Lee Lowenfish

A sloppy but often dramatic World Series came to a quiet close late on Wed night Oct 30 when oft-injured starting RHP Walker Buehler came out of the Dodger bullpen to earn a 1-2-3 save in a come-from-behind 7-6 victory that enabled LAD to win their seventh World Series championship since they abandoned Brooklyn 67 years ago - a mere two years after Brooklyn won its only WS in 1955. 

 

Game 1 this year, won on Freddie Freeman's historic walkoff grand slam, and the concluding Game 5 will go down as classics in World Series history. 

 

Yankee defense had been erratic all year.  It bit them fatally in the top of the 5th inning of Game 5 when two errors of commission and one unrecorded error of omission set the stage for the sudden evaporation of the Yanks' early 5-0 lead. It had been built on 3 HRs - the first by slumping Aaron Judge - and one sweet manufactured run not often seen in the Bronx this year - a double, 4-3 groundout getting runner to third, and SF. 

  

Yankee ace Gerrit Cole had a no-hitter going into the top of the 5th when the perennial pest Enrique "Kike" Hernandez smashed a solid single. Then Tommy Edman stroked a medium-hard-hit line drive to center field that went off Judge's glove for an error, his first of the season and a very rare one in his career.

 

Perhaps Judge was distracted by Kike running on the pitch despite his team trailing by five runs. Just an inning or two earlier, Judge had made a sensational running catch to rob Series MVP Freddie Freeman of his fifth homer in the Series.  

 

With two on and none out, Kike hustled to third on catcher Will Smith's grounder to shortstop Anthony Volpe. The young veteran short-hopped his throw to inexperienced third baseman Jazz Chisholm who couldn't pick it up for a force play. 

 

With bases loaded, Cole bore down and struck out both second baseman Gavin Lux and DH Shohei Ohtani. The amazingly talented Japanese star most likely will need shoulder surgery after his ill-advised poor slide into second base on an unnecessary stolen base attempt earlier in the Series. 

 

Up stepped Mookie Betts who had endured his own batting slump after returning from two months on the injured list after a broken hand caused by a HBP. 

He hit a spinning grounder to the right of first baseman Anthony Rizzo who is a shell of himself from injuries and age.  He didn't move quickly towards first base and Cole was late breaking, a cardial sin for any pitcher.  As he almost always does, Betts hustled down the first base line and easily beat Cole to the bag as a run scored.

 

You don't give a plucky and talented team like the Dodgers three extra outs.  Though he got ahead in the count, Cole gave up a two-run single to Freeman and then a two-run double to Teoscar Hernandez that tied the score. 

 

The Yankees did regain the lead in the bottom of the 6th on two walks, a HBP, and a sacrifice fly by catcher Austin Wells. But in the climactic top of the 8th, two singles, the first by who else? Kike Hernandez; a catcher's interference call against Wells; and two sacrifice flies, the last by Mookie Betts, produced the winning margin. 

 

It's a somewhat interesting factoid that the last out of the 2024 season was made when Buehler struck out Alex Verdugo, the last player in the majors from the trade that brought Betts to LA from Boston.  Most Boston fans that I know still have a warm place in their hearts for Betts who emerged in the Boston system as a second baseman, switched ro right field, and then started this season as the Dodger shortstop before his injury.

 

When he talks to the press, Mookie exudes modesty and even vulnerability.  He credited a chat with Freeman that relaxed him before his game-winning RBI.

Aaron Judge seems like another stand-up fellow when talking to the press.  He was quite honest - perhaps too honest - about how his post-season failures were beginning to gnaw at him. He also took the blame for his rare error that opened the floodgates. 

 

You may be wondering what the great W.R.Burnett has to do with all of this.  Well, growing up in the Midwest in the first decades of the twentieth century, he evidently became a baseball fan.  Resettling in LA in 1929 for the rest of his life after his novel LITTLE CAESAR became a sensation and adapted for the screen, the enormously prolific Burnett only wrote one book on baseball, THE ROAR OF THE CROWD: CONVERSATIONS WITH AN EX-BIG LEAGUER (NY, Clarkson Potter, 1964).

 

Burnett never was a baseball player - he did briefly play freshman football at Ohio State where his grandfather had been the mayor of Columbus and his father had worked closely with Governor James Cox, who lost the 1920 Presidential election to Warren Harding. 

 

But W. R. (William Riley) understood how hard a game baseball was to play.  Check out this passage from ROAR OF THE GAME on slumps that could give Mookie and Judge and any struggling hitter some solace:  "[There is] just no explanation for a slump and no ready remedy."  Except, he insisted, to battle through it with the optimistic spirit which is 75% of baseball:  "There is only one attitude to take in the batter's box - the pitcher is a bum, and you're going to murder him" (pp. 93-94)

 

You get a chance to see one of Burnett's stories on Noir Alley this Sunday Nov 3 at 1230A and 10A - "Nobody Lives Forever" (1946) starring John Garfield with

Geraldine Fitzgerald and Faye Emerson as the women in this handsome gangster's life that he tries to balance with predictably disastrous results.  The absorbing novel of the same name was republished earlier this year by Stark House Noir Classics in Eureka, California. 

 

Except for "Million Dollar Mermaid" (1952) with Esther Williams playing champion swimmner Annette Kellerman on W aft Nov 6 215P EDT, there are no movies with sports content to list. But here are some of the other memorable ones coming up shortly.

 

F Nov 1 8P "Being There" (1979) Peter Sellers as gardener who runs for President.  With Shirley MacLaine and Melvyn Douglas

 

Sa Nov 2 8P "A Face In The Crowd" (1957) Andy Griffith's powerhouse performance as guitar-slinging Lonesome Rhodes with Patricia Neal/Walter Matthau/Lee Remick in her debut

  followed at 10P by Billy Wilder's acerbic "Ace In The Hole" (1951) with Kirk Douglas as cynical reporter ready to milk a tragedy for all its worth

 

Su Nov 3p after the repeat performance of "Nobody Lives Forever" get this lineup:

12N  a classic Hitchcock: "North by Northwest" (1957) Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason

230P Bette Davis in "Payment on Demand" (1951)

415P Joan Crawford in "The Damned Don't Cry" (1950)

6P a classic Orson Welles: "Touch of Evil" (1958) with Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh

and then for something shall we say slightly mellower, 2 with Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo:

8P "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (1947) also with Boris Karloff

10P "A Song Is Born" (1948) also with Benny Goodman and his musicians - (revival of the better "Ball of Fire" (1941) with Gary Cooper/Barbara Stanwyck)

 

M Nov 4 two classic John Cassavetes/Gena Rowlands films

8P "Woman Under The Influence" (1974)

10P "Gloria" (1980)

 

A belated congrats to the NY Liberty who won their first WNBA title with a thrilling, nay heart-stopping, overtime victory over the Minnesota Lynx. Kudos to Liberty coach Australian-born Sandy Brondello and also to outstanding Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve who led the USA National Team to its stirring gold medal win over France in the Paris 2024 Olympics (corrections from an early edition of this blog). 

 

That's all for now.  Regardless of how the election turns out, I'll be back on this post before too long.  In the meantime, always remember:

Stay positive, test negative; Take it easy but take it; and make sure to turn your clocks back by 2AM on Sun Nov 3. 

 

 

 

 

 

Here we go again in baseball.  Labor-management relations at a standstill.  

Everything old is new again.  

 

"Defensive lockout," according to commissioner Rob Manfred, is necessary to make an agreement.  And war is peace.  And slavery is freedom.

 

It is a more complicated issue than billionaire owners versus millionaire players so I wish that short-hand description could be scrapped.   But it does come down to money

and plenty of it.  

 

Average salaries in baseball have been dropping in recent years and so have median salaries which is a more important figure.  Other pro sports have passed baseball in

the median quality - the midpoint between the richest and the least hightly-paid player.

 

It will be key for the players that two of their union leaders, the newly-enriched free agents Max Scherzer and Marcus Semien, keep their less financially-endowed brethren informed of developments.  They likely will but the prospects for a deal look far away right now.

 

I have a suspicion that those fans who bellow the loudest about greedy players would probably be the first people to jump in line to get the most money out of misguided owners.

Over time, they have never been able to stop themselves from putting that shiny free agent on the mantelpiece when huckstered by clever player representatives.

 

If you want more historical background on owners' inability to control themselves, check out my first book, THE IMPERFECT DIAMOND which was updated in a second and third edition.

 

In my intro, I noted the late satirist Mort Sahl's comment that Richard Nixon's memoir

"Six Crises" should have come out in a looseleaf edition so you could just add the crises.

So goes it with the baseball labor story except in 2021 total attendance is not up and it may

not return if there is any protracted shutdown.

 

I suggest that there better be some agreement before the Super Bowl - which is late this year, Feb. 13, because of the expanded 17-game NFL schedule.  Otherwise, spring training games and the regular season starting on March 31 will be impacted.

 

I was wondering why the Braves hadn't resigned Freddie Freeman, their leader and first baseman and lifelong Brave.  Then I discovered that his agent is Casey Close, a former

U of Michigan player and briefly a Yankee farmhand who became Derek Jeter's player agent and is now a big mover and shaker in the sports business firmament.  

 

It is not only Scott Boras trying to get top dollar from owners. In fact, in some ways Boras is admirable because as far as I know his Boras Corporation is not yet connected to a huge conglomerate as most agents like Casey Close are.

 

As for me, I will try to ignore the power plays, egos, and greed on both sides.  I applaud versatile Chris Taylor for re-signing just before the lockout with the Dodgers who realized they made a mistake in letting another grinder like Kike Hernandez get away last off-season to the Boston Red Sox.

 

I love grinders, players who know how to win and do the "little things" that don't appear in box scores.  In fact, as one wise person recently said, "There are no little things."

 

My cheering for the rest of the fall and winter will focus on Wisconsin Badgers men's

basketball who improved to 8-1 earlier today (Sat afternoon Dec 4) convincingly beating state rival Marquette 87-73.  Johnny Davis is an exciting player coming into his own and the rest of the team is playing good team basketball.

 

I'm also following closely, and in person when I can, my other alma mater, Columbia's women's basketball which has started 7-2 in the pre-Ivy League season. They are a versatile and speedy team and fun to watch under coach Megan Griffith who played for

non-contending Columbia teams and assisted at great Princeton winning teams.

 

Methinks she and all good coaches imbibe the great Christy Mathewson saying:

"I have learned little from winning. I have learned everything from losing."

 

Picked for 3rd in pre-season polls, the Lions will play their top rivals Princeton and Penn at home, respectively, on F Jan 7 at 7p and Sa Jan 8 at 5p.   They open league season at home Su Jan 2 at 1p against Yale.  Check out gocolumbialions.com for ticket info and other stories.  

 

In closing, I want to rave about the "La Boheme" I attended late last month at the

Metropolitan Opera.  It was my first foray to live opera since before the pandemic.

 

The orchestra and chorus under Korean woman conductor Eun Sun Kim making her NYC debut never sounded better.  The story of the irrepressible bohemians in 19th century France never fails to captivate.  

 

I wasn't familiar with any of the singers but they all performed with elan in the long-running Franco Zefferelli production. 

 

Conductor Eun Kim returns to the Met for four more "Boheme"'s on May 16, May 20,

May 24, and May 29 all at 8p.  There will be four other "Boheme"'s in January.

 

Sunday afternoon Jan 9 at 3p, a welcome innovation for opera.  Why should ballet and concerts have the audiences Sun afternoons to themselves?

 

There will be the national radio broadcast on Sa Jan 22 at 1p, and two weeknight performances at 8p, Jan 13 and Jan 18.

 

For Bohemeatologists, if I can coin a word, the 1926 silent movie "Boheme"

directed by the notable King Vidor, airs on TCM early Mon Dec 6 at 1:15a. 

 

Speaking of TCM, its Star of the Month is Ingrid Bergman, aired mainly on Weds.  

I caught her the other night in "Gaslight" 1944, directed by George Cukor, and her performance opposite convincing bad guy Charles Boyer, was so riveting that I passed up the first half of Wisconsin-Georgia Tech game.

 

"Gaslight" marked the debut of 18-year-old Angela Lansbury as a sassy maid in the

Victorian household.  The next year she had a haunting role in Albert Lewin's "Picture of

Dorian Gray" opposite Hurd Hatfield and with George Sanders. 

 

Her haunting rendition of the little yellow bird song remains constantly with me. "Dorian Gray" might be found on TCM On Demand.

 

Mentioning Lansbury makes me think of the recent death of Stephen Sondheim, 91.

More on him and his impact on so many people, including the New Yorkers who burst out in song when they learned of his death, next time. 

 

As well as reflections on the incomparable David Frishberg, 88, who mastered jazz piano and vocals and lyrics and composition. And through "Van Lingle Mungo" and "Matty" made a lasting contribution to baseball.  

 

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

ever, stay positive and test negative.