Lee Lowenfish

George Washington's 315th birthday - Sat February 22 2025 - will long live in the memory of this fan of Wisconsin men's and Columbia women's basketball.  The agony occurred in midday when on FOX national TV, the Badgers, ahead by 12 at the half and 15 midway through the second half, allowed Oregon's Ducks to go on a 13-2 run in the last six minutes of regulation and win in overtime, 77-73.  Oregon coach Dana Altman's suffocating defense forced the Badgers into a season-high 17 turnovers, many of them late in the game. Center Nate Bittle, back from two seaons of injury, led Oregon's offense with help from the Villanova transfer guard TJ Bamba (who was born in the Bronx but went to HS in Denver) and sophomore forward Kwame Evans, a fearless lefty who was born in Baltimore. 

Only positive thing about this loss is that it came in February not in March.  Having followed Wisconsin basketball intently for over a half-century, it seems we never play well when our national rankings increase.  We still have scoring machine John Tonge, the 6th-year transfer portal surprise, but only one real point guard, the undersized 6 0" senior Kamari McGee who doesn't even start but is one of the team leaders.  When we had the big lead on Saturday, I thought about how much McGee has meant off the bench and how his shot-making has improved.  Same story for senior reserve forward Carter Gilmore who even saved the Iowa game on the road with career-high offense. I can always root for sophomore big man Nolan Winter - great name for a Wisconsin player! - who hit a big 3 in OT to give us a brief lead against Oregon.  

Fans will blame inconsistent longtime center Steven Crowl for his six turnovers on Sat. and sophomore guard John Blackwell for his crucial late game booboos. And the haters of coach Greg Gard, silent during our winning streaks this season, always emerge after any loss. Yet the schedule ahead is not too bad for Badgers if they learn the lesson that Yogi Berra's line applies to basketball, too - it ain't over until it's over and you must play hard all game.

Up next is Washington at home on Tues Feb 25 9P EST on extra-priced Peacock. Then a biggie at Big 10 leader Michigan State on CBS next Sun Mar 2 at 130P. Followed by Wed Mar 5 arch-rival Minnesota at home on Big Ten Network at 830P and Penn State at home Sa Mar 8 1P BTN (all times EST).  The following week is the annual Big Ten tournament in Indianapolis.  This year the three teams with the worst record in the expanded Big 18 are sent home early so Washington, Penn State, and Minnesota cannot be overlooked because they are opponents with hopes alive for squeezing into the tournament.    

My ecstasy came later in the day when I got a ride to Princeton to see Columbia rally in the 4th quarter to beat the perennial-Ivy League champion Tigers, 64-60.  The Lions' victory moves Columbia into first place with a 10-1 record with a one game lead over both Princeton and Harvard with three

games to play before the conference tourney this year at Brown in Providence on FSa Mar 14-15.  

Down 6 points entering the 4th quarter on Sat., guard Maria Arrendola hit a 3-point shot that started a 13-0 run that gave Columbia the lead for good.  Sophomore Riley Weiss, who grew up in nearby Hewlett, NY, scored a career-high 34 points, 16 in the last period. Senior co-captain Kitty Henderson hit the dagger late in the 4th quarter that gave the Lions the cushion they needed. 

I was part of almost 200 ardent Lions fans seated behind the Columbia bench. Although we were outnumbered 10-1 by Princeton faithful, our chants of "DE-FENSE!" and "LET'S GO LIONS!" could be heard.  It was Princeton's first home loss in over 30 games and the first time we've beaten them twice in one season in almost 10 years.  Seated in the row behind me and rooting hard for her alma mater was Abbey Hsu, Columbia women's basketball all-time scoring leader who will be going to the Connecticut Sun's training camp in April. (Teammate Kaitlyn Davis, who played a graduate year at USC, will be going to the Liberty camp.)

I told Abbey she was almost as good a fan as she was a player. 

In addition to loving acronyms - Columbia coach Megan Griffith has coined a good one for her program:  EDGE:  Energy/Determination/Grit/Excellence - 

I'm somewhat of a sucker for inspirational slogans.  I saw a fan in the Princeton  crowd wearing a T-shirt that read:  LIFT/LAUGH/LOVE.  Pretty good one for the aspiring athlete in your family.  I've also loved the T-shirt I saw years ago worn by a Tampa Bay Rays baseball trainer:  CHAMPIONS ARE MADE WHEN NO ONE IS WATCHING.  And here's an original one to remember the Five Towns of Long Island's Nassau County close to the NYC borough of Queens:   

WILCH - Woodmere, Inwood, Lawrence, Cedarhurst, Hewlett (home town as noted earlier of Columbia's budding star Riley Weiss).

One last note on women's basketball in the NYC area:  The NYU women are now at 55 wins in a row and counting.  They will host the first two rounds

of the Division III playoffs on FSa Mar 7-8 at their home court Paulson Center on Mercer Street in Greenwich Village.  So likely will the men's team under coach Dave Klatsky, a 2003 graduate of Penn. They sport a 23-1 record as they, too, enter the playoff season.  I find it hard to imagine any school in any division that has gone this far in one basketball season with only one loss between them.    

NOW IT'S TIME FOR BASEBALL!

The annual New York Pro Scouts Hot Stove League dinner in late January offered some memorable speeches and tributes.  Anthony Iapoce, a 33rd-round 1994 draft choice of the Milwaukee Brewers, received the Jim Quigley "Service to Baseball Award" (which I was honored to receive 15 years ago). Service to baseball is no exaggeration for Iapoce whose career in baseball included over 10 years as a minor league outfielder (reaching Triple A at the highest), scout for several organizations, minor league manager in 2023 for the Tiger's Triple AAA Toledo franchise, and now entering his second year as Detroit first base coach.

Iapoca offered his general praise for the scouts who have "mastered simplicity" by becoming "detailed observers" and "active listeners".   He then specifically praised Jim Fleming the scouting director who hired him for the Marlins and insisted that every scout go to high school games with him and give appraisals not mere judgments. Anthony also tipped his cap to Tony LaCava, who when he hired him for the Blue Jays, stressed: "I want you to give your opinions." 

Another speaker at the late January dinner at Leonard's Palazzo in Great Neck Long Island was Bruce Shatel, High School Coach of the Year from Delbarton Prep in Morristown, New Jersey (alma mater of Yankee shortstop Anthony Volpe and Rangers RHP Jack Leiter).  "Why do you coach?" Shatel said he is often asked. Because he gets the thrill of a double into the gap hit by one of his players, he answered.  He added that he loved the thrill of seeing a well-executed 3-2 pitch that leads to an out. 

One sad note that I just learned while preparing this post.  Bobby Malkmus, born on the Fourth of July in 1931 in Newark NJ, passed away on Feb 23.

He had major experience as a Milwaukee Braves second baseman in the 1950s before the trade of Hall of Famer Red Schoendienst in 1957.  Malkmus was a long time Cleveland scout and a minister.  His presence at scout gatherings will be greatly missed.  

As for news of baseball on the MLB level, I am glad that most of the ballyhooed free agent signing season is over.  I have never begrudged players making a lot of money in a career that usually is quite short. But let the buyer owner beware of handing out multi-year contracts.  I don't like seeing super-agent Scott Boras's mug day in and day out on the TV and computer screens, sharing the space with his clients. I also think that the MLB season is ridiculously long and the number of teams in the playoffs are far too many.  But there is too much grouching in this world.  I'm happy for the return of baseball and upcoming warmer weather and for now I'll leave it at that.

The upcoming TCM baseball movie tip not to miss is Th Feb 27 at 7A (EST): "Speedy" (1928) - Harold Lloyd's great silent movie about the misfortunes but optimistic resilience of a baseball-loving young man. The scene where awed taxicab driver Lloyd transports his hero Babe Ruth to a game at Yankee Stadium is must-viewing.

W Feb 26 at 8P "Going My Way" (1944) Bing Crosby as a priest and St. Louis Browns fan with Barry Fitzgerald & Frank McHugh, dir. Leo McCarey. There's more baseball references in this film that I recalled on first viewing.  Not just Bing wearing a Browns sweatshirt.  After 1944 was the year of the only all St. Louis

World Series, won by the Cardinals in six games.  And Bing made a cameo in the 1951 underappreciated baseball film "Angels in the Outfield" (1951).

M Mar 3 8P "Pride of the Yankees" (1942) returns again and it is always worth seeing for the great cast of Gary Cooper/Teresa Wright/Dan Duryea/

Walter Brennan and Babe Ruth and Bill Dickey appearing as themselves. 

Non-baseball movies worthy of seeing include:

M Feb 24 5P "When We Were Kings" (1996) Leon Gast's movie about the hoopla surrounding the Sept 1974 "Rumble in the Jungle" between Muhammad Ali & Geoirge Foreman.  It is as much about the big music concert as it is about the fight. 

Later that night at 8P Hitchock's early classic "Suspicion" (1941) with Cary Grant

Tu Mar 4 highlights John Garfield movies from dawn to dusk. Most of them are from his heyday from the late 30s through the late 40s but his last film for Warners (and produced by his own company) "The Breaking Point" (1950) must be seen at 615P.  His blacklist started shortly thereafter and in 1952 he died of a heart attack at the age of 39.  (He suffered from a heart condition that kept him out of World War II service.) 

Cast includes Phyllis Thaxter as his wife, Patricia Neal as a femme fatale to end femme fatales, Wallace Ford, and Juano Hernandez.  By far the best film version of "To Have and Have Not" by Ernest Hemingway. 

That's all for now - stay positive test negative (for as long as the new Health czar RFK Jr. allows for tests) and take it easy but take it.  

Despite the over-commercialization of all sports, not least baseball, "pitchers and catchers have reported to spring training" remains one of the greatest

sentences in the English language.  l didn't make my first baseball trip to Florida until 1979 when I was starting my first book about the labor history of baseball, THE IMPERFECT DIAMOND. (Arizona would come a few years later). 

I will never forget that on the same day in early March, I met two Hall of Famers, Al Lopez (inducted in 1976) and Robin Roberts (inducted in 1977).  Nicknamed the Senor because he was born in Spain, Lopez greeted me in mid-morning at his home on a canal in Tampa's Ybor City. He had been a highly regarded catcher during his long playing career and became the only manager to break Casey Stengel's amazing streak of Yankee pennants, leading Cleveland in 1954 and the White Sox in 1959 to the World Series. 

Lopez professed that he had no memories of being part of the 1946 Pittsburgh Pirates that briefly voted to strike during the season over Pittsburgh management's failure to recognize the short-lived American Players Guild.  Lopez did share humorous stories about playing at Ebbets Field for the Daffy Dodgers in the 1920s.

He remembered one fan in particular who constantly razzed the Dodgers and manager Wilbert Robinson from the upper deck at Ebbets Field.  One day before a game, the harassed skipper summoned the fan to the dugout with an offer.   "Here's a box seat for the rest of the season," Robinson said, "if you promise to shut up."  In a thick Yiddish accent, Lopez recalled the fan's reply: "Uncle Robbie, you got a deal."   Of course, the truce didn't last for more than a game or two. When the fan renewed his bellowing, the ticket was taken away and without missing a beat the fan took his leather lungs back to his old perch in the upper stands. 

Later that day I met Robin Roberts, who was coaching baseball at the University of South Florida in Tampa. I'll never forget Roberts' first words to me: "Fire away!" meaning that I could ask him any questions I might have about his instrumental role in hiring Marvin Miller from the United Steelworkers of America to modernize the moribund Players Association. It is a part of baseball labor history that is not widely known that the players during Miller's first visit to Arizona spring training camps in 1966 rejected his candidacy. It took primarily the efforts of Roberts and pitchers Jim Bunning and Bob Friend, all training in Florida, to  rally the players in Miller's behalf.   

Roberts was easy to converse with on many topics. One of his sons was going to Michigan State where Robin had starred before signing a bonus contract with the Phillies. "Wait until you see Magic Johnson, Dad!" Robin recalled his son's awe.  Robin's career coaching USF would not last much longer. One of the issues

was he resisted the pressure  to call pitches from the dugout.  He wanted them to call their own games.  At the end of his playing career, Roberts had been the first roommate of Orioles rookie Jim Palmer, another future Hall of Famer.  His only advice to Palmer was "throw the hell out of the ball!"   

Another indelible memory from my visit with Roberts was his expressing surprise that southpaw Tommy John had recently left the Dodgers as a free agent to sign with the Yankees. Having played in the age of the reserve system that was perpetual but at times genuinely paternalistic, Roberts thought it almost shocking that John left the Dodgers after the team paid for the career-saving elbow operation performed by Dr. Frank Jobe.  Roberts sensed in 1979 that a new world was coming and he was glad that players were getting paid better but he also loved the traditions of the game.  He was almost wistful discussing the trip northward at the end of spring training when the Phillies (and most other teams) played games in smaller cities on the way North and each team let the varsity play five innings so the fans in the small towns could watch them.  

Roberts was one of the kindest and most thoughtful baseball people I've ever interviewed.  He expressed more of these thoughts in "We Would Have Played For Nothing," one of the oral histories that late commissioner of baseball Fay Vincent wrote after he retired.  Roberts mentioned to Vincent, who died on Feb 1 at the age of 86, that he still treasured the keepsake gift Phillies owner Bob Carpenter sent him when he was called up from the minors to make his major league debut.  The story brings back to mind a radio interview that I made 40 years ago with Mrs. Ron Hunt, the wife of second baseman Ron Hunt, the Mets' first All-Star.  She still treasured the silver spoon that Mets owner Joan Whitney Payson gave her when she had a child.

That's all for this post.  I'm heading to see Columbia women's basketball, riding a 9-game winning streak atop the Ivy League by itself for the first time.

Dartmouth is not a contender but youneverknow in any sport.  The matchup with Harvard on Sun at noon EST on ESPNU should be barnburner.

We'll see how my other team Wisconsin men do at Purdue at 1p tomorrow Sa Feb 15 on CBS.  And then Illinois on Peacock (alas) on Tu Feb 18.

More thoughts on today's baseball in later posts.  Glad I could share now some of the stories of baseball's rich past. 

Take it easy but take it and stay healthy and sane and test negative (for as long as we are allowed to have government health tests!)