Lee Lowenfish

The Thursday July 23 off-day is very welcome for Oriole players, non-uniformed personnel, and fans.  The narrative as the All-Star Game approached was the under-achieving Birds had not won more than 3 games in a row all season.  Then, thanks to some very sloppy play by Kansas City, the young Maryland men in Orange and Black swept KC at home and went into the All-Star Game break with a 4-game winning streak.  They came out of the break by sweeping a just-as-sloppy Astros in Houston. Then, in a meeting of streaking teams in Boston, the Orioles competed decently but lost the first two games to the red-hot Red Sox that extended the Bosox streak to 15 games, tying the team record set by the 1946 Bosox world champions. 

 

Last night (W July 22) Kyle Bradish pitched like an ace to break that streak in a tidy 5-1 win.  He only went 6 innings but he was in command all game, proving at least for now that he has ace-like potential and is worthy of the 5-year extension he signed that reportedly is worth $90 million. (Two of his arbitration years and two of his free agent years have been bought out.)

 

The NL East-leading Atlanta Braves come into Camden Yards this weekend and they will certainly pose another formidable test although they have been battered by mound injuries. The Birds know all about injuries, too - both catchers Adley Rutschman and Samuel Basallo are on the IL. And the broken hand of Orioles breakout star Blaze Alexander - the result of an errant pitch by Royals closer Lucas Erceg just before the ASG break - has been a blow to the Birds sporadic offense, but it has provided a chance for Christian Encarnacion-Strand, once a top prospect for Cincinnati Reds who is only 26. He hails from Walnut Creek, CA and played at Oklahoma State where the brother of teammate second baseman Jackson Holliday, Josh Holliday, is the head coach and where Jackson's father Matt Holliday was a star after being the Gatorade High School Player of Year twice in both football and baseball. (Maybe living up to that family athletic royalty has been an obstacle in Jackson's uncertain progress but he is only 22.) 

 

Christian blasted a couple of home runs at Fenway and did OK at third base where he might compete for playing time with the younger Coby Mayo, one of the many highly-touted young Orioles who have not yet proven themselves as consistent major leaguers.  There is always room for humor in baseball, such a difficult sport to master and stay in rhythm with.  So I wonder when C E-S makes his home debut tomorrow, will his hyphenated last name appear on the back of his uni? It didn't on the road. He carries the longest name in baseball history, supplanting catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia who retired in 2018 after a 12-year MLB career.   

 

The trading deadline is M Aug 3 and IMHO the Orioles need to get to .500 to become buyers. The schedule after Atlanta has a visit to the Tigers, another team on the bubble in a weak AL Central, and then a weekend tussle with the Phillies who under interim manager Don Mattingly have emerged as a possible challenger to the Braves in NL East.  The Marlins have faded after reaching a 10-over .500 peak.  Sure hope they hold on to their ace Sandy Alcantara who seems fully recovered from TJ surgery.  Miami owner Bruce Sherman claims he wants Sandy as a core piece of his future team but he is also a hawk about the salary cap and is on commissioner Rob Manfred's Executive Council. 

 

My TCM tips salute the SEVEN Joe E Brown films that will appear on TU JULY 28 from 10AM through a little before 8P

10A "On With The Show" (1929) his first film and the first in technicolor - it's about the misadventures of a traveling theater troupe (Joe had been an acrobat, a vaudeville performer, and starting in early 1920s a big Broadway star) 

1145A "Sally" (1930) with Marilyn Miller - Joe sings a plaintive beautiful version of Jerome Kern's "Look for the Silver Lining"

130P "Going Wild" (1930) Joe pretends to be a pilot.  With a young Walter Pidgeon long before he is Mr. Miniver or the producer yearning for a kiss at the

end of a film with plenty of black on the bottom line in "The Bad and the Beautiful"

245P "Sit Tight" (1931) featuring a hilarious scene at a health spa with Winnie Lightner as his formidable adversary

415P "You Said A Mouthful" (1932) Joe as a swimmer. With Ginger Rogers in one of her first starring roles.  She paid homage in her memoirs to what a helpful mentor he was. 

545P "Elmer the Great" (1933) Joe's favorite of his baseball trilogy.  Opening scene is priceless.  Joe initially spurns an offer from the Cubs to disbelief of his younger brother Sterling Holloway.  Mike Frankovich, UCLA football star and later virtually an adoptive Joe son and soon to become big producer, has cameo

645P "Alibi Ike" (1935) the last and probably best put-together of his baseball films. With William "Future Fred Mertz" Frawley as his manager, Olivia DeHavilland in her first year of stardom as love interest, underappreciated Ruth Donnelly as her sister. 

 

That's all for now.  My next post could well be from Chautauqua where I'm co-teaching the last week in July a class "Baseball Couples: Odd and Other".

Always remember:  Stay Positive, Test Negative, and Take It Easy But Take It!  

 

 

 

 

As we approach the year-end holidays, let's cross fingers that those who didn't practice social distancing and mask-wearing over the Thanksgiving holiday don't pay an awful price and infect others.

 
As for my Thanksgiving, I made my first trip to the North Fork of Long Island staying in Greenport, a scant 80 miles from the Big Apple. The onetime seaport town is on the upgrade with many tasty restaurants and stores while maintaining its cozy maritime flavor.

 
A first-ever trip to nearby historic Shelter Island was also memorable. After a short car ferry ride, with Maria smoothly at the wheel, we found ourselves riding on the undulating roads of that precious slice of land. Even passed a Shelter Island Country Club and golf course "open to the public".   

 

Meanwhile, the best news out of baseball came a week before Thanksgiving when Kim Ng was named the general manager of the Miami Marlins. 

 
Ng (pronounced Ang) will be the first woman to reach that exalted level in major league baseball, and she is probably the most qualified person ever to reach the top. 

 
After starring as a softball shortstop at Ridgewood High in New Jersey and the University of Chicago, she entered baseball as a White Sox intern and has risen rapidly in the ranks. She was a top assistant to Yankee GM Brian Cashman during their most recent dynasty in the late 1990s through 2001.  

 
Since early this century Ng has worked in top level MLB's executive positions while always being on the short list of GM candidates. She didn't let her failure to win other openings get her down. 

 

The oldest of five Ng girls, she brings a universally respected love of baseball in all its nuances. Kudos to Derek Jeter, Marlins president and part-owner who witnessed Ng's abilities first-hand while playing for the Yankees, for encouraging Bruce Sherman, the Marlins principal owner, to break the glass ceiling. 

 
In this time of great uncertainty, no one knows for sure when the Marlins and the 29 other MLB teams will start the 2021 season.  It seems unlikely that a full 162

game can be played which is fine by me. 

 
The season is far too long anyway.  So to steal from columnist Jimmy Cannon, here's my "Nobody Asked Me, But" list of changes I'd like to see in baseball's future.

 

**CHANGE 1:  A regular season of a maximum 154 games or even 144, 140, or fewer.  Baseball did very nicely with 154 games from 1903 to 1960 and every team playing every other in its league 22 times, 11 at home and 11 on road. 

 

Of course, with expansion from the 1960s through the late 1990s, we now have

30 teams and 6 divisions and additional wild cards. Commissioner Rob Manfred reportedly wants 14 teams to make the playoffs in the future.

 

If we continue to devalue the regular season, I say at least let's shorten it.  

 
**CHANGE 2 - I'm not a knee jerk advocate of "cancel culture," but I can see the value in adding a more deserving name to the MVP trophy than baseball's first commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis.  Landis didn't create baseball segregation but he sure tacitly enforced it.   

 
Why not honor the late Frank Robinson who is still the only man to win the MVP in both leagues?  First with the Cincinnati Reds in 1961 and then the Baltimore Orioles in 1966.

 

He played the game hard and passionately. The first Black manager in MLB with the Cleveland Indians, he was a very creditable manager for other teams. 

 
As an Oriole fan, I still think F. Robby's Game 6 tagging up and scoring from third base on a very short fly ball to Vic Davalillo in center field to extend the 1971 World Series to a seventh game is one of the greatest hustle plays I've ever seen. 

 

**CHANGE 3  Instead of starting an extra-inning game with a runner on second base and no one out, the gimmick currently used, why not allow for ties in the standings?  Hockey has lived with it for generations.  Even pro football allows for it.  There are enough games in a baseball regular season that a tie won't seem

like a devastating loss.  

 
**CHANGE 4  Modify the DH rule so a National League pinch-hitter can be used for a pitcher one time in a game without the pitcher being forced out of the lineup. Sadly, I guess the designated hitter in the AL is with us for the indefinite future.  

 
I have never thought that the disparity in the rule between the leagues was a detriment.  Except that American League pitchers were at a great disadvantage when they had to hit and AL teams lost a presumably big DH bat when the rule was not in effect in World Series road games. 

 

These changes won't guarantee any immediate uptick in spectatorship and participation.  But the more the drama of the game of running and throwing and

outguessing hitters instead of overpowering them is emphasized, I think the better the chance there will be of a resurgence of interest. 

 

And now before I bid adieu, here's some December tips for films on Turner Classic Movie. You never know what gems pop up on TCM.

 

On Sun night Nov 29, I stumbled into "Running On Empty" (1988 dir. by Sidney Lumet) with the marvelous cast of Judd Hirsch, Christine Lahti, River Phoenix, and Martha Plimpton. The fictionalized film based on the actual travails of radical activists living life on the run after violent anti-imperialist activities in the late 1960s/early 1970s holds up very well.

 

So here's my recommendations for early December on TCM:  

 

Th Dec 3 8p "Baby Face" (1933) Barbara Stanywick rises to the top using her

feminine wiles and encouraged by a mentor who quotes Nietzsche! Left in the dust in small roles are John Wayne and Douglas Dumbrille. 

 

Sat Dec 5 starting at 330p if you are into marathon watching or recording, 

Billy Wilder's "The Apartment" with Lemmon, MacLaine, MacMurray;  "It Happened on Fifth Ave," a progressive fantasy from 1947 set during the housing storage; "The Maltese Falcon" this week's "Essential"; followed by the first "Thin Man" and Eddie Muller's Noir Alley choice, "Tomorrow Is Another Day" with Ruth Roman and Steve Cochran. 

 

Sun Dec 6 is a mini-marathon starting at 6p with "Christmas in Connecticut" with Stanwyck and Sidney Greenstreet, and then two films with Marilyn Monroe, "The Seven Year Itch" with Tom Ewell and "Gentleman Prefer Blondes" with Jane Russell.

 

Fri Dec 11 8p is a 2015 documentary "Marsha Hunt's Sweet Adversity" about the blacklisted actress who used her later career to foster good causes.  She has drawn effusive praise from Eddie Muller which is as good a recommendation one can get. 

 

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