Lee Lowenfish

As readers of my blog know, I love sports quotes that have meaning transcending inspiration for athletes. The title for this post comes from Dick Bosman, once a no-hit pitcher for Cleveland, later an esteemed pitching coach for Orioles-Rangers-Rays and author with Ted Leavengood of the informative DICK BOSMAN ON PITCHING (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018):  "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery, today is a gift - that's why it's called the present."

 

Like most memorable quotes, Dick doesn't know where it came from. Perhaps from that mysterious multicultural androgynous Anon Ymous?  It doesn't matter - it's the thought that counts as in this observation:   "It's amazing how much good can be done if you don't care who gets the credit."

 

With March winds howling and temps changing violently here in the Northeast, this remains an exciting and hopeful time of year with college basketball playoffs nearing and baseball spring training in full flower.  Yesterday (M Mar 3) during an Oriole-Pirate spring training game in Sarasota, reliever Jose Bautista threw a perfect inning with two strikeouts in his first appearance in a game since August 2023 when he left the mound in Camden Yards soon headed for Tommy John surgery. 

 

Oriole manager Brandon Hyde says he will utilize Bautista conservatively, never pitching him for more than an inning and never on back-to-back days.  Nicknamed The Mountain for his imposing stature of 6' 8" 290 lbs, he needed years deep in the minor leagues and overseas before he developed command, control, and a consistent release point.   It's way too early in spring training to make any predictions about how the long season will play out, but it was a heartwarming sight to see The Mountain back on the mound. Tears of joy poured from his teammates, coaches, fans at Ed Smith Stadium and all over the Oriole universe.   

 

In yesterday game, switch-hitting catcher Adley Rutschman hit his first homer of the spring, another hopeful sign. He is more of a line drive hitter than a power bomber, but  in the last half of 2024, Adley endured the first slump of his storybook career.  He was mum about whether a hand injury affected his swing but if he is healthy again, his

presence in the lineup and behind the plate will be a definite asset for the Birds.  Waiting in the wings for perhaps a mid-season callup is the impressive Dominican backstop Samuel Basallo, barely 20 years old.  I saw him in the minors a couple of times and he is a commanding presence who reminds me of a left-handed hitting Orlando Cepeda. 

 

Another pleasant development was the announcement that the Orioles and Washington Nationals have settled their dispute over coverage of the teams on the MASN

stations (Mid-Atlantic Sports Network).  As it should be, the Nats will soon be on their own promoting the team on the air waves.  Previous Oriole owner, the late Peter Angelos, drove a very hard bargain and didn't accept prior arbitration settlements of the dispute.

 

David Rubenstein can now enter his second year as Oriole owner with this contentious dispute settled. He certainly brings to the table a fascinating background not common to ownership in any sport. Prominent as head of the Carlyle Equity fund, he is also a philanthropist with a genuine interest in history. On recent Mondays at the New York Historical Society on Central Park West, I heard him interview first Jeh Johnson, Secretary of Homeland Security during President Obama's second term, and then Ken Burns, the indefatigable documentary filmmaker. (These interviews are available on line.)  Rubenstein is also often heard interviewing people on Bloomberg TV.  He was the chairman of the board of the Kennedy Center in Washington until he and others on the board were fired last month by President Trump.  

 

I won't make spring training myself this year but of course, I'll be following Oriole developments closely.  In this turbulent and perilous time of American history, it will be nice to follow one's team with a sense of hope. Maybe more moves should have be made to replace Anthony Santander, their 44 HR, 100+ RBI man and ace pitcher Corbin Burnes.  Santander is now a Blue Jay and Burnes a Diamondback but O's still have a world of young talent waiting to blossom.  Like young second baseman Jackson Holliday, not ready to shine last year after enormous hoopla.  And Heston Kjerstad, who can now even put more distance from his scary heart ailment of a few years ago. He seems to have a good baseball head on his shoulder.  At U of Arkansas, he said that he always makes his goals for any season extremely high knowing that he cannot achieve them.

 

Turning to college basketball, Columbia's women Lions continue to impress.  They have earned for the first time the top seed in the Ivy League tournament this year to be held at the Pizzitola Center on the Brown U campus in Providence.  Penn will be their likely opponent on Fri Mar 14 at 430P with Harvard and Princeton battling it out in

the second game.  The final will be on Sat Mar 15 at 5P televised by ESPNNews.  Over this past weekend, seniors Kitty Henderson and Cece Collins each had a triple double - Kitty in the win over Brown and Cece in the triumph over Yale.  If I were running the PA system, I would have found a recording of Irving Berlin's "Anything you can do, I can do better" from "Annie Get Your Gun".   

 

Meanwhile down in Greenwich Village at the Paulson Center on Mercer Street, NYU, winners of 56 in a row, will open its defense of the Division III title against Gallaudet from Washington DC F Mar 7 at 730P.  At 430p U Mass-Dartmouth faces Trinity from Hartford CT.  The winners meet at 5P on Sat Mar 8.   The NYU men, losers of only one game all season, play Cortland State in York, PA at 730P after Cleveland's John Carroll plays host York at 430P.  Winners meet on Sa Mar 8 at 5P.  On the Big Boy front, St.John's, now ranked #6 in the country, won the Big East regular season and enter the Big East tourney at MSG with high hopes of another big March Madness run under septugenarian coach Rick Pitino. 

 

My Wisconsin Badgers came up short against Big Ten leader Michigan State this past Sunday but it was a hard-fought game.  If they bounce back at lagging but

gritty Minnesota on W Mar 5 830P on Big Ten Network and on Senior Day against Penn State on Sa Mar 8 1P on Peacock, they should enter Big Ten tournament at Indianapolis with some momentum. 

 

I read earlier today online a very moving story by Greg Stiemsma about how retired Badger athletic trainer Henry Perez-Guerra basically saved his life.  Now an Badger assistant coach with a new title of Director of Player Development, Stiemsma endured a tough period as a young Badger frontcourtman from tiny Randolph, Wisconsin.

He was not doing well in school and felt he wasn't playing well either.  He was close to suicidal when an early AM knock on the door from Perez-Guerra essentially saved his life. A long talk began his hard road to recovery.  Greg went on to a NBA and overseas career and now a prominent role on the Badger coaching staff. Kudos to Greg for being courageous to share his story and to Henry for being there to help. 

 

In conclusion, here are some upcoming TCM movies with sports themes: 

Th Mar 6 245P  "Tennessee Champ" (1954)  Keenan Wynn is boxer battling with crooked manager.  Shelley Winters presumably helps him. 

 

F Mar 7 a lot of movies with horse racing themes:

6A "Sporting Blood" (1931) Robert Florey directs Clark Gable/Madge Evans

730A "Glory" (1956) David Butler directs Margaret O'Brien/Walter Brennan/Charlotte Greenwood

915A "The Story of Seabiscuit" (1949)  Butler directs Barry Fitzgerald with some help from Shirley Temple/Rosemary DeCamp

*6P  "A Day At the Races" (1937) Sam Wood directs a Marx Brothers classic 

 

Tu Mar 11 6A  "Three Ages" (1923) a Buster Keaton classic with Wallace Beery. A caveman baseball scene especially notable.

615P "The Cameraman" (1928) even more notable, Keaton's baseball pantomime at an empty Yankee Stadium

 

(Non-sports films to be noted:  Sa Mar 8 12N "Hard Day's Night" (1964) early Beatles that reminds me of a Marx Bros. film at their best

M Mar 10 545A "The Apartment" (1960) probably Billy Wilder's last great film with Jack Lemmon/Shirley MacLaine/Fred MacMurray.)

 

 

Coming up on Sa Mar 22 10P "Angels in the Outfield" (1951) - the underappreciated original with uncredited James Whitmore as the

unseen but powerfully heard Angel Gabriel.  Paul Douglas in the lead as crusty manaager Guffy McGovern domesticated by Household Hints

journalist Janet Leigh with underappreciated Bruce Bennett as veteran pitcher Saul Hellman.  More in the next blog.

 

For now, always remember:  Stay positive, stay healthy, stay sane, and take it easy but take it. 

 

   

 

   

 

 

 

 

    

 

 

 

   

 

They tell me that there was a college football game on the night of January 20th.  It was quite a day that happened to coincide with this year's Martin Luther King Jr Birthday and the cruelly ironic inauguration of Donald Trump to a second non-consecutive presidential term.  I hear that Ohio State beat Notre Dame for the first title under the new 12-game college football playoff system.  Bully for them for recovering from an embarrassing home loss to arch-rival Michigan and running the table with four convincing playoff wins. 

 

For me, however, the place to be on the frigid night of M Jan 20 was up at my alma mater's Levien Gym on Broadway/120th Street. Along with over 2200 other passionate fans, we saw the Columbia women's basketball team roar back from a 10-point halftime deficit to beat longtime nemesis Princeton, the co-2024 Ivy League champion with the Lions, 58-50.  Columbia played airtight defense the whole game forcing 24 turnovers and finally capitalizing on them in the second half when they held the Tigers to 6 points in the third period and 20 overall in the half.  

 

Junior forward Susie Rafiu had a career game with 13 points on 6-10 shooting, 3 rebounds, 4 steals, 1 assist, and no turnovers. Reliable veteran senior tri-captain Cece Collins led the scoring with 18 points, her 3 assists and 2 steals overcoming her 4 turnovers. After a scoring drought that lasted until early in second half, sophomore Riley Weiss, the team's leading scorer, hit two big threes to keep the Lions ahead once they gained the lead late in the third quarter.  

 

It was Princeton's first league loss and they will undoubtedly be heard from before the season is over.  Senior center Parker Hill, trying to fill the shoes of the departed all-world Ellie Mitchell, chipped in 12 points and sophomore guard Ashley Chea, trying to fill the equally formidable shoes of departed Kaitlyn Chen (now a graduate player at UConn), had 16 points but commited 6 of the turnovers.

 

The rematch at Princeton will be on Sa Feb 22 at 530P.  You can be assured that the Tigers under coach Carla Berube, who played at perennial power UConn and has rarely lost coaching Princeton, will insist on improvement.  In the meantime, Columbia hosts Penn this Sa Jan 25 at 2P, a rematch of a hard-fought 15-point win earlier this month. 

 

The two games with Harvard, the other likely contender for top Ivy honors, will be Fri Jan 31 at Columbia at 7P and Su Feb 16 at Harvard at noon.

The top four teams will meet in the league post-season tourney at Brown in Providence RI on the weekend of March 14-15. 

 

(In a sad symbol of Columbia basketball teams going in different directions, earlier on Jan 20 the Columbia men blew a 33-15 halftime lead at Princeton and fell in the last seconds, 71-67.  The men under coach Jim Engles, a onetime Columbia assistant who was hired at the same time as women's caoch Megan Griffith, have just not come through in close Ivy League games.  They are now 0-3 in league play after an 11-1 start that is somewhat misleading because it is padded by expected routs over the Merchant Marine Academy and Sarah Lawrence, yes Sarah Lawrence. In prior years in mystifying pre-season scheduling, Bard and SUNY-Delhi have been sacrificial lambs to the Lions.)  

 

The other big women's basketball story in NYC concerns NYU's Division III Violets rolling along at 14-0 as they seek a second straight undefeated season and national championship.  They have been rarely tested so far this season, but there should be better competition on upcoming back-to-back weekends against longtime UAA (University Athletic Association) rivals, the University of Chicago and Washington U of St. Louis.  The games begin on the road in Chicago,

F Jan 31 730P and in St. Louis Su Feb 2 12 Noon.  The teams then return to the Paulson Center west of Broadway just north of Houston Streeet on Mercer Street on F Feb 7 at 730 with U Chicago coming in and Su Feb 9 at 12N the Violets host WUSL.  

 

My other favorite basketball team, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Badgers, has been surprising a lot of people this year.  How I love it when my teams are expected to do nothing because of transfer portal departures and supposedly uninspired coaching and wind up making the best of the situation.  Although the Badgers took a tough 86-84 loss at UCLA on Tu night Jan 21, they are 15-4 overall and 5-3, tied for 5th place (with recent nemesis Illinois that has beat them 9 times in a row), in the now 18-member Big Ten conference.  (The Badgers cannot overlook any game in the moshpit of Big Ten competition but I have Tu Feb 18 marked down when Illinois comes into Madison - 830P EDT nationally televised on Fox Sports !). 

 

Graduate transfer John Tonge (pronounced TAHN-jay, I think I've finally got the pronunciation down) was scoreless in last Sat's convincing win over USC but hit for 24 in the UCLA loss.  Sophomore John Blackwell pitched in with 23 although his second half technical foul was costly in the two-point loss.  But as long as he learns to control his temper and the team still has his back, Wisconsin could make the rest of the year into March Madness interesting. It's always very nice to see a team that seems to like to pass and run and not just shoot and dunk and play indifferent defense (BTW like too many NBA teams!).  

 

LATE JANUARY THOUGHTS ON BASEBALL PAST AND PRESENT:

The 2025 Baseball Hall of Fame class is now complete.  To no one's surprise, Ichiro Suzuki won a virtually unaminous selection. One still unidentified voter was evidently trying to draw attention to himself and didn't vote for the Japanese star.  His numbers are astounding: He amassed 4367 hits, 3,089 coming in the USA most of them with Seattle but some of them with the Yankees. In the USA he hit .311 (compared to .355 in Japan) and slugged .402 and was a sterling defensive player and base runner.

 

The stature of Ichiro is such that he needs only one name for ID.  He also exudes humility and an obvious love for the game.  But don't ignore his fierce competitiveness.  When Korea beat Japan in one international tournament and a rubber match ensued, Ichiro defiantly proclaimed that Japan would beat Korea so soundly they wouldn't dream of another rubber match for a half-century. Japan did win that game. 

 

I can accept the other Hall of Fame awardees although in the case of Billy Wagner I sense he got in mainly because San Diego's star reliever Trevor Hoffman is already enshrined.  Both did not do well in the post-season and for me that could be a reason for non-admittance. Remember that enshrinement should be for the great, not merely the very good. 

 

I think what probably turned the voters in favor of CC Sabathia, who was elected in his first year of eligibility, was his 250 career wins, a nice round number/ He also collected 3093 strikeouts, only the 3rd of 16 pitchers to reach the 3000 level. But I must say that since  the modern game has eliminated the stigma on striking out, I am less impressed with raw strikeout numbers because batters these days rarely cut down on their swings on two strikes. But CC did pitch capably in post-seasons with Milwaukee and the Yankees. He, Ichiro, and Billy W will join veterans committee picks Dick Allen and Dave Parker in the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies at Cooperstown on Sunday July 27.  

 

As for the news from the current free agent "re-entry" market, most Oriole fans expected Anthony Santander to leave for greener (as in $$$$) pastures. In his case, it will be for Toronto for five years in the neighborhood of $90 million.  The Blue Jays need a lot more than Santander to become a true contender again but no real fan begrudges the very likable Santander his new fortune.  I just hope he doesn't feel added pressure to produce because first baseman/DH Vladimir Guerrero Jr. might be headed to free agency after 2025 and the rest of the Toronto lineup doesn't look too imposing. Oriole fans have to hope that Tyler O'Neill, former Cardinal and Red Sox outfielder and son of a renowned Canadian body builder, can fill the void left by the switch-hitting 44 HR 102 RBI man in 2024. 

And maybe lefthanded hitting Hestor Kjerstad, a few years removed from a very serious heart condition, can become a productive hitter.

 

As for the LA Dodgers loading up on the best free agents - pitchers Blake Snell, Tanner Scott, the young Japanese wunderkind Roki Sasaki and re-signing outfielder Teoscar Hernandez - it is hard to see how competitive balance is helped by this spending spree that few franchises outside of the major markets can afford.  But who talks about competitive balance any more?  LAD will be overwhelming favorites in 2025 but they'll still have to do on the field. But I do know that despite LAD management chortling about how the Dodgers will become "Japan's team" now with Shohei Ohtani and pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto already in the fold, even some ardent fans in Japan do feel that enough is enough in bringing in outsiders to a team that used to boast about its farm system from the days in Brooklyn of Branch Rickey and Buzzie Bavasi through their early years in LA.   

 

Here's some good news though for those who need a baseball fix before spring training and the regular season start.

Starting at 450P EST on F Jan 31, MLBTV will be showing the full Caribbean Series with broadcasts in English. For the first time, Japan, the virtually perennial winner of international competition, will be joining the familiar group including the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and Mexico.  The games will be shown daily through the championship on F Feb 7. 

 

And what would be a LeeLow post without some TCM news.  On Sa Jan 25, TCM will be providing a PopUp program at the 92nd Street Y on Lexington Ave

on New York's Upper East Side.  Eddie Muller will not be there but  other TCMs wil be on the program. Ddoors will open at 1230P and at

1P TCM host Ben Mankiewicz will converse with Martin Scorsese for an hour.  What films or film clips will be shown is not clear and prices begin at $30.

This program is available online as well as in person.  All the other programs are in-person only.

 

330P TCM host Jacqueline Stewart interviews Drew Barrymore, followed by the showing of "Twentieth Century" with her noted forebear John Barrymore and

Carole Lombard one of the most talented and revered actresses of the Golden Age of Hollywood who perished in an airplace accident after completing with

classic Lubitsch film "To Be Or Not To Be".

 

7P Drew B. returns with TCM host Dave Karger and they interview Steven Spielberg and then "E.T." will be shown.

More info at 92stY.org

 

On the TCM channel itself, here are some highlights: 

Sa Jan 25 415P "Jim Thorpe, All-American" with Burt Lancaster in title role and Charles Bickford as coach Pop Warner

    745P an always-whimsical Robert Benchley short, "How To Watch Football"

Sat midnight (repeated Su Jan 26 at 10A)  "Woman on the Run" with Ann Sheridan/Robert Keith/Dennis O'Keefe - some wonderful San Francisco

    photograph and above-average Noir story - the last Noir Alley until March because of the Oscar films shown in Feb prior to Mar 2 Oscar ceremony

 

Sun Jan 26 4:15P "Somebody Up There Likes Me" (1956) boxer Rocky Graziano's life story starring Paul Newman with Sal Mineo/director Robert Wise

  Adapted from the book of same name by author Rowland Barber who a few years later would collaborate on "Harpo Speaks," Harpo Marx's wonderful

  memoir

 

M Jan 27 8P "The Pawnbroker" (1965) with Rod Steiger and the always fascinating Geraldine Fitzgerald

 

Tu Jan 28 the last night of the George Raft "Star of the Month" festival

8P "Johnny Allegro" (1948) with Nina Foch/George Macready

930P "Red Light" (1949) with Virginia Mayo/Gene Lockhart

11P "A Dangerous Profession" (1949) with Ella Raines/Pat O'Brien

 

One last comment:  I have been watching NFL playoffs and the final rounds have been pretty exciting.  I would like to see Buffalo finally win a Super

Bowl.  It is a city of loyal people and real fans and by the way the only city in Branch Rickey's doomed plan for the Continental League in 1959-60 not to get

a MLB franchise.  But there are good reasons for Kansas City to repeat and also for Philadelphia or Washington to wear theSuper Bowl crown.  Just hope the

injuries are few and the games go down to the last minute and even into overtime.  I have no real horse in this race so I can simply enjoy the games.

 

That's all for now.  Always remember:  Take it easy but take it, and stay positive, test negative.