Lee Lowenfish

There is certainly still a chance (mathematical) that Cleveland and the Mets can make a good series out of their matchups prior to the World Series.  But as of this writing on Thursday afternoon Oct 17, the Mets will have to clean up their game defensively and start their bats producing again. Even if they rediscover their magic sauce, down two games to one, they'll have to win it in LA. 

 

As for the Yankees-In-Guardians series (I've decided that since most of us folks of a certain age can't help calling them Indians, let's at least reclaim the

first syllable of the old name, OK?), Cleveland's lack of starting pitching has really been exposed.  I hope home-cooking allows at least one win and more chances for us to marvel at Steven Kwan, their great left fielder/leadoff man who has made Oregon State proud (in ways that the Orioles' Adley Rutschman could not duplicate this season). 

 

Here's the back story on why a Yankee-Dodger World Series is my least favorite of any Fall Classic.  I think my character was definitely shaped (warped?) by growing up a New York Giant fan when the Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers were seemingly in every World Series - to be exact, 1947, 1949, 1952-53, 1955-1956. As a National League fan, I pulled for the Dodgers in the World Series, but it certainly wasn't like rooting for your team. 

 

1955 was the only World Series the Brooklyn Dodgers ever won. The outrageously entitled Yankee fans still insist that blip happened only because Mickey Mantle was injured.  In a wound in the heart that still exists in most of the Flatbush Faithful older generation, almost exactly two years after Johnny Podres shut out the Yankees in Game 7, the Dodgers were on their way to Los Angeles. 

 

The Giants accompanied the Dodgers to the West Coast settling in San Francisco. To give you an idea of how much of a blow the departure of the historic NL franchises meant to NYC fans, the Yankees with the NYC market all to themselves drew fewer fans in 1958 than they did in 1957.  It didn't stop the Bronx Bombers from avenging their 7-game 1957 World Series loss to the Milwaukee Braves by overcoming a 3-1 games deficit in 1958 to beat the Braves. 

 

Fortunately with expansion, a Yankee-LA Dodger WS matchup hasn't happened that often and the LAD in 1963 and 1981 actually won two World Series

over the NYY.  But the Yankees did beat the Dodgers in back-to-back 1977-1978 World Series.  I

 

I remember 1977 painfully because the Orioles won 97 games in the first year of free agency.  They lost Reggie Jackson to the Yankees and Bobby Grich and Don Baylor to the Angels, but they stayed in the pennant race until the last weekend of regular season. 

 

On Friday night as I watching the Tigers' lefty John Hiller beat the Yankees at the second incarnation of Yankee Stadium, the Red Sox eliminated the Birds at Fenway in a slugfest.  I was watching the score throughout the game whenever the scoreboard deigned to show it. Shortly after the Tigers won, I looked at the scoreboard and it read "Bost 12 Balt 8 - F".

 

It turned out it was fake news. As I was coming home in the subway, a fan told me that final score was 12-11 and Al Bumbry had made the last out with tying run on second. How much disappointment can a fan take?!  The next afternoon, the Orioles eliminated the Red Sox.  Elliott Maddox, only briefly with the Orioles, insouciantly caught the last out, a routine fly ball to center. 

 

I was so bummed out that I vowed not to watch the World Series at all.  During Game 1, I went to see Win Wenders' neo-noir movie "The American Friend".  But when every time I glimpsed the mustache of actor Bruno Ganz I thought of Thurman Munson, I decided, "If the Yankees are still on my mind at the movies, I might as well watch the games." I did but with little passion. Reggie Jackson hit 3 home runs in the final game.  Ho-hum. 

 

47 years after that 1977 World Series, I think I've attained A LITTLE philosophical distance from my earlier self.  I don't really hate any of the players on NYY/LAA. And I find it amusing that the boobirds at Yankee Stadium will have to cheer at the success of their targets in recent years who are really producing now, Gian-Carlo Stanton, Gleyber Torres, and Alex Verdugo (a former Dodger who will have extra incentive against LAA).

 

You never know in baseball so I hope that the remaining LCS games have some memorable moments.  Like the last two games of the Cleveland-Detroit division series. When David Fry's pinch-hit home run silenced Detroit's Comerica Park in Game 4 forcing a return to Cleveland's Progressive Field for Game 5.

And Lane Thomas, former Cardinals farmhand and Nats outfielder, hit a grand slam off the brilliant southpaw Tarik Skubal, this year's likely AL Cy Young winner. 

 

Two pitches in succession turned around Skubal's season. First, a bases loaded HBP to Jose Ramirez and then Thomas' line drive HR that gave Cleveland the lead they would not relinquish.  It pays to watch the game closely - things can happen in a twinkling. 

 

I heard a wonderful story from a friend whose mother-in-law lives in an assisted living facility in Cleveland.  She was dutifully going to 4p Saturday Mass when the game was not yet final.  The service was delayed slightly to make sure the team had won and then it opened with a nun on piano playing a rousing version of"Take Me Out To The Ballgame". 

 

Speaking of rousing performances, how about that WNBA final between the New York Liberty and the Minnesota Lynx!  On their sixth visit to the finals as a WNBA charter member, the Liberty need one more victory either Fri night Oct 18 or back home in Brooklyn on Sun night Oct 20 to earn their first title.

 

This series has not been for the weak in heart.  The Liberty blew double-digit leads in the first two games at home, salvaging a split. The Lynx led all the

way in Game 3 until they didn't late in 4th quarter.  Only a 28-foot straight away jump shot by Sabrina Ionescu kept Game 3 from going into overtime. 

 

Another star from the Northwest like Steven Kwan, Ionesco, the former Oregon Ducks sensation, gave credit to her preparation for her ability to sink 

that shot.  It reminds me of the saying I once saw in the Tampa Bay Rays clubhouse or maybe on one of the their T-shirts:

"Champions Are Made When Nobody Is Looking." 

 

That's all for now - stay positive, test negative, still my mantra, and take it easy but take it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the Orioles seemingly headed for a mediocre finish to a disappointing season,
I have found several other ways to stoke my baseball passion.

Yesterday - a blissfully warm but not too humid Sunday afternoon August 20th - I made my second trip to the Staten Island Yankees this season.

With a five game lead over the second place Aberdeen Ironbirds the Oriole New York-Penn League farm club, the Yankees are headed for the post-Labor Day playoffs. But yesterday the Lowell Spinners, a Red Sox farm, tamed them 3-1.

The first home runs of the year by Spinners catcher Nick Sciortino from Barrington, New Jersey were more than enough for Denyi Reyes to improve his record to 7-0 with six strong innings of relief. Reyes also set a franchise record with 24-plus scoreless frames. Staten Island righty Daniel Alvarez took the loss despite striking out 10 Spinners.

The game lasted just an amazing two hours and thirteen minutes. Perhaps it was the crisp and efficient work of plate umpire Jennifer Pawol who really kept the game moving. The only woman umpire currently in pro baseball definitely bears watching as a comer.

What a difference from the regular three and a half hour marathons that are marring major league baseball games this season. THE MULTIPLE VISITS OF CATCHERS TO THE MOUND IN EVERY HALF-INNING MUST STOP. If Commissioner Rob Manfred really wants to speed up “the pace of play,” curbing the catchers’ mound journeys is the obvious place to start.

It’s a shame that attendance is so poor in Staten Island. It is rare when the customers total over a thousand in the impressive 7,000 seat stadium overlooking New York harbor and just a short walk from the Staten Island ferry (which by the way is free!).

There are multiple explanations for the lack of attendance: Ticket prices higher than most minor league stadiums; reduction in food services; massive construction going on in the area for future hotels and outlet stores; several ownership changes in recent years.

But the product on the field remains good - unlike the Brooklyn Cyclones, the Mets New York-Penn League team, that is having a historically bad season. Attendance in Coney Island is down by more than half but still far more than the Staten Island Yankees.

Earlier last week I enjoyed the final days of the PONY League championships in Washington, Penna. just 30 miles south of Pittsburgh. The 14-and-under tournament has been going on since the early 1950s and the ballpark dedicated to PONY's first commissioner Lew Hays is a gem.

When PONY started locally in 1951 it stood for Protect Our Neighborhood Youth. But the idea caught on nationally and internationally of having a league for players who were too old for Little League but not ready for Babe Ruth League on adult diamonds.

PONY soon changed its acronym to mean Protect Our Nation's Youth. Its first president was baseball-loving comedian Joe E. Brown who served effectively from 1953 to 1964.

Brown, whose baseball films from the 1930s especially his favorite "Elmer the Great" are now available on DVD, provided a motto for PONY when he said, "Teach them to play by the rules and they will live by the rules."

Future major leaguers who played in the PONY tournament range from Jim Abbott to Robin Yount, the Alomar family to Mookie and Willie Wilson, the Bonds family to Darrell Strawberry and Jim Thome, and on and on.

The 2017 champions came from Covina, California - located just a few miles east of Los Angeles. They won the title with a thrilling 3-1 extra-inning victory over Seoul, Korea.

The heroes for Covina were pitcher James Jimenez who threw seven strong innings and blasted a two-run homer in the top of the 8th off a light pole to provide the margin of victory. Catcher and leadoff hitter Hector Bautista forced the game into extras by a two-strike two-out seeing-eye single in the top of the seventh.

The game was televised on local cable which meant the half-inning delays were almost as long as the tiresome hiatuses that afflict MLB. Seoul’s manager was also thrown out of the game for arguing balls and strikes causing a delay of more than five minutes.

Nothing could spoil the beauty of the event, however. A real slice of late summer Americana nestled in so-called “Little” Washington, Pa. Lew Hays Stadium is only a few miles from PONY League headquarters in Washington, that adjoins the home park of the Washington Wild Things in the independent Frontier League.

And for those who can't get enough of baseball, next to the independent ballpark is the college home park of the Washington and Jefferson Presidents. There was no independent game going on last week and college ball is restricted to the spring. It was still a thrill to be surrounded by actual baseball and imagined baseball of the future.

I must conclude though on a sad note. More vital baseball people were lost to the great beyond recently. I am referring to the departure of eminent player-manager-coach Don Baylor, 68, and renowned scout Gene Bennett, 89.

Baylor fought quietly and valiantly a long battle against multiple myeloma, a form of cancer. He was the 1979 American League MVP for the California Angels AL West champions that lost the ALCS to Baylor's first team the Orioles. He never wanted to leave Baltimore and wept when told of the trade that saw Reggie Jackson leave Oakland for Baltimore before the start of the 1976 season.

Like his teammate in Baltimore Lee May, who I eulogized in the last blog, Baylor was far more than his impressive numbers: 18-year-career, .267 BA, .436 SA, 2135 H, 338 HR, 1236R 1286 RBI.

He served as a DH in three consecutive World Series, losing with 1986 Red Sox and 1988 Athletics and winning with the Twins in 1987, going 5 for 13 in that seven-game thriller. He was also the first manager of the expansion Colorado Rockies and served many teams as a valuable batting coach.

A native of Austin, Texas, Baylor integrated his elementary school and thought about playing football for the local Texas Longhorns before wisely choosing baseball. He was an active member of the Players Association and a key contributor to many charities including the Cystic Fibrosis Association. He will be missed very much.

So will the longtime Cincinnati Reds scout Gene Bennett who was a bulwark of the only organization he ever worked for. Raised in Branch Rickey's Scioto County in southern Ohio on the Kentucky border, Bennett's minor league career as an outfielder was curtailed by injury.

Offered a chance to manage or scout for the Reds, he took the advice of his mentor
Rickey: "Choose scouting over managing!" Baseball's wise man stressed to Bennett that as a scout you can find almost every season someone to help the organization, but if you are a manager and are given a bad team, you can be fired.

Among the prizes Bennett found for the Reds were southpaw Don Gullett, Hall of Fame shortstop Barry Larkin, right fielder Paul O'Neill, and third baseman Chris Sabo. Bennett was very active in the Wheelersburg Little League which now bears his name.

He will never be forgotten in Scioto County. I am pretty certain that the annual January Portsmouth Murals banquet will be dedicated to him this coming year.

That's all this time - but always remember: Take it easy but take it!
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