Lee Lowenfish

For those of us who get irritated if not downright incensed by the prevalence of new-fangled statistics in baseball today - launch angles, exit velocities, spin rates - the game itself still nourishes us.  

 

John Means' no-hitter against the Mariners last week is a case in point. Oriole fans like yours truly are looking for any rays of light these days. 

 

Means' 113-pitch gem against the Mariners last Wed afternoon May 5 sure provided it.  It was not a fluke even if the Mariners are not a good offensive team. 

 

Means has been pitching very well since the end of last season.  But he had never gone beyond the seventh inning in his career or thrown more than 101 pitches.  He even said after the game that getting into the eighth inning was a big thrill. 

 

Means makes his first start against the resurgent Mets at CitiField this coming Tues May 11.  I'll be there with an in-person report next time around.

 

Am crossing fingers that Means doesn't think he has to pitch a gem every time out.  So boo to Oriole broadcaster Hall of Famer Jim Palmer, the last Bird to throw a no-hitter back in 1969.

 

Palmer has been talking too much about how Means' life will be changed and he'll know that anytime he's out on the mound he can do it again.

 

Happily, Means seems like a refreshingly grounded young man. Raised in Olathe, Kansas near Kansas City, he was an eleventh-round draft choice out of West Viriginia U. He never expected this kind of success but I think he can handle it with firm humility.

 

Everything he has said publicly indicates he knows baseball is a game by game, batter by batter, and pitch by pitch operation.  Never get caught up in the big picture of the forest or else the trees will crash around you. 

 

Tyler Kepner had a lovely lede in discussing Means' achievement in the Friday May 7 New York Times. "Throwing a no-hitter, one could say, is like lassoing the moon."        

 

The thought stayed with me when watching "The Right Stuff" on TV on Saturday night.

"Punch a hole in the sky!" Barbara Hershey tells Sam Shepard just before he goes out to break the sound barrier.  

 

Hershey was playing the wife of Chuck Yaeger, played by Shepard. The film holds up well - Philip Kaufman's 1983 adaptation of Tom Wolfe's classic book about the first bunch of astronauts. Clips of Bill Dana as Jose Jiminez, the first Hispanic astronaut, are shown from Ed Sullivan's show.  

 

(I remember Dana from the Steve Allen Show. "What are you going to do in outer space all by yourself?"

"I plan to cry a lot.")

 

Tyler Kepner is on a roll.  When Albert Pujols was suddenly released by the Angels last week, he remembered what Pujols told him four years ago:  "You don't retire. The game retires you."

 

He is at least 41 years old and a shadow of his former self. I realize it is very hard for an athlete to admit when it is time to hang up one's spikes. But how many more record-breaking GIDPs does Pujols need to get the message?  

 

I also wish Miguel Cabrera of the lowly Tigers would also decide to retire. He seems likely to fall short of his goal of 3000 hits, being 124 shy after the rainout on May 9.

 

Unfortunately, neither Angels owner Arte Moreno nor Detroit's Ilitch family worked out a deal where each player could have retired gracefully by the end of the year. And feted for their undoubtedly Hall of Fame careers.

 

Meanwhile, the Yankees have righted their ship with improved starting pitching and just enough hitting.  They are two over .500 after games of May 9.  

 

For those wondering how their longtime starter Masahiro Tanaka is doing in Japan, he pitched seven innings in his latest effort even if it was a loss. Tanaka is back pitching for the Rakuten Eagles, his first pro team that he joined as a teenager before he signed with the Yankees in 2014.  

 

The last stats I saw had his record at 2-2 with 3 walks, 20 strikeouts and a 3.00 ERA. Amazingly, he is not yet 34 so he obviously feels he has a lot more left in the tank.  

 

Jun Ogawa, a devoted fan and student of Japanese baseball, reported the news to me about Tanaka's last outing.  You will hear more from Jun in the weeks ahead.  

 

While working in the computer field in LA in the late 20th century, Jun became a devoted fan of the Dodgers. Like most Dodger followers, he is concerned about their current slump.

 

They started 13-2 but astonishingly, the defending world champions have not won back-to-back games since Apr 16-17.  They are barely above .500 as I post.

 

Blake Treinen is currently the only reliable reliver. The loss of young phenom Dustin May to TJ surgery and the extended absence of former MVP Cody Bellinger have not helped. The Dodger individual offensive stats don't look bad but the elixir of winning has certainly been missing.

 

Still a long way to go and no team is running away with anything anywhere in this MLB season. So sit back and enjoy the unpredictable drama of baseball.  So I say YIBBA (Yours In Baseball Before Analytics).  

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A follower of YIBBA believes that starting pitchers should want to go deep into games - it doesn't have to be a possible no-hitter for a pitcher to expect to reach the 100-pitch mark.  Why not make 120 the outer edge?  Why not enforce penalties against pitchers and hitters who dawdle before each pitch?

 

What is today doesn't have to be tomorrow. So I say loud and clear, YIBBA, YIBBA, YIBBA!

 

Before I go, what would be this blog without a few TCM reminders:

M May 10 10p Norma Shearer in "Marie Antoinette" 1938

 

W May 12 915a Katherine Hepburn documentary

 

Sa May 15 12N "The Set-Up" great boxing movie with Robert Ryan 1949

  8p "The Big Heat" 1953 Fritz Lang directs Glenn Ford-Gloria Grahame, odd allies fighting gangsters 

 12M The return of Noir Alley with "Touch of Evil" 1953 Orson Welles directs, stars w. Janet Leigh/Charlton Heston

 

Coming Tues May 18 8p "Fatso" 1980  Anne Bancroft directs and stars with Dom DeLuise in dieting spoof

 

Wed May 19 6p "They Live By Night" 1948  Nicholas Ray's gripping tale of young Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell on the run from the law

 

8p "Judgment at Nuremberg" 1961  Stanley Kramer's 3-hour drama with Spencer Tracy/Richard Widmark/Marlene Dietrich

 

Th May 20 8:15a  "Fireman's Ball" 1967 one of Milos Forman's last films before he fled Czechosloakia

  930a "Operation Madball" 1957 with Jack Lemmon and Ernie Kovacs

 

Fri May 21 1030p Samuel Fuller's "Crimson Kimono" 1959 with James Shigeta/Victoria Shaw

 

And always remember:  Take it easy but take it!   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Baseball fans have to feel blessed that we've had gripping games to fill our October nights during this pandemic and the immense uncertainty about our future as a republic. It was only the third time since MLB went to seven-game championship series that both leagues came down to Game 7 dramas.

 

For six innings, the Braves-Dodgers NLCS final game looked like a classic in the making. Braves took early lead, Dodgers tied it in the third on clutch two-out single by young catcher Will Smith from University of Louisville. 

 

To me Smith was one of the unsung heroes of the Dodgers victory.  He hit a game-turning three-run homer against Braves southpaw reliever Will Smith to win a previous game. 

 

It was quickly announced that it was the first time in the playoffs that a player hit a homer against a pitcher with the same name.  What I want to know:  WHEN DID IT HAPPEN IN THE REGULAR SEASON?  No word at press time. 

 

Smith also made the key defensive play thwarting a big Braves rally when they gained the lead again.  He ran Dansby Swanson back to third base when he broke too soon for the plate on a grounder to third. Justin Turner made a great tag on Swanson heading home and then threw out young Austin Riley who delayed going to third from second.

 

The Dodger bullpen then shut down the Braves totally for the rest of the game.  You just knew that sooner or later they would score and that they did on a Cody Bellinger home run

in the bottom of the 7th.

 

A 2018 NL MVP, Bellinger has not had a good year but if he gets on a hot streak that Dodger lineup will be hard to beat. But don't count out the newly crowned AL titleists Tampa Bay Rays.

 

Rays fans told me that I wouldn't jinx them by my ode last week to their beating the Yankees.  It allowed us to celebrate YED, Yankee Elimination Day, that special holiday that should but doesn't teach humility to the outrageous entitlement of too many Yankee fans.

 

The Houston Astros under Dusty Baker's quietly passionate leadership did throw a major scare into Tampa Bay. They won three close games in a row after losing the first three.

But a first inning home run by Randy Arozarena, the sensation from Cuba who now lives in Mexico, gave the Rays a two-run lead in the first inning.

 

Talk about the little things that determine close games.  The TV camera caught Houston starter Lance McCullers Jr. hesitating before he threw the fateful pitch to Arozarena.

He kept the team in the game afterwards, giving up just a solo homer to another unsung star catcher Mike Zunino.

 

But former Astro and Pirate Charlie Morton was on his game and pitched nearly flawlessly.

In this age of the annoying mantra, "Don't dare let a pitcher go through a lineup three times", Morton left with two on and two out in top of sixth after only 66 pitches.  But the Rays bullpen sealed the deal in the 4-2 victory.

 

The odds-makers and TV people love LA and Hollywood and the Dodgers certainly have a lot to prove after winning eight NL West division titles in a row with no World Series wins.

But I'll be rooting for the Rays and their scrappy defense and their "Stable of Horses" in the bullpen who are seemingly interchangeable.  Just hope Randy A. gets more help at bat.

 

Always remember not only "Take it easy but take it!" but also, "The only reason to play baseball is to keep winter away."