Lee Lowenfish

Greetings from a NYC where I'm posting just moments from the start of two days of quadruple MLB Wild Card games.  Although I have long been an advocate for a shorter regular season, September baseball in 2025 was very dramatic.  Cleveland set a MLB record when its starting pitchers gave up less than 2 runs in 19 straight games.  Even when the collapsing Tigers temporarily broke its slide by winning against the Guardians, 4-2 in the last game of a road series on Th Sep 25, Cleveland pitching stayed competitive.  Kudos to the veteran pitching coach Carl Willis.

 

It's been a remarkable turnaround for a team that trailed Detroit by 11 1/2 games on Sep 4 and over 15 in July.  In late May, they lost two key pitchers, starter Luis Leandro Ortiz and acclaimed closer Emmanuel Clase, to indefinite suspension for their gambling activities. Before the trade deadline of July 31, rumors were also flying that Steven Kwan, the leadoff engine of their offense and a wonderful left fielder, might be traded.  Fortunately, the astute Guardian front office held on to Kwan but they did trade star pitcher Shane Bieber to the Blue Jays where, recovered from Tommy John surgery, he should help Toronto in the playoffs.  Switch-hitting third baseman Jose Ramirez remains the Guardians' anchor and leader.  A couple of years ago, the team was wise enough to sign Jose to a long-term contract knowing that he was comfortable with the only organization he has known since signing as a youngster in the Dominican Republic.

  

Despite its shocking decline, Detroit managed to limp into a rematch with Cleveland in the best-of-3 wild card round: Tu Sept 30, W Oct 1, and if necessary Th Oct 2 - all on ESPN game time 1:08P EDT. The national networks always give the Midwest the short stick in game times which is why yours truly, a perpetual rooter for underdogs and grinders, hopes the winner of this matchup goes deep into October and even November. They met last October in a memorable 5-game series won by Cleveland.  How Tarik Skubal, Detroit's ace southpaw, fares in Game 1 will be a big factor but ass I noted, Cleveland has a deep and largely home-grown pitching staff. 

 

The winner will face the AL West champ Seattle Mariners who dethroned perpetual playoff participant Houston, starting on Sa Oct 4 in a Best-of-5 series.  The Mariners, established in 1977 along with the Blue Jays, are the only MLB team that has never been to a World Series and fans and players are hungry for a better outcome. With the trade deadline additions of corner infielders Eugenio Suarez and Josh Naylor, the Mariners now have a deep lineup and solid, mainly youthful starting pitching. The enhanced offense has taken some pressure off the wunderkind center fielder Julio Rodriguez who might be ready to explode into the national baseball consciousness.

 

The Yankees and Red Sox will resume their intense rivalry in the other ALWC series, also on ESPN, with games starting on Tu Sept 30 at 608P.  The winner will face the Blue Jays starting on Sat Oct 5 in a best-of-five.  The Yankees finished the season with 8 wins in a row and looked impressive against the truly woeful White Sox and the disappointing Orioles - (I'm restraining myself on my adjectives to describe what happened to my team this year.) The Birds played like Woerioles in the first two games of the Yankee series - then fought nobly in the Sunday game, losing 3-2 as Yankees first baseman-catcher Ben Rice, a 12th round draft pick from Dartmouth, hit a first inning and decisive eighth solo home runs.  

The Red Sox have an ace in southpaw Garrett Crochet and a lot of feisty speedy young players even without rookies Roman Anthony and Marcelo Mayer.  Former Yankee Aroldis Chapman is the closer who had a record-setting regular season for consistency. But can he erase the memory of some of his post-season failures in pinstripes?    

 

Toronto will be a formidabale opponent in the ALDS.  Hard not to root for George Springer, 36, who has oodles of post-season experience with Houston and healthy again sparks the lineup.  Will never forget many seasons ago George's father accepting the Herb Stein Future Star award at the NY Pro Scouts annual January dinner. A lawyer who spoke like a preacher, George's dad assured us that his son will always put out 120% effort on the field.  In another nice touch.you can often see Springer, a Connecticut native, use batting gloves in the color of the dearly departed Hartford Whalers NHL team. 

 

The NLWC series look equally intriguing.  At 3:08P EDT on ABC, the Padres, runner up to the Dodgers in the NL West, meet the Cubs who finished second to the Milwaukee Brewers, lhe team with the best overall record this year so have earned home field advantage in every post-season series. But they carry the burden of a poor 2-10 record in recent post-seasons.  The Cubs seem to have a nice mix of veterans and youngsters - eg. shortstop Dansby Swanson is coming off a so-so year and might be ready to shine in playoffs, and center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong, a former Met farmhand who was traded for Javy Baez who BTW is now bringing his erratic magic act to the Tigers, will look to erase his late season slump.  Alas, San Diego will miss outfiielder Ramon Laureano who during an at-bat suffered a broken finger on a foul ball.  A matchup with Brewers looms starting on Oct 4.  If Chicago advances, the NLDS will pit Cubs manager Craig Counsell against Brewers skipper Pat Murphy, who coached Craig at Notre Dame and then served as Counsell's bench coach in Milwaukee. 

 

The final series, starting tonight Sep 30 at 908P on ESPN, pits the upstart Cincinnati Reds against the powerhouse Dodgers who like the Yankees finished the season on a roll.

Talented Reds RHP Hunter Greene has to come up big against one of the Dodgers' many big free agent acquisitions LHP Blake Snell. I have faith that veteran Reds manager Terry "Tito" Francona in his first year in Cincinnati will have Greene and his young team primsed to compete and not overcome by the moment.  Waiting in the wings are the Phillies with an older team that might be looking at these playoffs as a last hurrah.  

 

There is no substitute for experience under October's bright lights. I am not surprised that Francona led the young Reds to the playoffs.  They won two out of three from Brewers on last week of season while Mets lost 2 of 3 at Miami, completing a three-month slide from 21 games over .500 ln June to 18 under .500 for the rest of season. In Scott Miller's wonderful new book SKIPPER: WHY BASEBALL MANAGERS MATTER (AND ALWAYS WILL), he might have provided a clue to Mets' issues when he quoted Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor about what he learned from Francona on his first day as a Cleveland rookie:  "Just understand that somebody lost a job today by you getting called up. Respect your peers and show them that you are here to help us win."  The Mets' stars statistically all had successful seasons, but the essence of team was obviously missing.

 

I will write more in future posts about Scott Miller's achievement in SKIPPER but with a sad heart because though Miller lived to see the book published, he died of cancer in June at the age of 62.  How poignant that one of the best chroniclers of the managerial profession left us just a few weeks before managerial greats Davey Johnson, Bobby Cox, and hockey's Ken Dryden (who loved baseball as much as hockey) left us.  

 

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

       

 

 

I'm glad that there will be a full season of MLB ahead of us although as an Oriole fan I'm not looking forward to another season of losing.  

 

I just hope that the possible salary arbitration hearings of Trey Mancini and John Means (not Cedric Mullins as I mispoke in earlier edition) don't lead to bitter feelings and the departure from Baltimore of two of our more likable players.

 

Talented but inconsistent reliever Tanner Scott also is up for arbitration and if they trade him, i wouldn't mind.  The Mets don't have a left-handed reliever as of the morning of March 15.  I'd be glad to trade him for let's see - Jeff McNeil. LOL

 

**Mancini is a survivor of colon cancer who plays with super intensity. Probably beats up on himself more than he should, but he truly cares which is more than I can say for a lot of

players and certainly owners.  

 

**Mullins is not eligible for arbitration until after 2022.  He had a breakout offensive year in 2021 and has always been a top-notch center fielder.  We also recently learned that before last season he had surgery to alleviate the worst symptoms of the intestinal disorder known as Crohn's disease. 

 

**Southpaw John Means, the only somewhat proven starter on the Birds staff, is eligible for arbitration.  Hard to see how they could let him go but in an age where starters rarely go more than five innings, some genius in the front office might pitch an idea that we don't need starters at all.

 

Makers of the T-shirt JOHN MEANS WELL would be disappointed. So would I and my ideal T-shirt MEANS FINDS WAYS.  He did throw a no-hitter last May though the rest of his season was marred by injury and mediocrity. 

 

In the new Basic Agreement, the Rule 5 draft of bargain basement players discarded by other teams - the specialty of the house with the current Oriole front office crew - has been canceled for at least 2022. So maybe the Orioles won't be tempted to trade these good contributors and good citizens.

 

I've heard only good things about our rookie switch-hitting catcher Adley Rutschman so I certainly wish him well. But we still have no reliable infield defense (or offense) up the middle, a giant hole at third base, and no reliable starting pitching.

 

Just heard the news that Cincinnati traded two of its best offensive players, outfielder Jesse Winker and third baseman Eugenio Suarez, to Seattle for mediocre major leaguers and

the ever-popular "prospects".  

 

Very sad to see that before the pitch is thrown in the delayed but full 2022 season, Baltimore, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh have no chnce of competing. Oakland is starting a fire sale by trading Matt Olson to Atlanta for "prospects", although the players Billy Beane got seem to have more upside than those the Reds received.  

 

I've always said that every season produces a surprise team and it may happen in 2022 with the rebuilding Royals and Tigers and perhaps the Mariners.  But it is not a good situation for MLB when there is a permanent underclass. The addition of 12 teams to the playoffs will likely mean very little to baseball's have-nots.

 

I remind folks again - there is plenty of affordable minor league, high school, and college baseball to see in the coming months.  In the NYC metro area, Columbia, Rutgers, St. John's, and Seton Hall always have competitive programs.

 

The new Staten Island Ferry Hawks open their home schedule on Tu May 3, and the Yankees' Double A farm club Somerset Patriots and the Mets' High-Single A Brooklyn Cyclones farm club both open on Tu Apr 12 for a slate of six games through Easter Sunday Apr 17. 

 

Turning to basketball and the upcoming "March Madness",  Columbia's women basketball will start its first-ever post-season play with a home matchup in the WNIT (Women's NIT) against Holy Cross at 7p on Wed Mar 16.

 

The Lions routed Yale last weekend in the semi-final of the Ivy League tournament, but after battling Princeton to a tie in the first quarter of the final, they fell behind by 12 at the half.  They briefly cut the lead to 8 points with about 7 minutes to go, but a Princeton timeout stopped the surge.

 

Wisconsin's Cinderella men's team is in danger of turning into a pumpkin.  They have lost two in a row for the first time all season.  They enter the first round of March Madness on Fri March 18 at 950p EDT on TBS against Colgate in Milwaukee. 

 

It's virtually a home game for Wisconsin, but if newly named Big Ten Player of the Year Johnny Davis has another mediocre game as he did in the Big Ten tournament against Michigan State, this dream season will end abruptly.  

 

Davis is dealing with a chronic ankle injury that may be affecting his play.  It says here that the biggest factor is the pressure of being voted Big Ten Player of the Year and an expected NBA lottery pick is getting to him mentally.  

 

The Badgers were picked for 10th in pre-season polls. They don't have a deep roster so everyone in addition to Davis must step up.

 

The Film Forum on Houston Street in lower Manhattan is one of my favorite movie theaters.

Now open again for customers (fully-masked!), I saw yesterday the documentary about the late radio personality Steve Post.  

 

"Playing In The FM Band" is a definite must-see. The film, produced and directed by former WBAI station manager Rosemarie Reed, will go down as a memorable and indispensable tribute to one of the founders of free form radio in the 1960s. 

 

 

I came to WBAI to host and produce a sports show in November 1982 just after Post left to become a morning host and classical music jockey at the more sedate WNYC.  

 

We learn in the film that Post dealt with colon cancer from the age of 38,  the same age his mother got the disease.  He survived more than 30 years but his mother left this vale of tears when he was only 10.  

 

This calamity - and his father's unusual cooking habits that I'll only tease you with - undoubtedly contributed to Post's acerbic cynicism. The strength of the movie is its focus on his achievement as a pioneer in radio in NYC in the tumultuous age of the 1960s and beyond.

 

I was really impressed with the pacing of the film, which is the challenge in films that rely

on talking heads. I only wish that the credits at the end of the film moved more slowly - they rarely do, one of my pet peeves.  

 

Andy Lanset, director of WNYC archives, has dug up remarkable material, especially Bayard Rustin, the underappreciated civil rights leader, singing movement songs in a haunting high tenor voice.

 

Kudos to the original music of David Amram that augment some great irreverent songs from the 1960s and beyond. And the artists whose animations keep the story flowing with humor.  

 

What else can I say about the film except see it while it lasts at Film Forum through at least

Thursday March 24.  Any film that makes Post's first mentor at station, Larry Josephson, come across as avuncular and benign is a true work of art. 

 

That's all for now. Here's to the extra hour of sunlight that Daylight Saving Time has brought us, and let it brighten our spirits as spring happily looms on the horizon.  May it shine on the beleaguered people of Ukraine facing the awful scourge of Putin's unprovoked invasion. 

 

Always remember:  Take it easy but take it!