Lee Lowenfish

NYC has been blessed with spring-like and even summery weather since late August.  It has made the the end of Daylight Saving Time less somber. I've made it a point to be outside as much as possible in the waning daylight - walking and reading on park benches often up to dusk.

 

Yet drought is now becoming a problem around here. Fires have raged this weekend in area parks, probably caused by a toxic combination of heat and dry leaves. Nothing is ever simple in life, is it? 

 

The election results on Nov 5 were not to my liking, in the understatement of the year, but it didn't really surprise me.  Kamala Harris turned out to be a better candidate and a more appealing personality than I expected, but hers was a hasty entry into the race after President Biden succumbed to pressure and withdrew from the race after a disastrous June 27 TV debate against Donald Trump.

 

It happened on my 82nd birthday and I was eating a great Cuban meal at Amor Cubano on 3rd Avenue and 111th Street. I wasn't gonna be bothered with the kind of TV situation that Trump knew how to manipulate. I sensed too that incumbent administrations would always take the blame for what happens on their watch.  (I don't think the government of any country where there was some kind of legitimate election since the pandemic has survived.)    

 

The role of television, and now even more perniciously the instant streaming services readily available online, is more insidious than ever. I picked a good movie to watch on TCM the Friday before the election, Hal Ashby's "Being There" (1979). 

 

It really holds up well with Peter Sellers as the illiterate gardener whose emotions are entirely dictated by what he sees on TV.  In one particularly memorable scene, Sellers reacts to Shirley MacLaine's amorous advances only when he sees a couple kissing on TV. Sellers delivers a bravura performance with some fine work by Melvyn Douglas as the dying chairman of a big corporation, MacLaine as his wife, and Jack Warden as the befuddled President of the United States. 

 

Speaking of TCM, on Tues Nov 12 there is quite a lineup of sports-themed films beginning early in the morning with:

6A "Crazylegs" (1954) starring football star Elroy "Crazylegs" Hirsch playing himself.  For those of you moaning and groaning about the new freedoms for college football players, I'm glad I learned that the great Wisconsin Badger All-American also played for U of Michigan when he was stationed nearby during WW2 

 

730A "Viva Knievel" (1977) - remember him? the crazy motorcycle rider specializing in stunts

 

*930A  "Speedy" (1928) Harold Lloyd's memorable silent film that includes Babe Ruth suffering thru a cab ride to Yankee Stadium by adoring Lloyd 

 

11A  "The Jackie Robinson Story" (1950) with JR playing himself and young Ruby Dee as his wife Rachel

 

1230P "The Greatest" (1977) a dramatization of Muhammad Ali's fight against his refusal to fight in Vietnam - starring Ernest Borgnine  

 

(*430P  "A Hard Day's Night" (1964)  Not a sports film but the Beatles' first film under Richard Lester's artful direction of a more hopeful age)

 

8P "Strangers On A Train" (1951) a Hitchcock classic with some wonderful photography at the Forest Hills tennis center; Part of Ruth Roman Tuesday

nights in November with Farley Granger as the tennis pro trying to avoid Robert Walker's eerie stranger 

 

On the college basketball scene, I am happy to report good news in the early going for Columbia basketball, both women's and men's teams.They are undefeated in the early going. There will be plenty of home action this month, esp. for the men, at the Levien Gym on Broadway just east of SE of 120th Street.

 

The women, expected to contend for another Ivy League title, routed Stony Brook in the home opener and won an overtime thriller at Providence, their 9th win over a Big East team in the last 10 tries.  Next home games are :

M Nov 11 7P against powerhouse Florida Gulf Coast U.

W Nov 20 7P against Pacific of Stockton, CA where Eddie LeBaron played QB and Janet Leigh attended

And mark down Sa Jan 20 2P for Princeton's visit to Levien.  

 

The Columbia Lions men upset Villanova last week on the road.  They are an experienced team with no defections for transfer portals and the like.

Tu Nov 12 7P Lehigh

Sa Nov 16 Mercyhurst 12N

W Nov 20 at LIU Brooklyn 7P

Sa Nov 23 7P Stony Brook

M Nov 25 New Hampshire 7P 

 

Down at the NYU gym at Mercer and Bleecker Sts, the defending Division III champion women Violets play:

Fri Nov 15 6P Kean of NJ

Su Nov 24 2P Colby from Maine

 

The men's home opener won't be until Dec 3.   

 

Wisconsin, my graduate alma mater, is also off to undefeated start against middling competition.  They were hit hard by losses in the transfer portal, but

they have enough veterans back and newcomers to perhaps make life interesting this season.  

 

On the other hand, the second season of football coach Luke Fickell has hit major bumps in the road.  At 5-4, with Oregon coming up this Sat Nov 16, they

are not assured of even a minor bowl appearance.  Tearing down a good but not great program under Wisconsin native coach Paul Chryst doesn't look like

a good decision right now.  I'm glad they have kept for the time being at least another local basketball stalwart, longtime coach Greg Gard.    

 

Next time there may be news of baseball free agent signings though it looks like super-agent Scott Boras will string out his clients into the holiday season.

It didn't work out well for many of his players last off-season but we'll see.  I don't like the incessant talk of money so won't go into it here.

 

Instead, I will be relying on the saving grace of humor in the four years ahead - while keeping alive my love of good sports and finding where I can fascinating connections about people. 

 

Eg. Just found out ago moments ago from reading a Guardian.com post, that Susie Wiles, 67, Trump's campaign manager who will be his White House chief of staff, is the daughter of Pat Summerrall, former New York Giant place-kicker in their glory days and later the understated effective sidekick to John Madden on NFL broadcasts.

 

For now, always remember:  Take it easy but take it, and Stay Positive, Test Negative.  

 

 

 

 

A sloppy but often dramatic World Series came to a quiet close late on Wed night Oct 30 when oft-injured starting RHP Walker Buehler came out of the Dodger bullpen to earn a 1-2-3 save in a come-from-behind 7-6 victory that enabled LAD to win their seventh World Series championship since they abandoned Brooklyn 67 years ago - a mere two years after Brooklyn won its only WS in 1955. 

 

Game 1 this year, won on Freddie Freeman's historic walkoff grand slam, and the concluding Game 5 will go down as classics in World Series history. 

 

Yankee defense had been erratic all year.  It bit them fatally in the top of the 5th inning of Game 5 when two errors of commission and one unrecorded error of omission set the stage for the sudden evaporation of the Yanks' early 5-0 lead. It had been built on 3 HRs - the first by slumping Aaron Judge - and one sweet manufactured run not often seen in the Bronx this year - a double, 4-3 groundout getting runner to third, and SF. 

  

Yankee ace Gerrit Cole had a no-hitter going into the top of the 5th when the perennial pest Enrique "Kike" Hernandez smashed a solid single. Then Tommy Edman stroked a medium-hard-hit line drive to center field that went off Judge's glove for an error, his first of the season and a very rare one in his career.

 

Perhaps Judge was distracted by Kike running on the pitch despite his team trailing by five runs. Just an inning or two earlier, Judge had made a sensational running catch to rob Series MVP Freddie Freeman of his fifth homer in the Series.  

 

With two on and none out, Kike hustled to third on catcher Will Smith's grounder to shortstop Anthony Volpe. The young veteran short-hopped his throw to inexperienced third baseman Jazz Chisholm who couldn't pick it up for a force play. 

 

With bases loaded, Cole bore down and struck out both second baseman Gavin Lux and DH Shohei Ohtani. The amazingly talented Japanese star most likely will need shoulder surgery after his ill-advised poor slide into second base on an unnecessary stolen base attempt earlier in the Series. 

 

Up stepped Mookie Betts who had endured his own batting slump after returning from two months on the injured list after a broken hand caused by a HBP. 

He hit a spinning grounder to the right of first baseman Anthony Rizzo who is a shell of himself from injuries and age.  He didn't move quickly towards first base and Cole was late breaking, a cardial sin for any pitcher.  As he almost always does, Betts hustled down the first base line and easily beat Cole to the bag as a run scored.

 

You don't give a plucky and talented team like the Dodgers three extra outs.  Though he got ahead in the count, Cole gave up a two-run single to Freeman and then a two-run double to Teoscar Hernandez that tied the score. 

 

The Yankees did regain the lead in the bottom of the 6th on two walks, a HBP, and a sacrifice fly by catcher Austin Wells. But in the climactic top of the 8th, two singles, the first by who else? Kike Hernandez; a catcher's interference call against Wells; and two sacrifice flies, the last by Mookie Betts, produced the winning margin. 

 

It's a somewhat interesting factoid that the last out of the 2024 season was made when Buehler struck out Alex Verdugo, the last player in the majors from the trade that brought Betts to LA from Boston.  Most Boston fans that I know still have a warm place in their hearts for Betts who emerged in the Boston system as a second baseman, switched ro right field, and then started this season as the Dodger shortstop before his injury.

 

When he talks to the press, Mookie exudes modesty and even vulnerability.  He credited a chat with Freeman that relaxed him before his game-winning RBI.

Aaron Judge seems like another stand-up fellow when talking to the press.  He was quite honest - perhaps too honest - about how his post-season failures were beginning to gnaw at him. He also took the blame for his rare error that opened the floodgates. 

 

You may be wondering what the great W.R.Burnett has to do with all of this.  Well, growing up in the Midwest in the first decades of the twentieth century, he evidently became a baseball fan.  Resettling in LA in 1929 for the rest of his life after his novel LITTLE CAESAR became a sensation and adapted for the screen, the enormously prolific Burnett only wrote one book on baseball, THE ROAR OF THE CROWD: CONVERSATIONS WITH AN EX-BIG LEAGUER (NY, Clarkson Potter, 1964).

 

Burnett never was a baseball player - he did briefly play freshman football at Ohio State where his grandfather had been the mayor of Columbus and his father had worked closely with Governor James Cox, who lost the 1920 Presidential election to Warren Harding. 

 

But W. R. (William Riley) understood how hard a game baseball was to play.  Check out this passage from ROAR OF THE GAME on slumps that could give Mookie and Judge and any struggling hitter some solace:  "[There is] just no explanation for a slump and no ready remedy."  Except, he insisted, to battle through it with the optimistic spirit which is 75% of baseball:  "There is only one attitude to take in the batter's box - the pitcher is a bum, and you're going to murder him" (pp. 93-94)

 

You get a chance to see one of Burnett's stories on Noir Alley this Sunday Nov 3 at 1230A and 10A - "Nobody Lives Forever" (1946) starring John Garfield with

Geraldine Fitzgerald and Faye Emerson as the women in this handsome gangster's life that he tries to balance with predictably disastrous results.  The absorbing novel of the same name was republished earlier this year by Stark House Noir Classics in Eureka, California. 

 

Except for "Million Dollar Mermaid" (1952) with Esther Williams playing champion swimmner Annette Kellerman on W aft Nov 6 215P EDT, there are no movies with sports content to list. But here are some of the other memorable ones coming up shortly.

 

F Nov 1 8P "Being There" (1979) Peter Sellers as gardener who runs for President.  With Shirley MacLaine and Melvyn Douglas

 

Sa Nov 2 8P "A Face In The Crowd" (1957) Andy Griffith's powerhouse performance as guitar-slinging Lonesome Rhodes with Patricia Neal/Walter Matthau/Lee Remick in her debut

  followed at 10P by Billy Wilder's acerbic "Ace In The Hole" (1951) with Kirk Douglas as cynical reporter ready to milk a tragedy for all its worth

 

Su Nov 3p after the repeat performance of "Nobody Lives Forever" get this lineup:

12N  a classic Hitchcock: "North by Northwest" (1957) Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason

230P Bette Davis in "Payment on Demand" (1951)

415P Joan Crawford in "The Damned Don't Cry" (1950)

6P a classic Orson Welles: "Touch of Evil" (1958) with Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh

and then for something shall we say slightly mellower, 2 with Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo:

8P "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (1947) also with Boris Karloff

10P "A Song Is Born" (1948) also with Benny Goodman and his musicians - (revival of the better "Ball of Fire" (1941) with Gary Cooper/Barbara Stanwyck)

 

M Nov 4 two classic John Cassavetes/Gena Rowlands films

8P "Woman Under The Influence" (1974)

10P "Gloria" (1980)

 

A belated congrats to the NY Liberty who won their first WNBA title with a thrilling, nay heart-stopping, overtime victory over the Minnesota Lynx. Kudos to Liberty coach Australian-born Sandy Brondello and also to outstanding Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve who led the USA National Team to its stirring gold medal win over France in the Paris 2024 Olympics (corrections from an early edition of this blog). 

 

That's all for now.  Regardless of how the election turns out, I'll be back on this post before too long.  In the meantime, always remember:

Stay positive, test negative; Take it easy but take it; and make sure to turn your clocks back by 2AM on Sun Nov 3.