Lee Lowenfish

At this time of year, I often muse about what I would have done if I had been a parent with a child born on February 29. What would I tell him/her during the other three years? I hope without being too heavy about it, I would explain that keeping the equinoxes and solstices in sync with the calendar is important and you don't want to start summer in July.

I couldn't ask, of course, long gone figures how they dealt with Feb 29.  People like Pepper Martin, sparkplug of the Gashouse Gang Cardinals, or Al Rosen, Cleveland's sllugging third baseman & later MLB general manager, or songstress Dinah Shore. I didn't have the access to call Tyrese Halliburton, 23, breakout star guard of Indiana Pacers, or Bligh Madris, 28, trying to make the Tigers in spring training and with that delightful name I hope he does. 

Happily, I think I'll remember the Feb 29, 2024 Leap Day as a special day. Because I went down to New York University's dormitory-athletic facilities building in the former Palladium Theater on E 14th Street for the official opening of the Branca Family baseball training facility.  

After a 40-year lapse without varsity baseball, NYU started playing Division III ball in 2015 but the team lacked convenient space to train. They had been traveling all over the city to find places to practice.

Enter John (Gregory) Branca, a prominent Hollywood entertainment lawyer who represents Bob Dylan, the estates of Michael Jackson and Otis Redding. Smokey Robinson, and many other notable artists.  John is the nephew of Ralph Branca, the Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher and NYU baseball star who also played on the school's basketball team.

John's father, John R. Branca, two years older than Ralph, was a good athlete too, but he served four years on an aircraft carrier during WW II and never enjoyed a pro career.  John R. instead went to NYU on the G.I. Bill and wound up getting two degrees from his alma mater. 

He stayed close to baseball by running local athletic programs in the Branca family home town of Mount Vernon.  Among the future stars who profited were Ken Singleton, originally a Met and then a great Oriole, and basketball's stalwarts Gus and Ray Williams, the former Knick, and Rodney McCray. He was the kind of community-oriented person who saw that lights were put on the playground courts so kids could play at night.  John R. also served as a state assemblyman and later was New York State Boxing Commissioner. 

When John Gregory Branca learned from his son Dylan Gregory Branca, a sophomore pitcher, of the team's travel woes, he acted swiftly. The result is a handsome state-of-the-art 4,400 sq. ft. facility with 3 mounds, 2 batting cages, and also the analytic prerequisites these days of Rapsodo and Trackman. 

John Branca earlier gifted the UCLA baseball program with similar facilities at the Jackie Robinson Field near the campus.  Ralph Branca and Jackie Robinson were teammates and close friends and John Branca has kept that connection alive as a member of the board of directors of the Jackie Robinson Foundation.

Things are looking up for NYU athletics.  The baseball Violets have started the season 4-0 and their home season this year will be played at the handsome independent league Staten Island Ferry Hawks stadium just a short walk from the ferry. 

Both NYU basketball teams are in their Division III playoffs.  The men are hosting Husson College from Maine F March 1 at 645p with a game on Saturday if they win.  The women open on the road also on Mar 1 playing Millsaps College from Mississippi at DeSales College in Center Valley, Pennsylvania. They could host more games the weekend of Mar 8-9 if they win F and Sa.

Meanwhile the Columbia women Lions won a thrilling 67-65 victory over their nemesis, the Princeton Tigers, last Saturday Feb 24 before an enthusiastic packed Levien Gym. They are tied for the Ivy League lead with Princeton with 3 games to play The Ivy League tournament this year will be hosted by Columbia starting March 15.

You can always tell a good NYC crowd when it arrives real early - it was Senior Day for the outstanding Abbey Hsu and her teammates Paige Lauder and Nicole Stephens - and the cheers of "De-fense! De-fense!" happened early and often.     

Turning back to baseball, let me close this post with a remarkable quotation from super-agent Scott Boras after the Cubs' signing his client Cody Bellinger to a "measly" 3-year $80 million contract a few days ago.  As reported by Jesse Rogers on a Feb 28 espn.com post, Boras said:  "Free agency is like a turkey and a thermometer.  You have to go in, see what the temperature is, evaluate it."  

Quite a remarkable metaphor from an agent, given how many human turkeys have been lavished with big contracts by panicked owners.  Don't get me wrong.  I wish Bellinger well - after all, his father is Clay Bellinger from Oneonta, NY, home of the late lamented Oneonta Yankees owned by Sam Nader and his talented family. And Clay was the kind of grinder who won 3 World Series rings, 2 with the Yankees and 1 with the 2002 California Angels.

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

Way back in the way back of the mid-twentieth century, on Wednesday afternoon October 3, 1951 at 3:58p, New York Giants third baseman Bobby Thomson waited for an 0-1 pitch from Brooklyn Dodger reliever Ralph Branca.

 
"There's a long drive, I think it's gonna be," shouted Russ Hodges on WMCA Radio 570 AM.  And micro-seconds later, Hodges shouted not once but four times: "The Giants win the pennant!"  Over in the WMGM 1050 AM radio booth, Red Barber quietly said, "It's in there for the pennant." 

 
I was only nine years old, but I was listening on my parents' old floor model Crosley radio. It might have been to Barber and not Hodges, but Your Honor, I just don't remember.  

But I do vividly remember telephoning my father at his office with the good news because he was a Giant fan from the days of John McGraw. 

 
My boys had been down 4-1 in the bottom of the ninth and the odds didn't look good for the Polo Grounds nine. Giants owner Horace Stoneham had retreated to the center field clubhouse to greet the lads on a good try after the game.

But once Alvin Dark singled to lead off the inning against previously dominant Don Newcombe, ears perked up and hearts began to leap. When my favorite Don "Mandrake the Magician" Mueller singled Dark to third, we had tying run at the plate! True rally in making.

Monte Irvin popped out but Whitey Lockman doubled home Dark to cut lead to 4-2.  

There is nothing like baseball drama in October.  Don Mueller broke his ankle sliding into third so there was a pause as he was helped off the field.  Clint Hartung, who never lived up to the ballyhoo as The Hondo Hurricane, came in to pinch-run. 

Don Newcombe was out and Ralph Branca made the long walk in from the bullpen far away in left field. Coach Clyde Sukeforth is said to have advised manager Chuck Dressen that Carl Erskine had just thrown his vaunted curveball in the dirt and Branca was safer pick. (Though Thomson had homered a few times in the past against Branca.)

And on the 0-1 pitch Thomson swung and soon Russ Hodges was shouting, "They're going crazy, they're going crazy."  I've never believed that Thomson knew what pitch was coming.  I heard from a reliable source that a few days before Whitey Lockman died, he made a definitive comment:  "He still had to hit the ball, didn't he?" 

 
It was 69 years old today - the birthday of Hall of Famer Dave Winfield who was born in 1951.  It remains a special moment (with apologies to Brooklyn Dodger fans who were heart- broken but hey you guys won enough pennants - and we were both rooked six years later when the teams left for California.)

Once the expanded playoffs came into baseball with wild cards were added for best record without winning a division title, Russ Hodges' dramatic call would have lost a little flair.  It would have gone:  "The Giants Win The Pennant! . . . And The Dodgers Win The Wild Card."

 
Which brings us to October baseball in 2020.  The "final fours" in each league could be very dramatic best of five series.  All will be played in "bubbles" in warm weather sites in Texas or southern California.

The pandemic has caused this adjustment, but for decades "warm weather" sites has been a dream of many high-rollers in baseball and television circles. After all, their argument goes, who can afford World Series prices anyway? 

Three of the four divisional series could be called grudge matches, especially Yankees versus Tampa Bay Rays who won season series 8-2. With a no-name lineup of seemingly interchangeable pitching and batting parts, the Rays are defiant in their disregard for Yankee "aura and mystique" (to use the phrase of the politically righter-than-right Curt Schllling). 

That series will be played in San Diego. If the Dodgers won enough in their last years in Brooklyn, what can be said about the Yankees and their entitlement?  So let's bring those games on, starting Monday night Oct 5 on Fox channels for five consecutive nights if necessary.

I must say though I cannot root for Yankees, third baseman Gio Urschela's defensive and offensive performance against his former team Cleveland was truly awesome. It's an overused word these days but certainly true.  He has to have made the people of Colombia very proud.

In Los Angeles, the Oakland Athletics hope to get revenge on the Houston Astros who won the World Series in 2017 but were admonished for their high-tech and low-tech sign-stealing escapades. 

 
Dusty Baker has done a helluva job in his first year managing the Astros who everyone likes to hate. Houston players have hardly been repentant for their role in the scandal. 

But I can never root against a Baker-led team and so I'll say, "Let the best team win . . . without excess chicanery." 

 
In the NL "final four", the Southern California freeway battle between the Padres and the Dodgers will be played in Arlington, Texas, where the World Series will also be held in the Rangers' brand-new billion-dollar Globe Life Stadium.

If San Diego can get back its two starters Clevinger and Lamet that missed the triumph over the Cardinals, it says here that the Padres may have enough hitting to give the Dodgers a run for their money. And their left side of the infield, Manny Machado at third and Fernando Tatis Jr at shortstop, can be spectacular.

 
The Dodgers look exceptionally well-balanced and certainly have a lot to prove after winning 7 NL West titles in a row - now 8 - without a World Series title to show for it. 

The other NL matchup is not exactly chopped liver.  A well-balanced Atlanta Braves team that shut out the Reds twice in the first round faces the 2020 Cinderellas, the Miami Marlins, the "Bottom Feeders" derided by a Phillies broadcaster early in season, now have the last laugh. Philadelphia didn't even make playoffs. They will play in Houston.

 
With the NHL Stanley Cup now in the hands of the Tampa Bay Lightning and the NBA title likely going to LeBron James' LA Lakers, MLB will have the stage to itself n October as it should be.  (I omit from this discussion the NFL and its bowdlerized season.)  

In closing, let's clink glasses to three Baseball Hall of Famers who left us in rapid fashion recently:  Tom Seaver, Lou Brock, and Bob Gibson.  

And to three lesser lights who etched their names in the Baseball Book of Achievement:  Lou Johnson, Jay Johnstone, and Ron Perranoski.   "There is no wealth but life."

That's all for now.  Be well and stay well and as always, take it easy but take it.