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.