Lee Lowenfish

"Playing Meaningful Games In September" should be the goal of any MLB team but I must admit that I didn't think my Orioles, never a .500 team all season, would give me any late thrills this season. I was wrong and maybe the biggest single moment came a week after Labor Day when Pete Alonso led the Birds into CitiField.  Greeted by delirious fans from the moment the former Met stepped on the field for batting practice, Alonso made the most of his only two hits in a 3-game sweep of the even more disappointing Mets. Both were solo home runs, the first one dramatically tying the Tuesday Sep 15 game in the top of the 9th. It led to a remarkable eruption by fans who insisted that their former hero take a curtain call despite wearing the gray uniform of an enemy.

The outpouring of love for a banished fan favorite reminded many oldtimers of the adoring greeting that New York Rangers goalie Eddie Giacomin received when the Detroit Red Wings in 1975 picked up the goalie on waivers and he immediately won his first game against the Blue Shirts. Mets fans had all season to build up the resentment against baseball operations honcho David Stearns who convinced multi-billionaire owner Steve Cohen not to give Alonso a five-year free agent contract. Alonso quickly directed himself 200 miles south where Oriole fans have fallen in love with the Polar Bear, an apt nickname for the massive first baseman who romps on the field with ursine delight and intensity. Alonso's second HR against the Mets was a first inning blast that set the tone for an easy victory that cemented the sweep.

Alas, the Orioles returned home last weekend to be swept by the impressive Milwaukee Brewers who with largely a farm-raised team and a modest payroll by today's standards will have the best regular season record for the second year in a row.  The Brew Crew shut down Alonso and his less potent teammates but Pete erupted for two homers last night (M Sep 21) against the Blue Jays in a comeback win.  Alonso has now hit 40 HRs and is leading MLB in RBIs. The Polar Bear is also playing Gold Glove-caliber defense. 

Adding to the emotion of last week for Mets fans was the farewell broadcast of Howie Rose who grew up a Mets fan in Queens, attended games in the upper deck at Shea Stadium, and rose to his dream job as a broadcaster on both TV and radio for both the Mets and the NHL Islanders.  Rose's call of Alonso's game-tying home run that prompted the curtain call was a model of concise information and professional passion. Thanks to the proliferation of so many other media outlets, I sure hope Howie Rose will emerge again in some other formats. 

With the Orioles likely to be eliminated within a day or two after I post, I now would like to see a World Series with the Brewers meeting the Tampa Bay Rays, another team with a modest payroll and a bunch of speedy, gritty, and powerful players developed by an astute organization. Of course, to coin a phrase, you can't always get what you want.  Whether the Brewers can dethrone the two-time defending world champion LA Dodgers will be one of the compelling story lines in the playoffs that begin next week.  LAD swept them in last year's playoffs, something that I am sure Milwaukee wants to avenge.  As always, the team that is hottest in October and that has enough pitching, defense, and timely hitting will be celebrating in a few weeks.  The pre-season favorites the Yankees and Dodgers may be somewhat vulnerable with the nagging injuries of  NYY's Aaron Judge and LA's closer, the former Met Edwin Diaz. The Padres and the Guardians look like they will enter the playoffs as the hottest teams but whether that lasts into October is the big question.   Whatever happens, let's enjoy the games because (a) the only reason to play baseball is to keep winter away and (b) the looming owner lockout of the players on Dec 1 could impact the start of the 2027 season.   More on that constant irritant in what should be MLB growth later this autumn. 

My visceral rooting chops until next spring now turn to my undergraduate alma mater Columbia's teams. Football won its opener last Saturday in overtime over formidable Lafayette. I'm looking forward to big things for our women's basketball team in 2026-27 as well as for perennially contending baseball in the spring. I'm also thrilled at the emergence of recent Columbia graduate Michael Zweng on the bigtime tennis stage.  And maybe Wisconsin, my graduate alma mater,

has a revived football team, too.  They play at Penn State this Sat Sep 27 at 5P EDT, only on the extra-charge Peacock network.

The one sports-related film ahead on TCM is Sa Oct 3 10P "The Set-Up" (1949) probably the best boxing movie ever with Robert Ryan as a journeyman boxer who refuses to take a dive.  Preceded at 8P by one of the early Noir classics "Out of the Past" (1947) with Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas sparring over Jane Greer. To me one of the rarely noted highlights is Dickie Moore as the mute gas station attendant at beginning and end of film. A decade earlier as an even younger child actor, Moore played the orphan that Joe E Brown wants to adopt in "The Gladiator", a far too rarely-shown Brown pic from his heyday in the 1930s.

This Sat midnight Sep 27 - repeated Su Sep 28 10A - Noir Alley presents "Ace in the Hole" (1951), Billy Wilder's searing take on mass culture's obsession with disasters.  Kirk Douglas again as the sensationalist newspaper reporter banished to New Mexico from NYC. He misses Yankee Stadium and the Gotham scene and grouses about local guys who wear belts AND suspenders. He makes up for it by milking a mine cave-in story for all its worth.  Wilder's wife singer Audrey Young reportedly thought that the reason Jan Sterling (playing the trapped miner's surly wife) gave for not attending church was the best line in all of her husband's films:  "Kneeling bags my nylons." 

I close on an aching note. This past Sat Sep 25, my friend Ernie Accorsi, 84, died of cancer at his home in Hershey, PA.  A noted football executive, Ernie was probably best known as the GM that engineered the trade of Eli Manning to the Giants. He also had been the GM of two other successful NFL teams, the Baltimore Colts and the Cleveland Browns. He loved all sports. Growing up in Hershey, he still talked fondly about being an usher for the local minor league hockey Hershey Bears, a franchise still thriving in his home town.  He went to Wake Forest on a golf scholarship at the same time as Arnold Palmer, Jay Sigel, Lanny Wadkins, and others. A roommate was the late Pat Williams, another man destined to make his name as a noted sports executive. After military service, Ernie became a sportswriter in Charlotte where he interviewed Moonlight Graham but regretted that he didn't know at the time the full story of the man who briefly made a MLB baseball lineup and was immortalized in WP Kinsella's "Shoeless Joe" and the movie "Field of Dreams".  Ernie went on to work in sports information at St Joseph's in Philly when Jack Ramsay was coaching basketball and later at Penn State during the heyday of Joe Paterno. To know Ernie was one of the joys of my life. His insights, humor, and integrity were gifts to everyone who knew him. He has reserved a place in my heart forever. 

That's all for now - take it easy but take it and Stay Positive Test Negative!!        

The disappointing Mets will stumble back to CitiField this weekend to face the surging first-place Braves. I, for one, didn't expect much of this year's Mets because of holes in the lineup, mediocre defense, and a bullpen that matches my Orioles for ineptitude (and that means trouble right here in East River City).    

 
Forgive me a little reference to "The Music Man" because I've just completed my trombone year of 76 and start walking 77 Sunset Strip as I type this blog.  (If any dear readers want to lend Kookie Kookie a comb, please do -and while you're at it, send along a tape of Efrem Zimbalist's Sr. great violin playing.)   

 
A golden anniversary year like the Mets are celebrating brings back many memories. Kudos to the Met organization for selling some tickets to the ESPN Sunday night game at 1969 prices.

 
I was still living in Baltimore on June 27, 1969 after one year of teaching at Goucher College, just north of Baltimore. For my first Baltimore birthday I treated myself to the Birds playing the defending World Series Tigers.  

 
It was a steamy Friday on Bethlehem Steel night.  The factories were still brimming in Charm City and the steelworkers brought along a contraption placed behind the outfield fence that blasted smoke into the stifling humid air every time the Orioles did something good.   

 
Funny how memory can be deceptive. I was sure that the Birds annihilated former Cy Young award-winner Denny McLain in a rout. And that damned boiler gizmo added more hot air into the already stifling atmosphere.  

Thanks to a glance at retrosheet.org - SABR's indispensable guide to virtually every box score ever -, the Orioles did take an early lead and beat Detroit 4-1 behind Dave McNally's complete-game 5-hitter. But it was hardly a rout.

 
McLain did pitch the next night in a loss and didn't get out of the 6th inning but that too wasn't exactly an annihilation.  The Tigers wound up winning 90 games in 1969 but still finished far behind the Orioles, winners of 109 games.

The Birds were fated to meet the Mets in the World Series and lose in five games after beating Tom Seaver in Game One in Baltimore.  I attended Game Two in the right field upper deck nosebleeds and I have to admit like most New Yorkers (except for those sullen Yankee fans living through a rare dark decade of non-contention), I was rooting for a Mets victory.   

I reasoned it would be a good thing for the city of New York and the country itself.  It was the height of anti-Vietnam war opposition amidst Richard Nixon's succession to the Presidency earlier in 1969. 

 
If you want to relive that time, I highly recommend Wayne Coffey's new book from Crown Archetype:  "They Said It Couldn't Be Done: The '69 Mets, New York City, And The Most Astounding Season In Baseball History."  

It recreates very well the magical year where the Mets scored only 15 runs more than their hapless maiden version of 1962 but wound up winning it all. Ace Tom Seaver was so exuberant that he even took out an ad saying that if Mets could win World Series, America could end Vietnam war.

 
Coffey is a veteran columnist and reporter for the New York "Daily News".  Among his prior books are "The Boys of Winter" (about the USA hockey team that upset the Russians at the 1980 Winter Olympics) and "Wherever I Wind Up," his collaboration with former Mets Cy Young award-winner R. A. Dickey on his memoir.  

 
I felt drawn into this book from the opening epigraphs, quotes from Booker T. Washington and St. Francis Assisi.  Some of the baseball material will not be new to ardent Mets fans. But Coffey has done new interviews with pitcher Jerry Koosman - Tom Seaver's too-often neglected second banana -, Ed Kranepool, and probably the last interview with the Mets' platoon-third baseman and poet in residence Ed Charles.

Too many other of the Mets' 1969 heroes are gone now, starting with manager Gil Hodges who left us so shockingly of a heart attack on the dawn of the strike-delayed 1972 season.  Tom Seaver's ongoing battle with dementia caused by lyme disease will keep him away from this weekend's festivities.

Of the quartet of key AfricanAmerican Mets core players, only Cleon Jones remains. He remains actively involved in restoring his Mobile, Alabama neighborhood of Africatown, the last port where slave ships arrived. His friend and neighbor Tommy Agee is gone as in the mid-1969 acquisition, slugging first baseman Donn Clendenon.

Happily, they all come back to life on Coffey's pages.  We learn such new details (new at least to me) that Clendenon turned down a bigtime college football scholarship to attend Morehouse College in Atlanta. A person serving as his unofficial big brother made the recommendation, . . . the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.  

"They Said" is also enhanced by the still-vivid memories of Mets broadcasters Gary Cohen and Howie Rose both of whom like Coffey were teenagers in that special year of 1969.

My only criticism of Coffey's book is that there is no index.  A work of this quality needed one.

Well, that's all for now.  Always remember:  Take it easy but take it!