Lee Lowenfish

I can't resist the old joke.  "Why are people tired on April First?"  Answer - Because they have just been through a March of 31 days.  

 

OK, it's pretty bad but please give me some leeway. 

There will be no Columbia baseball for the second year in a row as the Ivy League has called off all spring sports - my Wisconsin Badgers basketball team is collapsing into the nether regions of the tough Big Ten - and although "President Biden" remains a lovely two-word phrase, the problems of governing this divided country remain imposing.

 

I try to find half-filled glasses.  

**The growing number of available vaccinations against Covid are a positive.  Now if people wear masks and keep practicing social distancing, there will be light at end of the tunnel. 

 

**The Orioles' Trey Mancini got a hit in his first Grapefruit League at-bat on Sunday after missing a season recovering from Grade 3 colon cancer.  Rooting for him will be the easiest job of the season.

 

The Orioles seem committed to his playing first base which is a good move. The highest paid, least productive Oriole, Chris Davis, might DH now and then, or just ride the pine as he collects two more years on his enormous contract. 

 

Let's hope the full MLB season is played.  The Triple-A season was supposed to start on April 6 and the Double-A season on May 4. Now because of covid concerns, Triple-A baseball won't start until early May.

 

One of the quirks of the new Double A schedule is that there will be a lot of six-game series with a Monday off.  It reminds of the 192-game schedule of the old Pacific Coast League before the Giants and Dodgers' relocation to SF and LA in 1958 prompted its restructuring.

 

On the basketball scene, there have been no Columbia losses to gripe about because there was no season.  We alums can and do BIRG - bask in reflective glory - about the play of our star point guard Mike Smith's great season as a graduate transfer at the University of Michigan. 

 

The Wolverines now stand as the number two team in the country after throttling contending Iowa last week.  They have lost only one game all season in the very tough Big Ten. 

 

Freshman seven-foot center Hunter Dickinson from DeMatha HS in Hyattsville MD (outside DC) has been a revelation and seems to be improving each game.

 

"March Madness" will be held in only one city this year, Indianapolis, and #1 Gonzaga and Michigan right now look like teams to beat.  Gonzaga has never won the title so it says here that the ghosts of past failures will be a significant hurdle for them to overcome. 

 

On the pro scene, the New York Knicks under new coach Tom Thibodeau are at .500 which is a huge improvement over recent seasons.  Thibodeau has finally got them playing defense and I enjoy his intensity.  

 

He reminds me in some ways of Rodney Dangerfield. I can almost envision him grumbling behind his mask, "We get no respect!" 

 

The Brooklyn Nets under rookie coach Steve Nash certainly have the firepower to contend for a NBA title.  I'm not crazy about the way James Harden manipulated his way to become part of the Big Three of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving but he certainly has played well in his new home.

Unlike the other two, so far he has been very durable.  

 

Meanwhile, as always, TCM movies keep me believing that a culture that produced such thoughtful and vivid movies last century can figure out a way to get us through the pandemic and reach some kind of social understanding.

 

For the baseball fan in March, the TCM films are for the early riser or you can tape them.   

 

Sa March 6 at 630A "Big Leaguer" - 1953, first film directed by Robert Aldrich. Shot at NY Giants minor league camp with Edward G. Robinson as manager trying to save job, Vera-Ellen as niece, Jeff Richards and Richard Jaeckel as competing players and cameo appearances by Giants farm director and Hall of Fame pitcher Carl Hubbell and Al Campanis as a Dodger farmhand manager. 

 

Sa Mar 13 630A  "The Stratton Story" - 1949, based on true story with Jimmy Stewart playing pitcher Monty Stratton trying to make a comeback from a hunting injury. With June Allyson and Jimmy Dykes playing himself. 

 

Tu Mar 16 630A  "The Winning Team" - 1952 with Ronald Reagan as Grover Cleveland Alexander and Doris Day as his wife (Mondays in March are Doris Day days and nights ) 

 

I should have mentioned it last month, but I hope some of you caught John Garfield Tuesdays in February.   I had never seen "Humoresque" and Garfield, playing a gifted violinist, is at the peak of his fame and talent (1946). Clifford Odets' hard-hitting script is gripping. 

 

Maybe Garfield's chemistry with femme fatale Joan Crawford wasn't great, but Oscar Levant was never better as his sidekick whose actual piano playing is heard on the sound track which is filled with top shelf classical music.  

 

Another TCM highlight last month was the restoration of "Native Son," starring author Richard Wright as protagonist Bigger Thomas.  It was shown on Eddie Muller's Noir Alley Feb 21/22.  

 

Wright in his 40s was too old to play a character 20 years younger, and he was not an actor, but he gave a credible performance.  The film was shot in Buenos Aires in the late 1940s but the American version shown in the early 1950s had 50 minutes cut out.  

 

Blessedly, a full 108-minute print was discovered in Buenos Aires not long ago. Kudos to the movie archivists who lovingly brought it back to life. And to the very informative discussion before and after the film by Muller and TCM's talented silent movie host Jacqueline Stewart.     

 

So here is Eddie Muller's Noir Alley schedule for March, Sat at midnight, repeated Su at 10A.

March 6/7 - "Killer's Kiss"  an early film directed by Stanley Kubrick - 1995

March 13/14 "The Night Brings Terror" - 1955

March 20/21  "The Third Man" 1949 a classic Cold War film with Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, and one hour in Orson Welles and haunting zither music. Can't wait to hear Muller's take on it

March 27/28 "Pepe Le Moko" a French Noir classic from 1937

 

Special mention should be made of two showings of "The Mask of Dimitrios" 1944 

Sat Mar 6 12N and Wed Mar 24 8p with post-"Casablanca" Peter Lorre & Sidney Greenstreet

W Mar 24 has three Lorre-Greenstreet films back-to-back.

945P "The Verdict" - 1946

1130P Three Strangers" with Geraldine Fitzgerald

 

Fri Mar 12 6p "East of Eden" 1955 - I saw it last month for first time and glad it is coming up ahead.  James Dean's debut and NYC-born Jo Van Fleet's Oscar.  Set before and during World War I in John Steinbeck's California.  He wasn't pleased with the selections chosen from his book of the same name, but director Elia Kazan created a memorable film.

 

Tu Mar 30 8:15A  Kazan's equally memorable "Splendor in the Grass" 1961 with Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood and Pat Hingle and screenplay by William Inge  

 

Before I close, I want to remember my neighbor Susan Feingold who lived for 60 years in my building on West 104th Street near Riverside Park. She left us in late September 2020 at the age of 95. 

 

Alex Vadukul contributed a moving obituary in the Feb 26 NY Times.  A Holocaust survivor, Susan became a prominent advocate for childhood education. Her work influenced the Head Start program and she was honored by President Obama.

 

Always remember:  "There is no wealth but life" - John Ruskin   

As well as Woody Guthrie's immortal:  "Take it easy but take it!"

On Lincoln's Birthday Feb 12 - it also would have been my mother's 119th birthday - I received my second Pfizer vaccine.  I was in and out of Mount Sinai Morningside - the former St. Lukes near the Columbia campus - in less than 45 minutes, including the 15-minute waiting period after the shot to make certain there were no adverse reactions.  

 

I really feel for the enormous number of people that have had to travel tens to hundreds of miles for their shots. Let's hope that a more streamlined public health service can be created under our new national Biden administration.

 

The nurse who gave me the second shot was very business-like and helpful.  I didn't really expect the unexpected praise that I heard before my first shot - when the nurse, a newcomer to NYC from Albuquerque, thought I looked closer to 50 than 78. If only it were true.  If only. 

 

It was fitting that I received the Pfizer vaccine because it brought back memories of John L. Smith, the Pfizer president in the 1930s and 1940s who was also an actively involved chemist.   Smith was also the treasurer and the wealthiest partner of the Brooklyn Dodgers as the internal war between the other partners, Branch Rickey and Walter O'Malley, began to build. 

 

While working on experiments to develop penicillin, Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming became a friend of Smith and fascinated by American baseball. Smith was reportedly first diagnosed with lung cancer in 1946 but evidently went into remission.  

 

Gifted NY "Herald Tribune" sportswriter Harold Rosenthal loved to discuss science and medicine with John L. Smith.  He thought it a tragedy that mass production of the miracle drug penicillin or perhaps some other new invention did not occur until it was too late to save the life of Smith whose cancer returned and he died during the AllStarGame break in July 1950.

   

When Smith's widow Mary Louise awarded her voting shares to O'Malley, Rickey's departure was foreordained and he left Brooklyn for Pittsburgh after the 1950 season.  The tragedy for Brooklyn Dodger fans occurred seven years later when O'Malley uprooted the franchise for the greener pasture$ of Los Angeles. 

 

I discuss the story in my essay, "The Two Titans and the Mystery Man," in the Joseph Dorinson/Joram Warmund edited volume, SPORT RACE AND THE AMERICAN DREAM (M.E.Sharpe), and in my biography, BRANCH RICKEY: BASEBALL'S FEROCIOUS GENTLEMAN

(U of Nebraska Press).  

 

(This is not the time or place to discuss whether Robert Moses was also a culprit in the Dodgers departure to Los Angeles. Sure he was, but I do firmly believe had Smith lived, that wound in the heart of Brooklyn might have been avoided.)    

 

I dearly hope that the Pfizer vaccine will take hold in the marrow of yours truly.  If it does,

I dedicate its healing graces to loyal Brooklynite John Lawrence Smith, who lived near Ebbets Field and was a great supporter of baseball, amateur sports, and local charities.   

 

He was a rare owner who wasn't into baseball to make money but to provide service to the local community. Rex Barney, Dodger pitcher and later Oriole public address announcer, told me that

Smith would come into the Sunday clubhouse waving pennants to lift up team spirits.  

 

Speaking of special owners, longtime Oneonta minor league owner Sam Nader passed away on Monday Feb 8 at the age of 101. In the 1980s, I fell in love with the New York-Penn League franchise located in the Otsego County seat scarcely a half-hour south of Cooperstown.  

 

When I first saw games in Oneonta, the staff of Sam Nader, previously a four-term mayor of the city, included his wife Alice and his three children, Suzanne, John, and Alice Adele.   Sam supervised the cooking of hot dogs, and "boy, they are good," I remember his justified praise.  

 

Oneonta was where Don Mattingly and Willie McGee broke into pro baseball.  Oneonta was where Buck Showalter first played and then managed.  I'll never forget Sam telling me at the time that Showalter one day would be Yankee manager.   

 

In 1982 John Elway hit .318 as a O-Yank right fielder, and led the team in every offensive category, including stolen bases.  Elway and his father Jack, a renowned West Coast football coach, were not happy that the Baltimore Colts had drafted John for football.

 

They did not like the methods of Colts coach Frank Kush when his Arizona State Sun Devils played against John Elway qb-ing Stanford. (In a fascinating aside, Jack Elway later coached Stanford with middling success but coaching San Jose State he beat his son's Stanford twice.)

 

If only the Colts had known about the Elways' antipathy towards Kush, a new coach could have been named, Elway signed, and no more Colts move to Indianapolis in the middle of the night early in 1984. Ah, "If" history yet again.

 

It was John Elway's only pro baseball experience but it was a memorable experience for him and the fans. There were few home runs evelr hit in Oneonta's spacious Damaschke Field but it was a great place to watch pitching and defense and savor the beauty of the restorative hill behind the left field fence.  Adding to Damaschke's charm, it was located within the picturesque public Neawha Park. 

 

Sam Nader was the youngest of six children of Elias Nader and Rose Rajah who emigrated from a mountain village near Beirut, Lebanon in 1909. As Mark Simonson noted in a long and moving article in the Oneonta "Daily Star," updated on Feb 13, Elias did not pass an American eye exam in France so the couple traveled to Brazil for two years where they had cousins.

 

Once he passed the exam, they settled in Oneonta where another cousin already lived. The Naders grew up not far from the railroad tracks, nicknamed the "lower deck" of the town. Through hard work and grit and an endearing love of people, Sam rose to become a pillar of the community.  An affordable housing complex, Nader Towers, honors him, and the Oneonta airport is named after him. 

 

Oneonta had been without minor league baseball since 1952 when Sam led the forces to bring the Red Sox to town in 1967.  In a time of social turmoil, Sam thought that baseball would be a unifying force for all ages.  

 

When the Yankees expressed interest in coming to town, Sam leaped at the chance because he was a longtime Yankee fan. He developed a close bond with George Steinbrenner once he bought the Yankees in 1973.

 

When Steinbrenner in 1998 as a favor to then-Mayor Rudolph Guiliani agreed to move the franchise to a brand new $70 million plus stadium on Staten Island in 1998, the Boss wanted Sam to come along.  No way lifelong Oneonta native Nader would leave.  

 

In its last years it became a Tigers franchise, aiding most famously in the development of future Yankee and Met outfielder Curtis Granderson. After 2009 the franchise was moved to Norwich, Connecticut on Long Island Sound. 

 

As Mark Simonson notes, Sam once expressed very beautifully his parting advice to Oneonta players:  "When you leave here, leave with a pleasant memory, and if you go on, always remember us because we'll always remember you."  

 

The likes of Sam Nader will sorely be missed.  Please don't forget him at a time when not only is Oneonta long gone from the minor leagues, but the whole New York-Penn League has been disbanded as well as several other leagues and forty teams discarded in all.    

 

The Staten Island Yankees are defunct and its stadium now lies vacant. It is hard to envision much commerce flocking to the new shopping mall adjacent to the stadium.  

 

The owners of the S. I. Yankees are suing MLB for its abandonment. So are the owners of the Trenton Thunder whose Double-A franchise was moved to the more lucrative suburban Bridgewater NJ area and will play in the Somerset Patriots independent league ballpark.

 

MORE SADNESS IN THE NEWS:

We lost another special person in the world of sports last week with the death of basketball scout Tom Konchalski, 74.  I never met Tom but I would see him after games in the area. He always sat in the top row away from scrutiny. 

 

He never learned to drive but his knowledge of players was so encyclopedic that writers loved to volunteer as chauffeurs to be able to pick his mind.  His typewritten High School Basketball Report was must reading for coaches at all levels of the game.

 

He was responsible for many players getting chances at Divsion II and III schools.  He appreciated Jay Wright as much for his career playing at Bucknell than his national titles coaching Villanova.

 

Like so many great scouts, he never denigrated a player's ability. His most severe criticism was: "He wasn't a genuine fit" for a program.  

 

A fine column by Roger Rubin in newsday.com quoted from some of his pithy reports:

On Jamal Mashburn, who went to Kentucky (and whose son now is a Minnesota reserve): 

He has "the body of a blacksmith and the touch of a surgeon."  

 

On Anfernee "Penny" Hardaway:  "Dishes like Julia, delivers like Dominos."  

 

Another loss in the basketball world recently was John Chaney, 89, who brought Temple in Philadelphia to national renown.  I'm tired of learning about these departures, but at least these men lived full and rewarding lives. May our memories of them always be a blessing.

 

Before I end this post, here are some of my TCM recommendations for late Feb: 

 

Fri Feb 19 8P a classic 1950 noir "Gun Crazy" followed at 945p by a classic in women's awakening - "Thelma and Louise" with Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis (shortly before her

memorable take on Dottie Hinson in "A League of Their Own")

 

Sat Feb 20 12M, repeated Sun at 10A "Native Son" (1950) starring author Richard Wright in title role as Bigger Thomas. Remastered by Eddie Muller who will intro and outro film as part of Noir Alley series.

 

Sun Feb 21 3:15p  Billy Wilder's "The Fortune Cookie" (1966) first pairing of Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon with scenes shot on the Cleveland Browns football field at Municipal Stadium. Not vintage Wilder but hard to beat the Lemmon-Matthau timing. Matthau won Oscar for portrayal of shyster lawyer.  (I didn't have a vote - LOL.) 

 

Wed Feb 24 10A "Hollywood Canteen" 1944 USO film with soldiers returning on furlough to meet such movie stars as Bette Davis, John Garfield, Ida Lupino and Dane Clark.  Watch for Joe E Brown's dance and Jack Benny sparring on violin with Joseph Szigeti.   

 

Fri Feb 26 630A  Ernst Lubitsch's "Ninotchka" (1939) - Melvyn Douglas woos serious Russian comrade played by Greta Garbo.  Wonderful character actors Felix Bressart,  Sig Rumann add much to the flavor.  Billy Wilder worked on it and you can see how he learned from the master how to get comedy out of very serious material.

 

Later on Feb 26 at 5p Vincent Price in "The Mad Magician" (1954) - first time I will see it since it scared the hell out of me when I first saw on TV in the 1950s.

 

Sa Feb 27 12N  "Knute Rockne" (1940) Hollywood's take on the coaching legend starring Pat O'Brien with tramp athlete George "Win One For The Gipper" Gipp played by some actor named Ronald Reagan.

 

Sa Feb 27 12M repeated Sun at 10A - Robert Wise's "Odds Against Tomorrow" (1960) intro'd and outro'd again by Eddie Muller. One of the great NYC movies, jazz movies, and overall A-one movies.  Music composed by John Lewis of Modern Jazz Quartet. Harry Belafonte and Robert Ryan, genuine liberals off-screen, play bank robbers who hate each other for black-white reasons.  Ex-cop Ed Begley Sr. plays the mastermind. 

 

Su Feb 28  345p Blake Edwards's "Days of Wine and Roses" (1962) with Lemmon and Lee Remick as the alcoholic lovers and Charles Bickford as her stern father

 

month ends at 10p Martin Ritt's "The Front" (1976) - one of the best if not the best movie about the blacklist. Woody Allen fronts for Zero Mostel. Cast also includes Andrea Marcovicci and Michael Murphy.

 

That's all for now.  Always remember: Take it easy but take it!