Lee Lowenfish

It is sad but not surprising that the baseball lockout is impacting spring training.  

The greatest words in English language, "pitchers and catchers are reporting to spring training," mean nothing to the powers in baseball ownership intent on rolling back salaries and letting the hired help realize at long last who is Boss.  

 

MLB Opening Day on March 31, another special occasion, looks threatened, too. Let me be clear, though, that there will be baseball on other levels soon. In fact, the Fordham Rams open their season on Fri Feb 23 at 3P against Sacred Heart of Fairfield, CT, at Houlihan Stadium at Jack Coffey Field.  

 

The park is a little treasure located behind the football stadium and across the street from the New York Botanical Garden.  And if you are into a healthy walk, it's just a little over a mile walk east on Fordham Road to the Bronx's Little Italy on Arthur Avenue.    

 

Manhattan College - now playing home games in Pomona New York at the independent league Rockland Boulders ballpark - waits until March 4 to open its season against Fairleigh Dickinson of Teaneck.   

 

My Columbia Lions head to Jacob DeGrom country to open its season Feb 25 thru 27 against the Stetson Hatters in Deland, Fla.  Stetson is DeGrom's alma mater

where he started as a shortstop until he needed Tommy John surgery.  

 

Columbia's home opener is against Penn with a doubleheader on Sa March 26 starting at 1130A and Su Mar 27 a 12N single game. Satow Stadium at Robertson Field is located west of Broadway & 218 St. Like Fordham, the baseball field is down a little hill behind the football field and affords a lovely view of the Hudson River.   

 

Deland, Florida is the home town of David Fultz, a forgotten but important figure in MLB labor history. Briefly a major leaguer in the early 20th century, Fultz was a well-respected football referee, and the president of the short-lived Baseball Players Fraternity of America.

 

The Fraternity vied with the owners around the time of the Federal League third league challenge and won some small concessions  It died shortly after the Feds folded by the end of the 1915 season.

 

It seems my mind never strays that far from the perennial labor wars in MLB, but, Virginia, let me stress that there will be baseball this year.  Exactly when on the MLB scene is not clear. I still don't know - nor does anybody - who is capable of making a deal on either side.

 

"You Must Believe In Spring" remains one of my favorite mantras.  Thank you Michel LeGrand for your lovely melody with lyrics by the Bergmans, Alan and Marilyn.

 

Meanwhile, my favorite college basketball teams continue to bring me pleasure and hope.  Wisconsin enters a Lincoln's Birthday Feb 12 game against improving Rutgers with a

18-4 overall record and locked in a first place Big Ten tie with formidable Illinois and Purdue.

 

Columbia's women basketball Lions got spanked by defending Ivy League champion Princeton last Saturday, but they will have a rematch at home on Wed Feb 23 at 5p. 

Can't wait to bring my newly acquired cow bell as spectators are welcomed back. 

 

The women Lions can't afford to overlook games against tough Yale on road and Harvard and Dartmouth at home before tackling the mighty Tigers again.

 

And now some tips on the music and movie scenes:

I heard last night (Wed Feb 9) on WQXR's long running series, David Dubal's "Reflections from the Keyboard," his second show dedicated to pianist Arturo Benedetto Michelangeli.

 

Brahms' Second Ballade, an early work, and Chopin's First Ballade in G-Minor, op. 23 took my breath away.  Talk about harmonies that stir the emotions and open the heart!  

A rarely heard Chopin Op. 45 Prelude in C-Sharp Minor was a highlight of the first Michelangeli show.

 

Also featured in Tribute #2 was the slow movement from Beethoven's Piano Concerto #5. One of its melodies must have inspired Leonard Bernstein when he wrote "There's A Place For Us" for "West Side Story".  

 

The Michelangeli show will be rebroadcast on Sunday night Feb. 13 from 10-11P and streamed at wqxr.org   Maybe listen in and mute the Super Bowl which might still be going. 

 

On the live scene, "Friends of Mozart" returns for another season:  

Wed Feb 16 at 7P with a Mozart Oboe Quartet, Beethoven's Variations of "La Ci Da Rem La Mano" from Mozart's "Don Giovanni," & an early Beethoven trio for piano, violin, and cello.  

 

The concert will be at the comfortable and welcoming St. Stephen's Church at 120 W 69 St just east of Broadway. There is no admission charge but a contribution is suggested.

 

On the TCM front, the Noir Alley selections for the rest of February look enticing.

Sa midnight Feb 13 repeated 10A Sun - "Side Street" (1949) with Farley Granger

 

Sa Feb 20-Su Feb 21  "Cast A Dark Shadow" (1955) with Dirk Bogarde the Brit who was a heartthrob of my late sister Carol Norton. He plays a bad guy out to do violence against

Margaret Lockwood.

 

Sa Feb 27-Su Feb 28 "No Way Out" (1950) Sidney Poitier young doctor assigned to treat an unrepentant racist, Richard Widmark.  Also featuring Linda Darnell, Stephen McNally (who played one of the most hateful characters ever in "Johnny Belinda", Jane Wyman's Oscar.) Directed by Joseph Mankiewicz.

 

Other TCM films of note include:

 Th Feb 17 will be Gene Tierney night starting with: 

8P with "Laura" (1944) with Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price, directed by Otto Preminger.  I'm not a collector but I'd love to know the story of the "Baseball" ball bearing game that Andrews is noodling with as he interviews Webb at beginning of film. 

 

945P "The Ghost and Mrs Muir" (1947)

 

1145P "Whirlpool" (1949)

 

Back to Linda Darnell, the Museum of Modern Art has a Darnell festival through the end of March.  The alluring and talented actress, who died at 41 from injuries in a fire, stars in:

F Mar 4 at 130P with Rex Harrison in "Unfaithfully Yours" (1948)

 

F Mar 11 at 130p as part of the great cast in "A Letter to Three Wives" (1949)

 

W Mar 23 at 130p in Rene Clair's "It Happened Tomorrow" (1944) with Dick Powell, on his path from bobby soxer roles into full-fledged dramatic noir, and Jack Oakie who might never have exceeded his portrayal of a Mussolini character opposite Charlie Chaplin's Hitler in "The Great Dictator" but he was a talented and humorous actor who enjoyed a long career.

 

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

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I must admit I didn't know what a "libero" was until I got wrapped up in the University of Wisconsin's stirring rise to their first women's volleyball championship last weekend.  I now know that a libero is the rearmost roaming defensive player in both volleyball & soccer. 

 

Undefeated Louisville and perennial contender Nebraska provided stiff competition for my Badgers in the Final Four. But behind a 6' 8" and 6' 9" front line of senior Dana Rettke and first-year Anna Smrek (daughter of a 1980s-backup-LA Laker champion), Wisconsin won the title in a five-set thriller.

 

"We try to practice gratitude," head coach Kelly Sheffield said during the week leading up to the tourney. "And it's really tough when you're in a grind." But he stressed the importance of appreciating the advantages players have -  competing in a sport they love with teammates who may be friends forever for a truly supportive Madison community.

 

Wisconsin has been blessed with a lot of inspirational leaders and well-chosen psychologists. "If consistency were an island, it would be lightly populated," current basketball coach Greg Gard cited one such thinker last year.

 

Nearly ten years ago, Gard's predecessor Bo Ryan explained how the Badgers overcame a late game deficit to win in Columbus:  "You measure people by what it takes to discourage them."

 

BTW So far this season, the Badgers are a pleasant surprise with a 9-2 overall record and 1-1 in the Big Ten.  How Covid affects the rest of the season is still an unknown but I'm looking forward to more great play from sophomore sensation Johnny Davis.  He has to shine for the team to have a chance at contention in the maelstrom/moshpit known as  B1G basketball.

 

A shoutout is also in order for Badger backup center Chris Vogt from Mayfield, Kentucky.

He not only contributed to two recent wins including the erasure of a 22-point deficit

against Indiana.  But more importantly he has spearheaded relief work in his home town that was devastated by the recent tornados.  His GoFundMe page reportedly raised nearly

$200,000. 

 

Today's last word on Badger exploits goes to National Women's Volleyball Player of Year Dana Rettke who explained the team's success this way:  They have learned to live "in the precious present . . . taking one point at a time and being where our feet are."  Reminds me of the old baseball scout who said that 87% of baseball was played beneath the waist. 

 

IN REMEMBRANCE:

ROLAND HEMOND, 92, who passed away in Arizona on Dec 12. From the age of 10 he was steadily employed in baseball and ultimately won three executive of the year awards. Yet Roland never forgot his roots as a hot dog and soda vendor.

 

His first front office job was as a typist for the Boston Braves.  "I always call him Henry Louis Aaron because that is the name I typed on his form," he once quipped.

 

In this age of impersonal uber-analytics, his kind will never be replicated.  But he must be remembered for his kindness and understanding that the human touch is vital in a sport where someone must lose every day.

 

KENNETH MOFFETT, 90, in Alexandria, Virginia, on Nov 19.  He was the federal mediator in baseball's 1981 strike. After that season, he briefly replaced retiring MLB players union leader Marvin Miller but he was considered too accommodating to owners' interests. 

 

In his less than a year of heading the MLBPA, Moffett and Lee MacPhail, his labor relations counterpart on the management side, hoped to work out a joint drug abuse program. It was not to be.   

 

Moffett moved on to work for the NABET union (of broadcast employees and technicians) and stayed with them when they merged with CWA, the Communication Workers of America.)  I'm glad he was remembered well in Wash Post and NY Times obits.

 

He loved the game of baseball and once coached in youth ball former Oriole Baby Bird southpaw Steve Barber.  He was an avid runner. 

 

   

Maybe early in the new year, there will be a breakthrough to end baseball's latest exercise in labor relations brinksmanship.  All the field managerial positions have been filled now that  Buck Showalter, 65, is taking over the Mets, and former MLB outfielder Mark Kotsay, 46, will lead the Oakland Athletics.

 

Being media savvy is essential for high positions in today's sports so I am sure both men will impress in their introduction to the public. 

 

Whether they can lead the players to the playoffs is another question.  The A's might be headed to Las Vegas in the relatively near future and they could be on the verge of a fire

sale.  

 

As the Yankees manager pre-Joe Torre, Showalter, of course, is a known commodity to the New York market. He has been a TV commentator so he will obviously be more fluent than the previous Mets rookie managers Mickey Callaway and Luis Rojas.  (Carlos Beltran never got to manage even one game because of his role as a player in the Houston sign-stealing scandal).

 

It will be very interesting to see who Buck names as his coaches.  He inherits the former Mets journeyman pitcher Jeremy Hefner as his pitching coach.  

 

Sure hope Jeremy and Buck are on the same page. The trend in baseball, however, is for pitching coaches to be hired by front offices not the manager.  

 

And people wonder why games are so long? "See the ball, hit the ball" has been replaced by pumping the latest analytics into pitchers while batters are gearing up for the proper hand position for maximum launch angle and exit velocity.   

 

More Mets questions:  Can the two horses at the top of the rotation, $43 million a year man Max Scherzer and oft-injured Jacob DeGrom, deliver full-seasons? What kind of year will erratic closer Edwin Diaz provide?  Which Francisco Lindor will show up - the Cleveland star or last year's washout?

 

Very interesting questions all and many more. As a fan of the Woerioles, who just before the lockout lavished $7 million a year on Jordan Lyles, one of the most ineffective pitchers in recent history who is penciled in as a number 2 starter, I guess I'd like to have the Mets' problems.

 

That's all for now!  There is reason to believe that if we don't panic, the latest Covid variant, amicron, might not be life-threatening and maybe even short-lived. So again stay positive, test negative, and take it easy but take it! l