Lee Lowenfish

Happy International Tango Day, December 11 - get out of your chairs, sedentary dear readers, and move those puppies.  How do I know it is International Tango Day? Because I saw it on the internet so it must be true, right? 

 

Humor must be our constant companion these days and weeks and months ahead.  So let me start with the hilarious Onion headline that popped up the other

day on the internet:  MORE PARENTS SAY ALLOWING CHILD TO PLAY FOOTBALL NOT WORTH RISE OF BEING DRAFTED BY JETS. 

 

New York is going through a truly horrible pro football season with the Jets and Giants simply incapable of playing winning football.  The Giants have an injured and thin roster but the Jets were supposed to be a good team.  Owner Woody Johnson forgot or more likely never understood that relying on aging QB Aaron Rodgers wouldn't lead them to the promised land.  

 

So I don't begrudge the excitement of Mets fans who are celebrating the acquisition of Juan Soto as a free agent with the extraordinary amount of money, a reported $765 million spread out over 15 years. If Soto deems it necessary, he can opt out after 5 years. The blow to the crosstown Yankees no doubt felt like an extra bonus. 

 

But as I was finishing this blog on Tues evening Dec 10, the news came that the Yankees' first return salvo has been signing away from the Atlanta Braves, gifted though somewhat fragile southpaw Max Fried to a eight-year contract for reportedly "only" 27 million a year.  There will likely be more big ticket acquisitions by the Bronx Bombers. 

 

Super-agent Scott Boras and most of the local and national media are applauding the high stakes competition between Mets owner Steve Cohen and Hal Steinbrenner. Smooth-talking Boras even lauds the "goliaths" that we either love or hate so everybody's happy. 

 

I beg to differ. I cannot hail the likelihood of big market domination in MLB. Maybe commissioner Rob Manfred and minions yearn for a Yankee-Dodger or Yankee-Met World Series every year but not me.  I can tolerate a Yankee-Dodger World Series, let's say every 43 years.

 

I am not sure that Blake Snell will become a real ace for the Dodgers, but he is certainly an improvement to their oft-injured starting corps.  At a far lower price versatile middle infielder-outfielder Tommy Edman just re-upped for five years.  It is so hard to project the future of a player, which is why I revere the eyes-and-ears scouting profession. But even I could see in the Cape Cod summer league almost 10 years ago when Edman was still a Stanford collegian that he was a future major leaguer.

 

The common wisdom is that Dodgers are acting within the rules to backload most of their contracts - so, for example, Shohei Ohtani is only being paid $2 million a year to minimize the team's luxury tax penalty.  It is still not good that the smaller markets have little chance to bid for the best players. 

 

I think back to the early 1920s when the Yankees and the Giants squared off in three World Series in a row from 1921 through 1923.  In 1922 Branch Rickey in his fourth full year of running the cash-poor St. Louis Cardinals - multi-tasking in the roles of both field manager and top baseball executive - he had the team in the pennant race until late July.  Then the Yankees picked up third baseman Joe Dugan from the Bosox and the Giants pitcher Hugh McQuillan from the Boston Braves and they went on to win the pennants. 

 

Rickey railed to a St. Louis Rotary Club gathering: "How can those teams without unlimited resources in their deposit boxes have a chance to compete fairly?"

(Source:  my biography BRANCH RICKEY: BASEBALL'S FEROCIOUS GENTLEMAN, P. 135). Newly-installed commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis said that nothing could be done about these acquisitions, but soon thereafter MLB implemented the June 15th deadline - only waiver deals and no trades allowed after that date. A few years after free agency came in after the 1976 season, the deadline was pushed back to late August.  Now it is the end of the July with some of the fat cats wanting the chance to get additions as late as early September.  

  

End of history lesson but more to come in future posts.  On the current Orioles front, I am not sure that Tyler O'Neill is an improvement on homegrown Anthony Santander in right field.  I definitely am a little aghast that they signed defensively challenged Gary Sanchez to be the backup catcher replacing the gritty James McCann who is older but certainly a better receiver.  But I guess the Birds seem to be counting on a revival of Adley Rutschman from his very sub-par second half of the season. 

 

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!   

On the movie front, those film buffs who envy those of us living in the New York area can drool at this news about a Robert Siodmak Festival at the two theaters at Lincoln Center on W 65th Street west of Broadway, W Dec 11 through Th Dec 19.   Siodmak was a German exile from Nazism in the 1930s who became in the 1940s and early 1950s one of the leading if underappreciated directors of Noir Films.   

 

Here is a partial list. Some films are at Bunin Monroe Center 144 W 65th St, others at bigger Walter Reade Theatre across street. 

For info, contact email.ticketing@filmlc.org or 212/875-5825

W Dec 11 630P & Sa Dec 14 230P  "Phantom Lady" (1944) with Franchot Tone/Ella Raines/Elisha Cook Jr./Thomas Gomez

W Dec 11 845P & Sa Dec 14 830P  "Criss Cross" (1949) perhaps his best Noir with Burt Lancaster/Yvonne DeCarlo/Dan Duryea

Th Dec 12 630P & F Dec 13 830P "The Killers" (1946) based on Hemingway story with Burt Lancaster/Ava Gardner

Th Dec 12 845P & F Dec 13 630P "The Suspect" (1944) Set in 1902 England with Charles Laughton as mousy gent pining for Ella Raines

Sa Dec 14 430P & W Dec 18 645P "The Spiral Staircase" (1946) with Dorothy McGuire/Ethel Barrymore/George Brent/Kent Smith

Su Dec 15 230P "People On Sunday" (1930) filmed in Berlin with directors R. Siodmak, Edgar Ulmer, young Billy Wilder

Su Dec 15 430P & W Dec 18 830P  "Son of Dracula" (1943) with Lon Chaney Jr. in New Orleans trying to act like Dad 

Su Dec 15 630P & Th Dec 19 2P "Strange Affair of Uncle Harry" (1946) with George Sanders pining for Ella Raines    

Su Dec 16 1P & Dec 19 630P (not in 4-K restoration) "File on Thelma Jordan" (1950) with Barbara Stanwyck/Wendell Corey

Tu Dec 18 6P & Dec 19 845P "The Cry of The City" (1948) with Victor Mature trying to go straight and Richard Conte going the other way

 

On TCM, Mickey Rooney Thursdays this month has the following films of interest for boxing and car and horse racing fans:

All on Th Dec 12 2P "Killer McCoy" (1946) with Brian Donlevy/Ann Blyth in presumably less malicious role than as Joan Crawford's daughter in "Mildred Pierce" 

6P "The Big Wheel" (1949) with Thomas Mitchell/Mary Hatcher 

8P "National Velvet" (1945) with Elizabeth Taylor/Donald Crisp, directed by Clarence Brown

 

And here's a music documentary note: 

Wed Dec 11 at 8P on Netflix - "The Only Girl In the Orchestra" 33-minute documentary on Orrin O'Brien,

recently-retired outstanding bassist in the NY Philharmonic and the first woman hired by the orchestra. 

 

That's all for now - stay positive, test negative remains my mantra & as always, Take It Easy But Take It! 

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.