Lee Lowenfish

Nobody can predict how a schedule made up in the summer of 2023 can create high drama in Sept 2024.  It turns out that the final two weeks of the baseball regular season will feature tremendous matchups that will affect not only next month's playoffs but could even lead to curtains for the losing teams.  

 

I'm sad to report that there is fear and trembling among the Oriole faithful that thought playoff participation was a lock and even advancement deep into October was a possibility. I must say that I never drank the Kool-Aid that we had the "best farm system in baseball."  I just hope that the failures of highly touted Jackson Holliday - ballyhooed as the "best prospect in baseball" whatever that meant - and almost-as-highly-touted Coby Mayo will not lead to permanent damage to their careers.

 

I'm not forgetting that injuries have crippled the Oriole offense: the HBP that broke the throwing hand of feisty 2b-3bman Jordan Westburg (he could be back next week); speedy savvy fellow infielder Jorge Mateo, gone for the season with an elbow injury caused by a freak collision with shortstop Gunnar Henderson (the only regular producing with the bat despite erratic shortstop play); and more recently the sprained ankle of versatile infielder Ramon Urias and sprained wrist of first baseman Ryan Mountcastle. 

 

Yet other teams have bounced back from even bigger injuries as we'll see below. Mediocre trades by top baseball ops man Mike Elias have not fortified the bench and the Birds' "deep depth" - that wonderful Earl Weaver/Yogi Berra phrase - has vanished. It's painful to watch the inexperienced Holliday and Mayo used as pinch-hitters late in games.  

 

There will thus be less drama for the much-anticipated Oriole visit to Yankee Stadium on Sep 24-26. Before games of tonight Sep 16 the Yanks held a 3-game lead on Baltimore and will play in Seattle with the Mariners only three lost games out of the third wild card currently held by Minnesota.

 

The Twins are in the most precarious wild card situation and face the Guardians in Cleveland for 4 big games starting tonight Sep 16 through Th Sep 19.  They then spend the weekend at the out-of-contention Red Sox and then return home for the final week, a series with the NL expansion Marlins and then one with the Orioles.  At least Minnesota and Baltimore have a deep history in the American League.  It could be a meeting of two teams desperately hanging on to a playoff dream.  

 

After their West Coast trip to Seattle, hanging on to the hope of catching Minnesota for the third wild card, and a final visit to Oakland, the Yankees wind up the season at home with the Orioles and then the Pirates.  This last series with Pittsburgh is one of the preposterous inter-league matchups that have marred the September schedule for too long. When the Orioles return home for their final week of regular season series, they will first face the SF Giants from Tu through Th Sep 17-19.  It says here that this crucial time of season is not the time for a matchup of teams unfamiliar with each other. 

 

The fast-charging Tigers come to Baltimore this weekend Sep 20-22.  Detroit just took two out of three from the Orioles at home and have the best record in MLB since early August. I wasn't thrilled that in the first two games of the series, the Tigers used an opener in the first inning, the same pitcher too, the immortal Beau Brieske. It's not against the rules to use an opener, of course, but it reveals to me the abject failure of most major league organizations to develop pitchers that can throw six innings or more. 

 

Commissioner Rob Manfred wants to decree a six-inning minimum for starters but you can't meaningfully change pitching routines by fiat - it requires a change in philosophy that downplays raw velocity and humongous spin rate and stresses pitchability, i.e. the ability to change speeds and pitch to contact and rely on your defense.  There will have to be significant internal pressures to force these changes. Speaking truth to power is never easy, but there will be more thoughts on this important subject in off-season posts. 

 

Before their visit to Charm City, the Tigers have a huge 3-game series at Kansas City starting tonight M Sep 16. To give you a sense of how the Tigers are coalescing at the right time, in yesterday's (Sun Sept 15) 4-2 win over Baltimore, outfielder Riley Greene hit his first two home runs off a lefthander all season if not in his career.

 

The Royals are one of 2024's best feel-good stories, a team eagerly awaiting their first playoff experience since winning the World Series in 2015. They are only two games behind my Birds for the first wild card and a home field advantage in playoffs. 

 

The Royals have an MVP candidate in shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. (although it would be hard to vote against Aaron Judge of the Yankees). KC also features a revived veteran catcher-occasional first baseman-leader in Salvador Perez.  The former Met Seth Lugo has had an excellent year on the mound. I find it hard not to root for someone who almost uses a full windup! 

 

After the Royals finish with the Tigers, they might catch a break with two inter-league series: the Giants at home this weekend and then the Nats in Washington.  But they end up with three at Atlanta, another inter-league series that sticks out like a sore thumb and yet could provide high drama. 

 

The Braves and Mets are currently tied for the third wild card in the National League.  Despite the early season loss of pitcher Spencer Strider and MVP outfielder Ronald Acuna Jr and more recently offensive producers, third baseman Austin Riley and second baseman Ozzie Albies, Atlanta has hung in there as a contender.  Rookie Spencer Schwellenbach has stepped up on the mound, and after many injuries center fielder Michael Harris II is back and has again shown his abilities as a game-changer.

 

Three cheers to Braves utilityman Whit Merrifield who has somehow bounced back from a serious finger injury from a HBP plus a batted foul ball off his leg to provide spark.  He also has had the courage to call for an investigation of the rushing of rookie pitchers from the minor leagues who may throw 100 mph but don't know where the ball is going.  Merrifield is on a joint player-management committee that discusses such issues. He has vowed to do something about the situation in off-season meetings.

 

Atlanta has one more game tonight - M Sep 16 - against the Dodgers at home and then play this coming week at Cincinnati, long out of the race but with enough offense and occasioinal good pitching to make trouble. For the weekend they go to Minnesota in another preposterous inter-league matchup but with great import for both teams.

The Twins are the third wild card as of this writing but they are wildly inconsistent in large part because three offensive stars, Carlos Correa, Royce Lewis, and Bryan Buxton, are regularly injured, especially the later two. 

 

The Braves return home for the final week to face the arch-rival Mets with whom they're tied before games of Sep 16.  And then they wind up with the Royals.

They are playoff experienced and their big three on the mound, Chris Sale, Max Fried, and Spencer Schwellenbach, would be a tough matchup in the playoffs.  But of course they have to get there first.  

 

The one NL wild card contender that has impressively improved its record recently is San Diego, 85-65 as of this writing.  They host AL Central leader Houston, a scary team in any playoff because of their vast post-season experience, and then the White Sox come in this weekend.  San Diego spends the last week on the road at the Dodgers and then the Diamondbacks, the second wild card leader as of now.  Lots of drama likely ahead for the Padres.  

 

One of the more perceptive points I've read recently on Oriole blogs is given the troubles of Holliday and Mayo, what a player young Manny Machado must have been to come up in August 2012 at the age of 19 under the guidance of manager Buck Showalter, playing a new position third base, and give Baltimore a boost into the playoffs after 15 years of non-participation.  Now at age 32 Machado is spearheading a revived Padres under former Cardinals manager Mike Schildt. In some ways, what Jazz Chisholm has done for the Yankees playing a new position, also third base, is comparable. 

 

I'm happy too for the resurgence of Jurickson Profar from Curacao, once a Baseball America cover boy as that Best Prospect in Baseball, who has found success as a solid run-producing left fielder after a long journey of mediocrity.  The Padres also feature young center fielder Jackson Merrill who to me should be a lock as Rookie of the Year of the National League. 

 

I don't really believe in jinxes, but I hope Mets fans forgive me if I went a bit overboard in singing their praises in my last post. This past weekend, they lost two close games in Philadelphia. The Phillies now have a two game lead over the Dodgers for home field advantage throughout the playoffs.  The Mets play the improved pesky Nats and Phillies this week at home and then wind up with the big series at Atlanta and then at Milwaukee. 

 

The Brewers long ago clinched the NL Central and unless there is a good chance that they could have the best record in NL, they might just be playing the last series to stay in shape and set up their pitching rotation for the playoffs.  The Mets have to hope that the back discomfort of MVP candidate Francisco Lindor is minor and he can contribute mightily down the stretch. 

 

The loss of Jeff McNeil to another HBP is not helping their depth even if he is having an off-season. As I said last post, closer Edwin Diaz has to regain consistency. Of course, except for Emmanuel Clase of the Guardians, there has been no great closer in 2024 which is a major reason why there is no clear favorite in the playoffs. 

 

I've rarely tried my hand on prognostications. An exception: During my next-to-last year in graduate school at U of Wisconsin-Madison, I did predict in the mid-summer of 1967 that the Red Sox would overtake the Twins for the AL pennant.  I was right on with that one because I thought Boston playing Minnesota at home would have the pitching and the Fenway advantage to contain the power-happy Twins.

 

I haven't made any predictions since then. It was 20 teams in 1967 and two bulky 10-team leagues and then one World Series.  Now there are 30 teams and six divisions and 12 teams eligible for four rounds of playoffs. If the owners had their way in the last Basic Agreement, they would have pushed for 14 and of course higher-priced playoff tickets for every participant.

 

If this system remains in place indefinitely, some time in the lives of the younger readers of this blog, the regular season will have to be shortened.  For now, I don't want to begrudge the hopeful feelings for fans of those teams still in the wild card hunt.  Yet I cannot help thinking of how Russ Hodges, if he had lived into the Wild Card era, would have called the famous Bobby Thomson home run on Oct 3, 1951: 

"THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT, THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT, THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT, THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT, . . . AND THE DODGERS

WIN THE WILD CARD!!" 

 

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT . . . 

Don't have any major sports-related movies on TCM to share but here are some films of interest, some of which have a sports moment:

Tu Sep 17 945A - the Marx Brothers in "A Night At The Opera" (1935) with a crucial version of "Take Me Out To Ball Game" near the end

 

W Sep 18  715A Frank Sinatra debuts the song "Time After Time" in "It Happened In Brooklyn" (1947)

9a "The Story of Seabiscuit" (1949) fictionalized version of the underdog horse's story with Shirley Temple and Barry Fitzgerald

     and three classics back-to-back:

6p "White Heat" (1949) with Cagney in perhaps his last great role 

8p "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946) John Garfield & Lana Turner can't resist passion for each other in story by James M. Cain

10p "Born To Kill" (1947) brutal but absorbing drama with Lawrence Tierney and Claire Trevor (a year before she is forced to sing in "Key Largo"

   and then plays a sanitized Mrs. Babe Ruth in "Babe Ruth Story")

 

Th Sep 19 10P "Modern Times" (1936) - Chaplin's last silent movie with his then-amour Paulette Goddard

 

F Sep 20 9A "Strangers On A Train" (1951) Farley Granger as a besieged tennis player in a Hitchcock classic; nice scenes at Forest Hills tennis club

 

and talk about a couple of timely films:

2p "Berlin Express" (1948) A search for post-WW II Nazi operatives, with Robert Ryan/Merle Oberon/director Jacques Tourneur 

330p "The Tall Target" (1951) foiling of an attempted train assassination of Abe Lincoln with Dick Powell/Adolph Menjou/Paula Raymond/dir. Anthony Mann

 

8p "Dr Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb" (1964)  Peter Sellers in 3 roles/also George C. Scott/Sterling Hayden/Keenan Wynn

945p "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington" (1940) Jimmy Stewart gets disillusioned in DC and tries to fight back - not my favorite Capra film

  but always worth seeing 

 

ERRATUM from last post:  It was Jessica Pegula who was runner-up at US Tennis Open earlier this month, not Jennifer.

 

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

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

The New York Met family and its legion of fans were saddened last week by the news of the passing of Bud Harrelson, 79, on Jan 11 at an hospice house after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease. 

 

He was the starting shortstop on the 1969 Miracle Mets and the 1973 NL champs that lost a hard-fought 7-game World Series to the Oakland A's (who were in the middle of their three-peat of world championships.) Harrelson became a national figure when during the championship series against the Reds, he and the much sturdier Pete Rose had a skirmish when Rose slid too hard into him at second base.

 

I was watching on TV when the incident happened. I will never forget the peace contingent including manager Yogi Berra, Tom Seaver and Rusty Staub  walking to the left field wall to plead with upper deck fans to stop littering the field lest the umpires call a forfeit in favor of the Reds.  

 

Harrelson also was the third base coach for the victorious 1986 Mets, becoming the only Met to wear the team's uniform for both Met world championships.  In the famous video of Ray Knight scoring the winning run in Game 6 of the World Series after first baseman Bill Buckner's error, it is Harrelson running towards home plate side by side with Knight. Bud later quipped that he made sure he didn't beat Ray to the plate. 

 

He also managed the 1990 Mets to 91 wins, but in another example of impetuousness in the agonizing history of the franchise, he was fired in the middle of the 1991 season, still finishing his MLB managerial career with an overall 145-129 record.  He made Long Island his permanent home and became an original and continuous part-owner of the independent Long Island Ducks whom he managed to an Atlantic League championship in 2004. 

 

Harrelson was born on D-Day June 6, 1944 in the East San Francisco Bay town of Niles but he grew up a little south in Hayward.  Despite his small frame - his listed 5' 11" 160 pounds was an exaggeration - he was a great all-around athlete and attended San Francisco State on a basketball scholarship.  But he only played baseball there. According to Bill Nowlin's characteristically informative SABR Bioproject essay, Mets scout Roy Partee signed Harrelson after his 1963 college season. 

 

It was two years before the introduction of the amateur free agent draft and Partee, a former Red Sox catcher who wasn't much bigger than Harrelson, won Harrelson's services over the Yankees and a few other teams with an offer of probably a little over $10,000. Harrelson arrived in Queens in 1965 and when Seaver arrived in 1967, two key pieces were in place for the 1969 triumph.

 

My guess is that scout Roy Partee probably came to work for the expansion Mets with Johnny Murphy, the former great Yankees relief pitcher who worked for over a decade in the Red Sox player development system and became the Mets first scouting director and later general manager. 

 

For those of you so drunk on analytics that you don't think pitching and defense are important, the 1969 Mets scored only 15 more runs than the sad sack 1962 Mets. Though Harrelson's career BA was only .236, all but the last three seasons with the Mets, he was a 1970-71 NL All-Star and solid defensive shortstop.   

 

My most vivid personal memory of Harrelson is when he spoke in Babylon, Long Island in 2010 at the dedication of a cornerstone to mark where the Cuban Giants first played in 1885. The team consisted of African-American waiters at the nearby Argyle Hotel who, given the virulent racial segregation of the time, could not openly admit their slave ancestry so posed as "Cubans".  

 

Harrelson told the gathering that he knew about the Negro Leagues of the twentieth century, but the story of the Cuban Giants as the first organized black baseball team was new to him and he was glad to learn the story.  He told me afterward that his own family roots were in Minnesota but they were "Grapes of Wrath" people who moved to California to find a better life.

 

Bud's father worked as an auto mechanic and never had a chance to pursue an athletic career. He passed on his love of the game to his son and Bud Harrelson wound up serving it very well.  He became one of baseball's good guys and his quiet passion and level-headedness will surely be missed. 

 

Too often in blogs and other publications errata are buried at the end.  So let me mention here a couple of changes from my last post.  The recently-retired Astros outfielder is Michael Brantley.  Mickey Brantley was his father who also played in the big leagues.

 

And Columbia's women's basketball great senior guard is Abbey Hsu, not Abby.  The Lions keep on rolling and are 3-0 in Ivy League and 12-3 overall, riding a 10-game winning streak into formidable Princeton on Sat aft Jan 20 for a 4p matchup that will be broadcast on ESPN News. 

 

My other favorite basketball team, the Wisconsin Badger men, lost at Penn State on Tu Jan 16), suffering their first Big Ten loss game of the season.87-83.  They simply could not contain the swift Nittany Lion guards, Kanye Clary and Ace Baldwin, Jr. who led virtually all the way in a 87-83 win. Max Klesmit, a recent breakout scorer for Wisconsin, was plagued with foul trouble and scored only 10 points.  His defense was sorely missed this night but

then again it was the speed of the Penn State guards that caused his lack of playing time.    

 ,

As I mentioned last post, the 20-game Big Ten schedule is a severe test of skill and endurance.  I guess you can say that about most conference play but there is a special intensity in the Big Ten - which of course is now the Big 14 and soon will be the Big 18. Maybe it comes from dealing with the ferocious weather at the height of the season.  

 

On the movie front, "American Fiction" blew me away with its amazing ability to move from hilarity to tenderness without missing a beat. Cord Jefferson, who used to write for "USA Today" and was an editor of the defunct "Gawker" e-zine, both wrote and directed the movie based on the 2001 Percival Everett novel, "Erasure".  Jeffrey Wright leads an impressive cast with Leslie Uggams as his mother.  Yes, that Leslie Uggams still bringing it at age 80.

 

My best experiences seeing films have always come with low or no expectations.  I had seen the trailer for "American Fiction" but had read nothing else about the puckish story of an English professor frustrated that his high class novels don't sell while other dumbed-down books are best sellers so he decides to do somethng about it. 

 

I really hadn't read that much about "Oppenheimer" either, but had high hopes for it because I lived through the Red Scare and the civil defense craze of the 1950s and knew that Robert Oppenheimer had been instrumental in developing the atomic bomb.  I must say though I left the film mainly disappointed because the sound track was far too intrusive. It even overwhelms the dialogue at times. I saw it at an IMAX theater and it is not a film made for IMAX.  The acting is fine but three hours without intermission was too much for me.

 

On the other hand, my first opera of the season, Verdi's "Nabucco", thrilled me to the marrow.  It is considered Verdi's first major opera, debuting in 1842. The early first act trio featuring the rival Babylonian half-sisters Fenene (sung by Maria Barakova from Kemerova, Russia) and Abigaille (sung by Liudmyla Monastryska from Kiev, Ukraine) and Ismaele, nephew of the King of Jerusalem (sung by SeokJong Baek from Seoul, Korea), matches in power and beauty anything I've heard in a long time.   

 

Like most operas, the libretto strains credulity.  Unlike most operas, this one ends with the death of only one of the protagonists although plenty of common people do get wiped out off stage in the incessant wars around the Babylonian Captivity of the Israelites in 600 B.C.E. 

 

The famous third act chorus, "Va, pensiero," sung by the lost Israelites, always brings the house down. It was moving to read in the program that when Verdi died in 1901, there was a public memorial in which thousands sung this famous chorus conducted by the future lion of American conducting, Arturo Toscanini. 

 

There are three more chances to hear this "Nabucco" all with the same cast conducted by Daniele Callegari (from Milan).  

Thursday Jan 18 8p; Su Jan 21 3p; and F Sep 26 at 8p.  

 

The set for "Nabucco" is 20 years old and some people have tired of it.  A new production of "Carmen" can be seen F Jan 19 and Tu Jan 23 at 730p.  

It is worth noting that there will be no performances at the Met from Jan 28 thru Feb 25.

 

Rush seats from as low as $20-$25 are often available if you were willing to wait on line before the Met box office opens at 10AM.  More info available

at metopera.org   

 

One TCM tip - Tu Jan 23 at 1130A - Joe E Brown as a swimmer vying for young Ginger Rogers in "You Said A Mouthful" with Preston Foster.

 

And fond retirement wishes to Clayelle Dalfares who broadcast her last WQXR radio programs last weekend.  She is also a great baseball fan who around this time or a little later would make reference to the coming arrival of pitchers and catchers in spring training. 

 

Time is on our side.  The equipment trucks will be heading to Florida and Arizona before my next post and just remember when the Super Bowl is over Feb 11 the next week the camps will open. 

 

Re: the Super Bowl, I'd love to see the Lions make it after all the suffering of their fans for decades. And I'm torn between rooting for long-suffering Buffalo Bills and Baltimore's Ravens.

 

Baltimore quarterback Lamar Jackson seems to be a maturing star with enormous talent and a very admirable off-field profile - he is his own

agent.  A story worth exploring in an upcoming blog.

 

For now, always remember:  Take it easy but take it and stay positive, test negative.