 on an inning-ending DP because Addison Barger got doubled-up at second and the BJs didn't want that again. Replays showed he was out ... or was he? Did Will Smith's  cleat leave homeplate early? Nearly? No. I don't think the BJs even challenged.

“That'd be an awful way for the Series to end, right?” I said. “With a replay challenge?”

Jeff agreed. We did a lot of that talk. The season should not end on a bases-loaded walk. The season should not end on an overturned replay challenge. And while we were talking, Ernie Roberto Clemente, who looks like the bastard child of 2003-era Aaron Boone, crushed one to left field. Kiké went back and back and back, and was arching his head almost like Willie Mays, when, stage right, Andy Pages entered, crashing into him and nonchalantly snagging the ball to end the inning. Holy shit.

And on to extras. Could it be anything else with this Series?

In the 10th the Dodgers loaded the bases with one out. 6-2 to nab Mookie at the plate, 3-1 to nab a sprawling Kiké at first. BJs went 1-2-3, with George Springer finally looking as tired as he ought to look. And then all eyes on Shohei again. And again it was a guy on the other side of him, this time Will Smith, now batting second instead of the slumping Mookie (another good Roberts move), who took a hanging Shane Bieber slider deep to left to put the Dodgers on top for the first time in the game.

Right, but who was leading off for the Jays? Vladdy Jr., of course. Except he looked out of sorts, not his confident self, and I thought he was done, too. Then he rifled a double into the left-field corner and did his hand-clapping exhortation from second base to pump up his team. He was doing David Ortiz-style work here; he would not go gentle into that good night. Then he was sac bunted to third. Smart? Not? It was a beautiful bunt by IKF, perfect, really, since it took a nice play from Yamamoto to nab him. And the tying run was now 90 feet away.

Then four straight balls to Addison Barger. Purposeful? Maybe. Dude was hitting .500 and it set up the DP. And the next batter, Kirk, was an ideal DP batter. He was also an ideal double-in-the-gap batter. Anything might happen. But anything didn't. 0-2 and he grounded the ball to Mookie who executed a beautifully graceful 6-3 double play, and the game, the season, and the Series, belonged to the Dodgers. They're the first non-Yankees back-to-back World Series winners since ... of course ... the Toronto Blue Jays: 1992-93. And they're the first in the NL since the Big Red Machine in 1975-76. The Dodgers just flipped the Reds' script. Reds had a World Series for the ages in '75 and then blew out the Yankees in '76. Dodgers blew out the Yankees in '24 and had a World Series for the ages in '25.

Mid-game, when all was well at Rogers Centre, I was thinking the Blue Jays fans who came down from Canada and took over Mariners Park for 3-4 games a season would be insufferable next year, and the year after, and the year after. They had their ring. They had their bragging rights. They would never go away. Now? After being two outs away? After being two inches away? After the collision in left field and the DP to end all DPs? After all that, I imagine they'll be just like the rest of us: sufferable.

A post, from earlier in the week, from the once and future Pope Hat, Ken White, a criminal defense attorney out of LA:

This was in response to Vice President J.D. Vance's comments on how nobody wants foreign-speaking neighbors. 

Vance agreed with host Miranda Divine when she said it “creates division and hatred” for people of other cultural backgrounds to move into a neighborhood after he gave an example in which “20 people” price out U.S. citizens by moving into “a three-bedroom house.”

“Their next-door neighbors are going to say, 'Wait a second, what is going on here? I don't know these people. They don't speak the same language that I do,'” Vance said.

What nice people. 

Meanwhile, last night, Donald Trump held a Gatsby-style Roaring '20s Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago even as Americans are starving, because he doesn't think starvation, due to curtailing SNAP benefits/food stamps as a result of the ongoing government shutdown, is a situation worthy of using our emergency funds. Starvation does not mean emergency to Trump. If the right people are starving.

“A little party killed nobody” was the official response to criticism. It's the new “Let them eat cake”; Trump's version is “Let ME eat cake.”

• Part I: Handsy Patron at Black Joe’s (Uncredited)
• Part II: Clearly Visible James Cagney

I’m not the only one who’s noticed that the clearly visible James Cagney isn’t clearly visible in “Mutiny on the Bounty.” More and more people have questioned it. One guy decided to do his own deep dive and claims to have found Cagney, less than clearly visible, sure, and not exactly off Catalina Island, per the original story, but 1) on the deck of the Bounty in port; and 2) in a tavern. He posted his detective work to his YouTube channel, circling the find(s): 

On the Bounty

During a transition scene at a pub

I assume he’s well-meaning, but damn I miss gatekeepers.

A suspect James Cagney credit, corrected or left to linger, doesn’t matter in the long run, but it is indicative of a larger problem. We’ve created two repositories of facts, pre- and post-internet, and the latter has the field and is winning the day. Until the internet came around, nobody claimed that James Cagney was in “Mutiny on the Bounty,” but that mistake, or joke, or lark, has persisted because people want things to be true and entities like IMDb can’t be bothered to fact-check. Essentially, the one thing I want for IMDb—to be a solid repository of film history—isn’t what it wants for itself.

Soon, of course, it won’t be pre- and post-internet facts we’re wrangling over but pre- and post-AI facts. Reality will become more and more malleable. The grifters who pulled off this one will digitally insert Cagney into clips, and entities like IMDb will go along because there’s no money in correcting it; and maybe because IMDb will be all AI, too. Maybe it already is.

When the internet age began in the mid-90s, writers and editors like myself realized, with something like joy, that mistakes that lived on in print didn’t have to live on in this other realm. Mistakes could be corrected! It took longer to realize there was another path.

Joey Poz has his usual fun breakdown of the World Series, this one Game 2, the Yoshinobu “Start Me Up” Yamamoto complete game, and it's good, and he mentions the usual stats—first WS CG since 2015, first back-to-back CGs in post since Schilling in 2001—but bypasses my favorite stat that I saw via Sarah Langs. Yamamoto retired the last 20 batters he faced; who was the last pitcher in the World Series to do that? Answer (which my father figured out in a second): Don Larsen, 1956. His perfect game. And before him? Grover Cleveland Alexander in 1926. And before him? Dutch Leonard in 1915. (No, not that Dutch Leonard, the other one.) In other words, it's only been done three previous times, and none during my lifetime, and I'm about to turn 63. Now that's a throwback. 

So that's fun ... but then it gets better. Because Poz slams MLB for its mini Jonas Bros. concert in the 5th inning during the “stand up to cancer” moment. I didn't watch the game so wasn't annoyed the way Poz was; but what I liked was how this rant veered into one about something Tim and I have been wondering over:

What's astonishing to me is not that MLB will sell its soul for money. That's been true since the dawn of time. No, the astonishing part is how CHEAP it is to buy MLB's soul. I mean, every single batting helmet has the word STRAUSS written across it (on both sides!). What is Strauss? It is, get this, a EUROPEAN WORKWEAR company. Yeah. They sell work pants and stuff.

This is what they have on their homepage.

“A celebration of the work that goes into America's pastime — and those who make it happen?” What the heck does that mean? What AI bot wrote that line? I don't have anything against Strauss — I'd never even heard of Strauss (which I guess was the point) — but, seriously, how much money did they spend to get their name on EVERY SINGLE MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL HELMET FOR FOUR YEARS?

And, whatever they spent, how was that enough money? ...

It breaks my heart to see MLB constantly rifling through couches in search of nickels. Come on, Rob, baseball is the national pastime. It says so right on the Strauss homepage.

Thus endeth the sermon.

No one will listen, of course, other than those of us in the choir, so might as well have fun with it. 

I don't know. Maybe “Charlie's Angels”? That's the point, right? Who's Jaclyn Smith? Oh, she was one of the first Charlie's Angels. That kind of thing. 

Certainly that thought process is true on Wikipedia:

• Lucy Kate Jackson (born October 29, 1948) is an American actress and television producer, known for her television roles as Sabrina Duncan in the series Charlie's Angels (1976–1979) and Amanda King in the series Scarecrow and Mrs. King (1983–1987).
• Farrah Fawcett (born Mary Ferrah Leni Fawcett; February 2, 1947 – June 25, 2009) was an American actress. A four-time Primetime Emmy Award nominee and six-time Golden Globe Award nominee, Fawcett rose to international fame when she played a starring role in the first season of the television series Charlie's Angels.
• Jaclyn Smith (born October 26, 1945) is an American actress. She is most notable for her role as Kelly Garrett in the television series Charlie's Angels (1976–1981).
• Cheryl Ladd (born Cheryl Jean Stoppelmoor; July 12, 1951) is an American actress, singer, and author best known for her role as Kris Munroe in the ABC television series Charlie's Angels.

Seems like we have concensus!

Oh wait, IMDb's “Known For” algorithm in the back of the room has something to say? Of course it does. 

Kate Jackson's makes sense, Farrah's no, Jaclyn's least of all, Cheryl's I already complained about.

Seriously, is there anybody at IMDb not embarrassed about all of this? They've been gaslighting American culture and history for almost 10 years now. And for what? Because they don't want to update their algorithm? Because they don't want to work hard? What is it? Tell us. Maybe we can help you. Help us help you. 

See Part I: “Handsy Patron at Black Joe’s (Uncredited).”

After correcting the “Singing Fool” credit on James Cagney’s IMDb page, I realized there was another of his credits that never seemed right to me. In 1935, so IMDb and Wikipedia claimed, Cagney appeared uncredited in MGM’s “Mutiny on the Bounty,” starring Clark Gable. Here’s the story per IMDb’s trivia section:

Actor James Cagney was sailing his boat off of Catalina Island, California, and passed the area where the film’s crew was shooting aboard the Bounty replica. Cagney called to director Frank Lloyd, an old friend, and said that he was on vacation and could use a couple of bucks, and asked if Lloyd had any work for him. Lloyd put him into a sailor's uniform, and Cagney spent the rest of the day as an extra playing a sailor aboard the Bounty. Cagney is clearly visible near the beginning of the movie. 

During my initial run through Cagney films, I’d watched “Mutiny,” scanning the screen for the “clearly visible” Cagney. Couldn’t find him. Now I wondered: Had I missed him or was he just not there? Was the story bullshit? So I watched the movie again, stopping and scanning, stopping and scanning. There are a lot of extras in a lot of striped shirts. None of them are clearly visible James Cagney. Or even remotely visible James Cagney.

And then I realized I didn’t even have to do that. What’s the internet but the repository of our collective knowledge and/or bunk? If Cagney were “clearly visible” near the beginning of the movie, someone, somewhere, at some point, would’ve taken a screenshot and posted it. So I did an image search and combed through the options. There’s a lot of bare-chested men, a lot of sailors in striped shirts. None are clearly James Cagney:

Some, however, are clearly Eddie Quillan.

If you squint, you might mistake Quillan—a future Ellery Queen and an early television staple—for Cagney. He’s about the same height (5’6” to Cagney’s 5’5”), and he can do a bit of a sneer, but he’s younger and thinner, with a weaker jaw and less of a presence. So maybe early in the internet age, someone mistook Quillan for Cagney. Not sure who came up with the story of Cagney sailing his boat off Catalina Island and jumping on board for a laugh, but again, it’s not in his memoir, it’s not in his authorized biography, it’s not mentioned anywhere except online—the repository of our collective knowledge and/or bunk.

One of the many places it isn’t mentioned online? The American Film Institute Catalog, which gives us credits, synopses, production details, and background history for every American-made movie. No Cagney is listed under “Mutiny” and no “Mutiny” is mentioned for Cagney. But of course AFI’s site doesn’t rely on user-generated data like IMDb and Wikipedia. It relies on … what are they called again? … experts.

Per AFI, the “Mutiny” story is technically possible. These are the production dates for “Mutiny”:

• May 8 to Sept. 11, 1935

1935 was a busy year for Cagney but he might have been able to fit another day of filming into his busy schedule:

• “G-Men”: Feb. 20 to April 1
• “The Irish in Us”: begun May 25
• “Frisco Kid”: begun August 7
• “Ceiling Zero”: ended Nov. 2

If we had the ending dates for “Irish” and “Frisco,” we might know definitively.

But the more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that it was all bullshit. The Catalina Island story would have us believe that even with this packed schedule, Cagney (called “The Faraway Fella” by good friend Pat O’Brien for his tendency to disappear from Hollywood) would use a rare day off to call out to “old friend” Frank Lloyd (whom Cagney never mentions in his memoir), and join an MGM film (when he was under contract to Warner Bros.) as an extra (when he was someone who looked out for extras on his own sets rather than take their spots).

Nothing fit.

Given all this, and hot off my “Singing Fool” success, I tried to get rid of the “Bounty” credit from Cagney’s IMDb page, too. This time, IMDb's verdict went against me:

We have been unable to verify your contribution. … you now have an option to provide evidence with your additions, as well as corrections or deletions.

I stared at that sentence for a long while. Was IMDb asking me to provide evidence for a thing that didn’t exist? To prove a negative? If this were a conversation, I’d respond, “Just show me that it exists. Because I don’t know how to show you all the ways a thing doesn’t exist.” But as we all know, it’s not a conversation. 

I tried one more time. No soap.

Next: Correcting IMDb Part III: Missing Gatekeepers

Busy boy

Hardly the due up that spells doom, but the 7th inning of the 7th game proved unlucky for the Mariners.

A common refrain for me since 2019 has been: Not only were the Seattle Mariners the only team to not win a pennant, they were never within one game of winning the pennant. The best they'd ever done is win two games in the ALCS. They'd done it twice: 1995 and 2000. That was it.

Well, now we've gotten closer, but I don't know it makes me happier.

The M's finally won that elusive third ALCS game of the Friday night behind Eugenio Suarez's opposite-field grand slam in the 8th inning, to go up three games to two against the Blue Jays, with two to play in Toronto. We just needed to win one of those. 

Sunday, BJs took the early lead, padded it, we had bases-loaded chances that went nowhere, etc. 

Last night, we had a better chance. There was a fire there. Julio seemed fired up from the get-go and led off with a double and scored on Josh Naylor's single to right. They actually tried to get Julio at the plate. I thought that was funny. No way Julio not scoring on that. Next time up, Julio homered to left. Both hits were off BJs starter Shane Bieber, whose splitter wasn't splitting. Meanwhile, George Kirby was doing OK. Gave up a run in the first, allowed a two-out infield single in the second, 1-2-3 in the third, allowed a two-out single in the fourth.

I began this postseason admitting that I didn't know the 2025 Mariners well enough to question the moves of manager Dan Wilson. I feel that's no longer the case. Some of my question marks:

• I didn't get J.P.'s sac bunt with two on and nobody out in the 2nd. That's giving them an out with Leo Rivas and Victor Robles due up, and neither was hitting well. And yes, nobody budged. The ball wasn't even hit out of the infield: K, 1-3. Inning over.
• Didn't get pulling Kirby after 4. He seemed to be settling down. I guess it was the “third time through the lineup” argument, but, c'mon, by now everyone's seen everybody. They were all old pals. No one had any secrets. 
• I particularly didn't get that move if your only option between Bryan Woo and Andres Munoz was Eduard Bazardo. Because (I guess) you don't trust Gabe Speier and because you spent Matt Brash the day before. And why did you spend Matt Brash the day before in a losing effort?

All of that I don't get.

Admittedly, Dan made a bunch of moves that I also questioned that turned out OK. But these moves didn't.

In the bottom of the eighth, now down 4-3 of Whatshisface's three-run homer, I kept thinking, “Just get somebody on, just get somebody on, and if there are no DPs, we get both Julio and Cal in the ninth.” We didn't get anybody on. We also don't have much on the bench to pinch-hit. In the ninth, Rivas batted and struck out swinging. Dominic Canzone and his .100 postseason batting average hit for Victor Robles: K swinging. Then it was Julio, the face of the franchise, the man who had started the night so well, who had scored two of our three runs and driven in another, who had been fired up from the get-go. And on a 3-2 pitch he did what he often does: swings at the breaking ball low and away. And there went the at-bat, the game, the season. Julio didn't deserve that. He didn't deserve to be the one to end the season with Cal on-deck. But as the man said, deserve's got nothing to do with it.

We got close. Closer than this franchise has ever been. Maybe someday that fact will make me happier.