Lee Lowenfish

It sure is nice to have a full baseball season back, cross fingers that Covid can be fully controlled. The great thing about a 162-game season - or maybe only 154 (the way it used to be from 1903-1960)  -  is you can't win them all. 

 

And get ready folks - here comes another cliche:  The best teams always lose at least fifty and the worst ones win fifty. It's how you do in the other 60+ that determines what cream will rise to the top in October.

 

The ability to bounce back from losses - simply flush them out of the mind - is so essential to baseball which is like no other sport in the length of its schedule.  

 

Full credit to the Red Sox and the Braves who started 0-3 and 0-4. Now the Bosox have won six in a row (after games of Apr 11). They are the only team over .500 in the AL East. The Braves, too, have neared the .500 line after their opening losses.  

 

Get ready for another cliche (but like most cliches it is true):  A pennant is never won in April but you sure can dig an awfully big hole for yourself in April. The Oakland A's started 1-6, but they got a couple needed wins in Houston so they can still harbor hopes of contention.  

 

Until starting rotations are settled, no need to panic. If If If you have the able arms and don't ruin your bullpens too early in the season. 

 

The return of Alex Cora as Red Sox manager certainly steadied the team after the Orioles swept them in Fenway in the first series of the season. Cora was suspended for the 2020 season for his part as bench coach in the Houston sign-stealing scandal.

 

It is ridiculous to make projections on the basis of nine games except that the LA Dodgers have only two losses and look like they are primed to defend their crown.  

 

Don't know if the Red Sox are true contenders but they have certainly been impressive in sweeping the Tampa Bay Rays at home and returning the favor by sweeping the Orioles on the road.  

 

Slugger J.D. Martinez in the last year of his contract is off to a sizzling start and third baseman Rafael Devers's hitting is making people forget for the time being his defense.  If they get pitching, they'll be interesting to watch.

 

Ah, the Orioles or the Woerioles as I call them in my darkest moments.  I said in my last post that it would be a miracle if they won three games in a row all season because their pitching looked so weak.  So they sweep Boston and pitch fairly well in losing two out of three to the Yankees.  What do I know, huh?

 

They competed fairly well on the mound for most of the first two games in the rematch against Boston.  But usually reliable Cesar Valdez couldn't get the save on Sat night and they lost in extra-innings. They got blown out in the final game of the series, the one time the pitching looked totally outmatched. 

 

Speaking of extra innings, I will never get used to extra innings starting with a runner on second base. They might as well as have a Home Run Derby to decide a game. I'd rather have a tie than this artificial idea.

 

On the non-baseball front, I highly recommend the documentary "Oliver Sacks: His Own Life" directed by Ric Burns (Ken's equally talented brother).  Sacks' fame was secured when he wrote "Awakenings," his study of psychologically challenged people that became a movie starring Robin Williams. 

 

There is a very brief clip of Sacks meeting Williams in the editing room, but the strength of the film comes from its rendering in aching detail the story of Sacks' struggle from his earliest days to find meaning in his life and the world.

 

He was the son of two gifted English doctors of Jewish heritage who expected him to become a doctor. He did but he always was a loner.  He remained close to his mother even after she was horrified at his homosexuality.  I was very moved by the story of his arrival and adventures in America during the free-spirited 1960s.

 

Check your PBS schedules for when it might re-air.  It is also available via free streaming through May 7.  Google:  Oliver Sacks: His Own Life  

 

Here's some TCM tips for the next couple of weeks:

M Apr 12 8p "It's Always Fair Weather" (1955)  Gene Kelly, Cyd Charisse, Michael Kidd, co-director Stanley Donen.

Originally intended as "On The Town" reunion, this is choreographer Kidd's lfirst appearance on screen.

 

W Apr 14 4p "Ladies In Retirement" (1941) - Ida Lupino plays another noirish role with Elsa Lanchester and Evelyn Keyes.

 

Sa Apr 17 4p "Mildred Pierce" (1945) always worth re-seeing with Joan Crawford as mother and Ann Blyth as daughter you wouldn't want to have - Jack Carson and Zachary Scott are wonderful secondary characters

 

Sun Apr 18 6a "Mr Deeds Goes To Town" (1936) I always get moved by Gary Cooper's pain when he gets humiliated by the press.  It may be Capra-corn but I think it holds up.  Maybe you'll get pixillated. 

 

Sun Apr 18 "The Naked Spur" (1953) dir. Anthony Mann.  Jimmy Stewart hunts Robert Ryan with the underappreciated Janet Leigh. 

 

Tu Apr 20 6p "Pal Joey" (1957) - Sinatra as a louse with that great Rodgers-Hart score

 

W Apr 21 2p "Pete Kelly's Blues" (1955) - directed and starring Jack Webb - one of the better 1920s jazz-based films with Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald, Janet Leigh again (not one of her best roles) and Edmond O'Brien

 

Th Apr 22 starting at 8p - back-to-back-to-back  "The Producers", "Psycho", "The Public Enemy" where Cagney hits Mae Clarke with the grapefruit

 

F Apr 23 145p "Rasputin and the Empress" - early 1930s - featuring three Barrymores, John, Lionel, Ethel

 

Sa Apr 24 130p "The Sea Wolf" (1941) - dir. Curtiz, with Lupino-Garfield-Edward G Robinson at top of their game.

   based on a Jack London story so it was never made into a sit-com 

 

Su Apr 25 945p "Somebody Up There Likes Me" (1956) dir. Robert Wise one of the greats and oh-so-versatile.

Paul Newman plays Rocky Graziano. He didn't get top billing but he was on his way. Sal Mineo Joseph Buloff got greater billing. Steve McQueen in minor role and sportscaster-onetime NY Titans owner (pre-Jets) Harry Wismer plays himself.

 

That's all for now.  Remember to stay positive, test negative, and take it easy but take it! 

 

 

 

 

 

I've always loved the adage, "Jazz, baseball and the Constitution are the greatest  achievements of American culture."  I first heard it from the gifted cultural historian/American Studies professor Gerald Early. 

 

No matter its origins, the important thing is the essential truth. All three institutions have endured attacks, most seriously the Constitution these days under our out-of-control President.

 

Let's make sure we are registered to vote in November and use our precious voting franchise. 

 

Meanwhile, the 30 franchises of Major League Baseball have missed a golden opportunity to return to the field by the Fourth of July.  It could have provided some semblance of normality in a country that is wracked by the virus epidemic, soaring unemployment, and police killings of unarmed black citizens.    

 

Instead, the owners under their commissioner Rob Manfred and the leaders of the Major League Baseball Players Association have trotted out their decades-old worn playbook of labor rhetoric. They cannot decide on payment to the players for what will obviously be a shortened season.

 

Manfred, who has been in baseball since the collusion cases against free agents in the 1980s, insists that he has the right to force a season upon the players.  It looks like he may invoke that draconian measure of barely fifty games and then expanded playoffs to satsify TV.   

 

I really wonder whether MLB will ever recover its once-hallowed place in our country. Attendance was sinking before the three enormous social crises erupted.

 

Even before the crises, Manfred had tried to impose the reduction of more than a quarter of minor league baseball's 160 franchises. Under his deputy with the eerily appropriate name of Morgan Sword, it looks like MLB will get its way by default because there will be no minor league season in 2020.

 

Like so much of America these days, it is a sad situation in baseball, made sadder by the wounds being self-inflcted. 

 

So I'm finding solace these days in Turner Classic Movies (TCM), especially its salute to Jazz in Film every Monday and Thursday night in June. 

 

I was pleasantly surprised this past Monday night to see Eddie Muller, the host of the indispensable "Noir Alley" series on TCM (Sat night at 12M and repeated Sun 10A), as guest host. To comment on the films "A Man Called Adam" (1966) starring Sammy Davis Jr. with Cicely Tyson, and Kirk Douglas in "Young Man with a Horn" (1950), Muller invited the talented and accessible pianist Monty Alexander to join.   

 

There were worthy and memorable moments in both films. As Hollywood creations they couldn't be totally convincing, of course.  But the Jamaican-born Alexander, who still occasionally comes into the New York jazz club Birdland, had much to say and talked about "glad-i-tude" for making music.   

 

 I am posting this too late for most of you to catch tonight Th June 11 two classic bio-pics, "The Glenn Miller Story" at 8p (with Jimmy Stewart) and "The Gene Krupa Story" at 10p (with Sal Mineo).  

 

And for you night owls at midnight, there will be al rare Benny Goodman film "Sweet and Low Down" (1943), not to be confused with the Woody Allen film with Sean Penn with the same name. 

 

Mark down Mon June 15 on your calendars. At 8p one of the great noir films with a score by John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet, "Odds Against Tomorrow" (1959).  

 

"Odds" is a very timely film because it is about a bank robbery where two of the gang, Harry Belafonte and Robert Ryan, don't like each other for racial reasons.  (Off-camera they became great friends and were active in the civil rights movement of the time.) 

 

At 10p on June 15, "Farewell My Lovely" (1975) with Robert Mitchum and Charlotte Rampling.

And at midnight Ida Lupino stars as a singer in "The Man I Love" (1946). 

 

I haven't abandoned sports. On Su Jun 14 TCM presents two outstanding movies that use track and field to make profound points about society:  8p Oscar-winning "Chariots of Fire" followed at 10p by "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner."

 

I can't say enough about the value of repeated watching of good movies. Here's a sample of what I've seen lately on TCM. 

 

**"Woman in the Window" 1944 film directed by German exile Fritz Lang. Edward G. Robinson plays a psychology professor at "Gotham" U. who begins the film lecturing his students on murder, unjustified and justified.

 

As he heads to a faculty lounge he passes by an alluring painting of a woman in the window of a storefront. The fellows in his club, including Raymond Massey as a big shot lawyer, talk about how they'd love to meet that woman.  

 

When he leaves the club, Edward G. again walks by the painting and voila! who's there in the shadows but Joan Bennett "the woman in the window".  Since Edward G's wife has taken the kids to the country, he goes out for a drink with Joan and you can kinda guess the rest.

The murder is justified but it is a murder and there are complications. 

 
**John Garfield in "Pride of the Marines" (1945) and the evergreen "Best Years of Our Lives" (1946).  They were both shown on Memorial Day and they brought to life the sacrifices that World War II soldiers endured - Garfield's blindness and the loss of Harold Russell's hands.  Russell, not an actor but who performed memorably, remains the only person ever to win two Oscars for the same movie. 

 

His girl friend Wilma was played in her debut by Cathy O'Donnell who later would shine in the 1948 "They Drive By Night" with Farley Granger (later remade as "Thieves Like Us" by Robert Altman).  O'Donnell wound up marrying director William Wyler's older brother, who was 24 years older than Cathy.  The marriage lasted though they died within months of each other in the late 1960s.  

 

I hope you get a chance to see some of these films one day and also the jazz films this month.

 

That's all for now.  Always remember:  Take it easy but take it.