Lee Lowenfish

The Orioles' magical 2023 ride hit a serious bump on Fri night Aug 25 when ace closer Felix "The Mountain" Bautista, one strike away from completing a save against the Colorado Rockies, stumbled off the mound after throwing a 102+ mph fastball.

 

Head trainer Brian Ebel and manager Brandon Hyde rushed to the mound and led Bautista away without him even throwing a practice pitch. Some kind of elbow injury was quickly diagnosed and Felix was put on the injured list. He will undoubtedly be lost for the season, and if he needs Tommy John surgery out for all of 2004 and maybe beyond. 

 

Danny Coulombe, a recently re-activated southpaw reliever also having a career year, completed the save on only one pitch.  In a cruel irony, Felix Bautista Bobblehead Day was celebrated the next night and over 42,000

packed Camden Yards to see another Oriole win. 

 

Bautista was present in the dugout to show solidarity with his teammates on a surprising Oriole team that continues to win despite the huge loss - both figuratively and metaphorically - at the back end of the bullpen. 

 

On the eve of their second West Coast trip in the last few weeks, the Orioles are 1 1/2 games ahead of the Tampa Bay Rays, winners of 10 of their 12 games after a disappointing July in which they let the Orioles overtake them. 

 

Tampa has endured its share of injuries, too.  They lost their Cy Young Award-candidate Ryan McClanahan to Tommy John surgery and their pitching roster as always is a merry-go-round of other pitchers going and coming back from surgery. 

 

Even more seriously in the longer run, star shortstop Wander Franco has been indefinitely suspended with pay He is being investigated for several relationships with under-age women in his homeland of the Dominican Republic.  Earlier in the season, he had been briefly suspended by the team for behavior not worthy of "a good teammate." 

 

One wonders what was in the minds of Rays management when they signed Franco a couple of years ago to a 11-year contract reportedly worth upwards of $200 million. I guess the red flags about his questionable behavior faded when they considered what other owners might pay one day on the open market for his transcendent on-field talents.  

 

In spite of these distractions, the Rays have regained the winning touch that saw them begin the year with 13 straight wins and a 30-11 record.  Not the Detroit Tigers 35-5 of 1984 on their way to a wire-to-wire World Series win but quite impressive. They are now 30 games over .500 and for me a MVP-candidate in corner infielder Yandy Diaz.  

 

Fortunately, the crazy-quilt so-called "balanced" schedule at least allows for a big head-to-head matchup of Rays at Orioles Th Sept 14-Su Sept 17.  The inconsistent Red Sox, recently swept at home by defending World Series champ Houston and only 4 games over .500, will have a large say in how the AL East turns out.  They play Tampa 5 times and the Birds 7, including the last 4 games of the season at Camden Yards. 

 

Winning the division will not just be a psychological prize, especially for the Orioles who haven't been in the playoffs since 2016.  It gives the victor almost a week's rest by avoiding the best-of-three wild card round.  There is an argument that a team can get rusty with too much time off, but for me the ability to heal minor injuries and to set up one's pitching rotation are the great positives. 

 

The drama in the AL West is even greater than in the AL East because barring a total collapse, the Rays and Orioles should make the playoffs.  Before games of F Sep 1, Seattle and Houston were virtually tied although Houston had one more win and one more loss. Texas was one full game behind Seattle. 

 

For the sake of drama, I'm hoping that Texas with formidable hitting but questionable pitching stays relevant into the last 10 days of the season because the Rangers and Mariners play each other 7 times in last 10 days of regular season, the final 4 in Seattle.  Houston might have the edge overall because they are the only team that still plays the 2 worst teams in baseball record-wise, the Royals and the Athletics.

 

In the AL Central, the Twins had a chance to bury the Guardians this past week, but they couldn't do it

Minnesota is only four games over .500 but Cleveland is still 6 games under.  The NL Central is not much better but at least the Brewers have been playing much better baseball.

 

They are 15 games over .500,  but did lose a chance on Wed Aug 30 to win a series in Chicago against the surprising Cubs. They couldn't do it and their divisional lead in only 3 games. 

 

In the other NL divisioins, the Braves and Dodgers are running away with their division titles. But the race for the 3 Wild Cards is appropriately wild. The Phillies with the same record as Milwaukee, 74-59, has a 3 game lead on the Cubs.  The third wild card at this juncture is being tightly contested among the Giants who are 1 lost game ahead of the Diamondbacks, 2 lost games ahead of the Reds, and 3 lost games ahead of the Marlins. 

 

A wise person once described the MLB season as really 4 seasons:  spring training, April through August, September, and the playoffs.  We are entering September now and as the late legendary Mets announcer Bob Murphy used to say, "Fasten your seat belts!" 

 

Before I conclude this post, here are some sports-related movies coming up on TCM Turner Classic Movie

cable channel:

Tu Sept 5 features these boxing classics:

1145A "The Champ" (1931) - King Vidor directs irrepressible Wallace Beery and young Jackie Cooper

6P "The Prizefighter & The Lady" (1933) - W.S. "Woody" Van Dyke directs Myrna Loy and heavyweight

    boxers Max Baer and Primo Carnera

 

Wed Sep 6 for night owls or more likely for those can record them: 

215A "Knute Rockne All American" (1940) with Pat O'Brien in title role and Ronald Reagan as the Gipper

400A "Jim Thorpe All American" (1952) with Burt Lancaster in title role, the underappreciated Charles Bickford as Pop Warner, and directed by Michael Curtiz

 

The next two have no real sports connection but wanted to list them: 

Th Sep 7 10p "It Happened In Brooklyn" (1947) with Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Durante, Kathryn Grayson and the introduction for first time of Sammy Cahn's classic "Time After Time" - not much on baseball except likely brief shots of Ebbets Field - also of interest to Noir fans:  Gloria Grahame as a nurse! 

 

F Sep 8 10A "The Petrified Forest" (1936) directed by Archie Mayo from Robert Sherwood's play, a real classic with Humphrey Bogart as the outlaw Duke Mantee, Bette Davis the poems of Villon-reading waitress, and Leslie Howard as the disconsolate writer with a vague desire to see the Pacific Ocean and drown in it

 

F Sep 8 11:15P  "Boys Town" (1938)  Norman Taurog directs Spencer Tracy as Father Flanagan and Mickey Rooney as one of his charges.  

 

And happily Eddie Muller's "Noir Alley" returns before Labor Day

Su Sep 3 12 M/repeated 10A  "The Secret Fury" (1950) Mel Ferrer directs Robert Ryan and Claudette Colbert and keep eyes open for Vivian Vance before she inhabited Ethel Mertz! 

Su Sep 10 Alfred Hitchcock's "The Wrong Man" (1956) with Henry Fonda in title role

 

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

 

 

 

The end of a baseball season, even one as short as this one, always brings melancholy. With Daylight Saving Time ending at Sun at 2AM, the days will grow short, too. For a half-filled-glass kinda guy, it will be suck-it-up, hope-for-better-days time.  

 

There is no doubt that the LA Dodgers deserved to win the Series. Smooth shortstop Corey Seager was a worthy MVP for his offensive production and fine defense.  

 

LA hit and pitched more consistently than the Rays whose lack of offense except for the rookie Randy Azorarena was disappointing if not appalling. Randy was also handled fairly easily with men on base.

 

For a season to end with shortstop Willy Adames taking the last two strikes in a three-pitch punchout from the nearly-flawless Julio Urias was tough to handle.  Highly touted prospect Wander Franco may be replacing Adames in 2021. I would have liked Willy to have gone down swinging. 

 

Or manager Kevin Cash use a pinch-hitter for him.  It was Cash's first World Series as a skipper and he didn't seem to manage with urgency. He could have pinch-hit more often for great defender/weak-hitting catcher Mike Zunino. 

 

I was glad Zunino got his first World Series hit in his last AB in the Series.  And gotta love a guy whose parents were both catchers - they met when father Greg, now a Cincinnati scout, was playing in Italy and his mother Paola was playing for the Italian national softball team.

 

Props to Mike for thanking his wife when interviewed after a big game earlier in the playoffs. But backup Michael Perez might have been used more.  I know during the regular season every time he came up against the Orioles he seemed to deliver a big hit.

 

The classic game was the fourth one, a back and forth affair that ended on a game-tying single by reserve Brett Phillips and two rare errors by Chris Taylor bobbling a single in center field and Will Smith muffing a relay throw not realizing that Arozarena had fallen down between third and home.

 

The real turning point int he Series came in game 5 when the Dodgers immediately scored two runs in the top of the first to wrest whatever momentum the Rays might have had from the previous night's victory.  

 

The old cliche came true again:  "Momentum in baseball is the next game's starting pitcher."

Tyler Glasnost simply did not rise to the occasion in game 5.  After Manuel Margot was caught stealing home to end the bottom of the 4th after the Rays scored two runs, it was up to Glasnow to pitch a shutdown top of 5th.

 

He couldn't do it. He gave up a solo home run to Max Muncy to give LA breathing room.

Props to the Dodgers for scoring so many runs with two outs. More than I've ever seen. 

 

Where Kevin Cash is really being roasted is for yanking Blake Snell in the final game after the 2018 Cy Young-winner had thrown only 73 pitches with nine strikeouts in 5 1/3 superb innings.

 

Snell deserved to face Mookie Betts for a third time despite the infuriating "advanced metric" that said it is a no-no. Even Betts said after the game he was glad Snell was gone.

 

Somewhere in this land and in baseball-loving nations around the world, here's a hope that young pitchers are growing up dreaming of pitching in big games and embracing the challenge of going through an order three times or even more.  It is called pitching.

 

Lord knows what kind of season and what kind of country we face in the weeks and months ahead.  As a Wisconsin Badger fan, I first suffered the loss of a basketball season where Greg Gard's unheralded squad won the last eight games of the season and a share of Big Ten title when the pandemic hit.

 

Football got off to a flying start last Friday with Grahem Mertz's nearly-perfect five touchdown game against Illinois.  And then he tested positive for covid-19 as did his backup QB and coach Paul Chryst and several other players and staff.  The game against Nebraska has been canceled with no makeup planned and Mertz will be out for at least two more games.

 

I haven't even mentioned that the Dodgers' leader and big run-producer Justin Turner tested positive, a result known in the 2nd inning of the last game.  But he wasn't removed until the 8th inning. He was then allowed, unmasked, to join the post-game celebration.

 

In a country where our POTUS is behaving similarly, I worry about the validity of polls showing his likely defeat.  We've been through that before. "We're all in this together" doesn't apply for at least 40% of the country and probably a majority of athletes. 

 

So let me return to my half-filled-glass state and hope for the best in our country and also for some kind of satisfying regular season in 2021.  With also fewer minor league teams axed. Alas, there is no indication that any reasonable solution is at hand.

 

Nevertheless, always remember:  Take it easy but take it!