Lee Lowenfish

I'm must confess that this blog was originally gonna be another embittered rant about the disappointing Orioles who since the early summer of 2024 have been an under-.500 team and perhaps haunted by never winning a game in five tries during playoff action in 2023 and 2024. Last week's trade of switch-hitting catcher Adley Rutschman, 2019's number one overall draft pick, to the arch-division rival Boston Red Sox no less, was a harsh blow to the Oriole faithful who saw Adley's departure as the waving of the 2026 white flag. Pete Alonso dispelled that despicable thought with a two-home run game on Sunday Aug 9 that sparked a rare 10-3 outburst to salvage one game over the current AL Third Wild Card leader Texas Rangers. Still 4 games under .500 and behind Houston, Detroit, Minnesota, Cleveland as well as Texas, there is a pulse, however flickering, left in my Birds.  

 

Having not lived in Baltimore since I returned in 1976 to my "home town" of NYC, the Rutschman trade hasn't affected me that deeply.  Adley had become injury-prone, winding up on the Injured List five times in the last two seasons. At the age of only 28, it does look like he is going into an enviable situation in Boston, providing experience to a speedy and talented young team that has rediscovered its offense but has needed a solid receiver.  If Adley finally realizes that he is a line drive hitter and stops swinging for the fences and fretting about his inconsistent "launch angle," he should be a great addition to a Red Sox team that roared from 14 under .500 at the end of June to more than 10 above .500 and the Second Wild Card position behind the Yankees. In the wonderful world of MLB where even the best teams lose at least 60 games a season and the worst ones win at least 60, the lowly Athletics (temporarily in Sacramento) punctured a little of the Bosox bubble by winning this past weekend the Sat and Sun games at Fenway. 

 

I must admit that I have a soft spot for the Tampa Bay Rays who are now loaded with a bevy of ex-Orioles including gritty center fielder Cedric Mullins, closer Bryan Baker, possessor of 35 saves, and Tyler Wells, a multi-purpose reliever who can also spot start. Another recent Oriole discard, veteran RHP Dean Kremer, is slated to pitch for the Minnesota Twins against his former team on Mon Aug 10. The Twins just lost the rubber match in an intense series against the Brewers, but the Brew Crew needed one of the best catches I've ever seen by rookie right fielder Luis Lara who robbed Koby Clemens of a second home run.  Koby, Roger's son who has found a home in Minnesota after not making it in Philly, had tied the game with a two-run shot off wunderkind Jacob Misiorowski who regularly brings 100 mph heat.  "Mis" seems to be pitching-wise beyond his young age - he understands that changing speeds is the key to sustained success.

 

It is barely mid-August and we are only at the top of the stretch with more than 45 games to play. Arizona just won its first regular season series since 2018 over the defending champion LA Dodgers. They needed a gritty 115-pitch 7-inning outing by LHP Eduardo Rodriguez in the Sunday rubber match - it was a resilient team effort after losing an extra-inning heartbreaker on Sat night.  With the Dodgers leading 1-0 in the bottom of the 9th, closer Edwin Diaz, just back from injury, gave up back-to-back triples to tie the game.  But the Snakes couldn't bring in the winning run and Shohei Ohtani broke the tie with a 10th inning single. Unheralded reliever Jack Dreyer got the save for LAD.

 

I do not believe that a three-peat is a shoo-in for LAD.  Age is creeping up on their roster.  Mookie Betts maybe is showing it the most, followed by Max Muncy, and Freddie Freeman a little less. I think Dave Roberts is a great manager because he understands the heartbeats of his players as well as anyone in his profession.  (In the late Scott Miller's marvelous book about managers SKIPPER, Roberts called his job two parts being a baseball man and one part being an emcee.) LAD still features the versatile grinding old pros Tommy Edman and Kike Hernandez, the latter just back from serious injury.They will be forces to reckon with but teams like the Cubs and certainly the Brewers and maybe even the Dbacks, Cardinals, and Phillies could give LAD a run for their money. 

 

I also don't think a lockout that wipes out a big chunk of the 2027 season is inevitable either. But at this point in time, neither the MLB owners nor

the MLBPA leaders feel like negotiating.  So I'm all for enjoying the intense action that will intensify as we approach the climactic days of late September.

As an Oriole fan living in NYC but with a heart still bleeding Orange and Black, I just hope that when the Yankees come into Camden Yards Aug 18-20 and the

Bosox the four days before Labor Day, there are enough Oriole fans in attendance to hold their own against the invading hordes of winnite Yankee and

Red Sox fans.   

 

The big TCM tip of this post is the Marx Brothers marathon including of course Margaret Dumont - it runs from 1030A W Aug 12 through a 245A Th Aug 13 showing of "Go West"

1030A "The Big Store" (1941) haven't seen it in decades.  Recall Tony Martin singing the "Tenement Symphony" and Groucho singing "Sing While

You Sell" with such lyrics as "Sell that birdie with some Verdi"

12N "At the Circus" (1939) with Eve Arden and "Lydia The Tattooed Lady"

130P "Room Service" (1938)

3P "A Day At The Races" (1937)

*5P "A Night At the Opera" (1935) with hilarious Sig Rumann as Gottlieb the impresario who Groucho tangles with.  And Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones.  Never

met Kitty but her advice on the secret to her long active life was a beaut:  "Every morning before my yoga, I look in the mirror and say, 'I forgive you.'"

Watch for the brief "Take Me Out To the Ball Game" scene.

*645P "Horse Feathers" (1932) The college football spoof is memorable 

*8P "Duck Soup" (1933) with Louis Calhern as Sylvania foreign minister tangling with the Fredonians 

915P "My Favorite Duck" cartoon short

930P "Animal Crackers" (1930) from whence cometh Groucho's theme for his 1950s "You Bet Your Life" quiz show, "Hooray for Captain Spaulding" ("the African explorer/did someone call me schnorrer?/Hooray, hooray, hooray!")

1120P Bugs Bunny cartoon

*1130P "Monkey Business" (1933) the last one with the doomed Thelma Todd

*1A "The Cocoanuts" (1929) the first one, fresh from the NY stage

230A "Go West" (1939)

 

One other film of note for sports lovers:

Fri Aug 14 3P "The Fortune Cookie" (1966) Billy Wilder directs Walter Matthau as a cunning lawyer trying to win Jack Lemmon a big legal award for injury

incurred on a football sideline. Some of it filmed at Municipal Stadium, then-home of the Cleveland Browns

 

That's all for now.  Always remember:  Stay Positive Test Negative and Take It Easy But Take It! 

 

 

  

 

 

 

    

There are light years of difference between watching a game with emotional involvement for one of your teams and merely being interested in a good World Series game.  With my Woerioles under current management sadly headed nowhere (would love to be proven wrong), I adopted the gritty unheralded Blue Jays in the just-concluded Fall Classic.  By Games 6 and 7, I was really hoping Toronto would win over the Evil Empire West or less pejoratively, the Deferral Dodgers whose management has shrewdly backloaded many contracts to avoid paying luxury taxes to their less-financially-endowed and less-interested-in-winning partners.   

 

I watched Game 7 in a local Upper West Side bar, the Dive 106 on Amsterdam Ave.  It was a lively evening but not too raucous because the local Mets and Yankees were long gone from the playoffs - the Mets never even made them. It says here that having Juan Soto as a third MVP candidate doesn't seem right. My lasting memory of Soto this year was watching him take strike three called to end the penultimate game of the season in Miami and then arguing the call with the ump.  The Mets were still alive in the pennant race and NO WAY an MVP ends a crucial game with the bat on his shoulder.. 

 

There was an intense Dodger fan at the tavern wearing a blue Dodger T-shirt with the names on the front of Clayton Kershaw-Jackie Robinson-Sandy Koufax-and a 4th I can't remember. He told me that earlier in the season when the Dodgers came to New York to play both the Mets and Yankees, he met manager Dave Roberts at a downtown restaurant and he couldn't have been nicer. I thought to myself that the Jays' less-experienced manager John Schneider seemed like a good guy, too. 

 

Dive 106 customers might have been evenly split between Toronto and LAD rooters but when Alejandro Kirk hit into a Series-ending 6-6-3 DP started by Mookie Betts, T-shirted LAD fan erupted in bellicose joy.  Another happy camper was a Yankee fan who booed Blue Jay George Springer every time he came up.  She still held a grudge against any former Astro involved in the sign-stealing scandal that may have cost the Yankees the 2017 ALCS.  She did know the game though, learning it in Texas from her Brooklyn-born father.  She surmised accurately that walking potent Vladimir Guerrero Jr set up a double play trap for Kirk that he soon fell into.  Inning over, game over, World Series over, Dodgers win.

(Without John Sterling's screaming.)

 

The LA Dodgers are now the first back-to-back champions since the 1998-99-2000 Yankees. I don't want to nitpick too much because both teams could have won, but in the cruel crucible of baseball with its immensely long season, there is only one winner.  I did think after Toronto won Games 4 and 5 convincingly at Chavez Ravine they could win it all.  But the Dodgers are battle-tested and at least it was their grinders that made most of the difference. 

 

Not just the well-paid Mookie Betts who broke out of his slump long enough to get the huge hit in Game 6 - the two-run single off Kevin Gausman on an off-speed pitch after a long at-bat. They wouldn't have won without third baseman Max Muncy, a scrap heap pickup years ago, breaking out of his slump to homer in the 8th inning of Game 7 to bring the Dodgers within a run.   And then most improbably Miguel Rojas, 36-year-old former Miami Marlin who late in regular season announced his retirement after playoffs, hit the tying homer off recently-reliable closer Jeff Hoffman to tie the game with one out in the 9th. 

 

In a Series in which each team almost always answered runs quickly, the Blue Jays almost won it all in the bottom of the 9th. Alas, with the bases loaded and two out, defensive substitute Andy Pages made a leaping catch in left center knocking left fielder Kike Hernandez to the ground in the process.  The game was decided in the 11th when catcher Will Smith hit Shane Bieber's 2-0 pitch for a homer to deep left. LAD's young Japanese pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto was voted the Series MVP for winning 3 games and saving Game 7 with almost 3 innings of relief after throwing nearly 100 pitches in Game 6. 

 

I think Will Smith could have easily been the co-MVP because he caught every inning of every Series game. I counted at least 3 wild pitches he saved in the early innings of Game 7 when unicorn Shohei Ohtani was ineffective.  Smith reminds me of Yankee catcher Jorge Posada during the Bronx Bombers' most recent dynasty.  You love him if he's on your team and loathe him if he's an opponent.  Smith at least is a home-grown Dodger and came back from injury just in time to make his mark in the post-season. 

 

In many ways, I think Dodger manager Dave Roberts was the MVP. He manipulated his roster brilliantly, moving catcher Smith to second in the batting order to take pressure off Betts who until his big single in Game 6 was not contributing at the plate (but he was a whiz in the field, defying the pundits by playing shortstop for first time in MLB career.)

Roberts also inserted Rojas at second base for the last games and he came through on both sides of the ball.  Inserting rarely-used Justin Dean for defense in Game 6 proved very crucial when he immediately reacted to a line dlrive in the gap stuck in the outfield fence and got the umps to end the play without a run scoring.  

 

There is a revealing chapter on Dave Roberts in Scott Miller's recent book on managers SKIPPER. "I say a prayer every day, don't make it be about me."  More on this indispensable book coming up in Hot Stove League posts of this blog.  It is so sad that veteran sportswriter Scott Miller didn't live to enjoy most of the plaudits for SKIPPER because he died iof cancer n June at age 62.  It is a work that not only brings familiar managerial names back to life - Tom Kelly, Sparky Anderson, Billy Martin, Whitey Herzog, and others.  Miller also tells the stories of less-remembered managers like Cito Gaston, Art Howe, Jim Tracy, among others, who lost their jobs to the inexorable wave of analytics. 

 

Speaking of books, keep your eyes open for Steve Somers, ME HERE, YOU THERE which is available now on pre-order from Triumph Books and officially debuts on November 18. The San Francisco-born Somers made his New York radio debut in 1987 when WFAN went on the air as the first all-sports talk radio station.  Steve brought great knowledge and welcome humor to his overnight broadcasts. His carefully crafted well-written opening monologues were especially delightful after the host and caller screamings that punctuated sports talk radio then and now.   

 

Here's some TCM Turner Classic Movies tips, most notably Claude Rains marathon from 6A until 8P on Mon Nov 10.  I have dreamed of being reincarnated as Rains and (also Robert Preston and James Garner).  Here's the lineup for Rains:

6A "Four Daughters" (1938). Music teacher Rains is wary of his daughters, some of the Lane sisters, getting too friendly with John Garfield.

745A "Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938) Rains contends with Errol Flynn and Olivia DeHavilland

945A "Mr. Skeffington" (1942) Michael Curtiz reunites with Rains after "Casablanca" - Bette Davis has to contend with Rains who is spared her worst side in "Deception"

   which is not shown today.

1215P "Passage to Marseilles" (1944) - Curtiz again this time with Bogart along for a WW II story

215P "The Unsuspected" (1947) another villain role for Claude with Joan Caulfield and Audrey Totter

4P "Casablanca" (1943)

545P "Caesar and Cleopatra" (1945)

This amazing day on TCM opens at 1215A with the silent "Body and Soul" (1925) with Paul Robeson as philandering minister.  ("Ol' Man River" had not yet made its debut) 

And at 8P the oft-shown but always gripping "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966). Mike Nichols directs Liz and Burton in Edward Albee's searing play

 

On the live music front for those in NYC area, Sa Nov 8 10A-10P - "Wall-To-Wall Stevie Wonder" - Symphony Space, Broadway/95th Street Manhattan

 

That's all for now.  Stay strong without baseball until late winter.  And always remember:  Stay Positive, Test Negative & Take It Easy But Take It!