Just as I was beginning to give up on any improvement in the post-season fortunes of my Orioles - and consigned myself again to calling them the Woerioles - the Birds surprised me on Wed aft Dec 10 by signing former Mets first baseman Pete Alonso to a five-year contract for a reported $155 million. It was not so surprisng that Mets owner Steve A. Cohen - like Orioles owner David Rubenstein someone who made his fortune in private equity funding - was willing to let Alonso walk. Cohen only reluctantly signed him last year at this time to a two-year contract with an opt-out clause after one year. Virtually seconds after the end of the Mets' disappointing 2025 season, Alonso activated the clause that made him a free agent. .
That the Orioles won the auction engineered by super-agent Scott Boras was more surprising. Evidently Rubenstein and his President of Baseball Operations Mike Elias realized that they must act proactively after their own very disappointing 2025 season that saw them fall into the AL East basement 12 games under .500. Count me in as someone who always thought that Alonso's bigtime power to all fields would be a perfect fit for Baltimore's Camden Yards with its cozy dimensions in right field and now left field where the fences are a little closer once Elias realized his moving them farther out had been a mistake.
Of course, as someone who was dubbed the Prince of Paranoia by the late great Batlimore sportswriter Jim Henneman, I did immediately think of other first base signings in Oriole history that proved disastrous: Chris Davis who they are still paying through 2037 and earlier Glenn Davis (no relation) who cost them in a trade three good players, pitchers Pete Harnisch, Curt Schilling, and outfielder Steve Finley.
I hope though that unlike Glenn Davis who may have arrived from the cavernous Houston Astrodome with injury issues, Alonso has been durable and has played almost every game in each season since he arrived in New York via the University of Florida and time in the Mets' minor league system. There is no doubt that Alonso believed that the Mets kept him down on the farm for an extra year so his clock towards salary arbitration and the super-big bucks of free agency could be delayed.
Time will tell if Alonso will begin to fade near the end of his contract. For now the Orioles have filled one big need in their lineup - a power righthanded bat that drives in runs. What to do with the incumbent first basemen - injury-prone Ryan Mountcastle (whose power has mysteriously declined though he is still under 30) and younger Coby Mayo who has enormous power but is still unproven - will have to be determined. There is also the highly touted young catcher Samuel Basallo, 21, who was slated to be an occasional first baseman. And let us not forget the holes that remain in the starting pitching rotation for the Orioles.
Yet this early visit from Santa Claus is to be celebrated. So the Prince of Paranoia will try to focus on the gift-giving and card-receiving of the holiday season. And pledges a hiatus to Woeriole grousing . . .at least until I get agitated next season about an Alonso 0-20 slump or perhaps a wild throw on a possible double play grounder.
Here's more happy recent news on my favorite basketball team, the Columbia women's basketball team that produced a stirring victory at Seton Hall this past Tuesday Dec 9, the day before the Alonso trade. Trailing for virtually the entire game with star junior guard Riley Weiss having an off night, the Lions used tough defense to stay in the battle though falling behind by 10 points a couple of times in second half. Holding the Seton Hall Pirates to 2-15 shooting in the late going, the Lions won it, 54-53, on a layup by senior co-captain Perri Page. Somehow with less than 9 seconds remaining in the game, she broke free from a triple-team to hit the big shot with 0.5 registering on clock. Kudos to junior Fliss Henderson for delivering the ball accurately to Page and her defense and rebounding. And a shout-out to sophomore Mia Bloom who filled the scoresheet with 3 steals, 1 block, i assist, and only 1 turnover.
After a break for fall semester final exams, Columbia has one more home game in 2025, a Sat Dec 19 encounter at 1P with U of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). On the same Tues night where the Lions prevailed at Seton Hall, the Columbia men lost in OT at Stony Brook but they enter exam period at a surprising and encouraging 9-2 while the women are 7-4. The men have one more December home game at 2P Dec 31 against Penn State at Abington and start the Ivy League season on M Jan 5 at 5P at Cornell. Men's home opener is Sa Jan 10 at 2P against Harvard.. The women open their defense of the Ivy League title on Sat Jan 3 at 2P home against Cornell.
And now for some TCM tips: Very few upcoming films with sports themes but a boxing classic is on:
Sa Dec 13 930P "The Harder They Fall" (1956) One of Humphrey Bogart's last films - he plays a press agent who becomes a crusader against boxing corruption in a story written by Budd Schulberg based in part on the selling of the overmatched heavyweight Primo Carnera. With Rod Steiger.
Noir Alley follows at 12M (also Dec 14 10A). "Cash on Demand" (1961) a British Noir with Peter Cushing, Andre Morell, John Vernon.
Later on Su Dec 14 Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" (1940) with his then-amour Paulette Goddard/Jack Oakie as a Mussolini character opposite Chaplin playing 2 roles, a Hitler character and a Jewish barber with amnesia after a World War I injury who returns to find the Nazi takeover of his village. The movie was the first full talking picture Chaplin ever made. If never seen, it should be on anyone's list if only as a slice of cultural history at a time when US had not entered World War II yet but the horrors of Nazism were beginning to be known.
After reading Diane Kiesel's masterful recent book "WHEN CHARLIE MET JOAN: The Tragedy of the Chaplin Trials and the Failings of American Law" (U of Michigan Press, 2025), it is hard to view Chaplin the man with great sympathy. He had many love affairs from his earliest times in Hollywood and blithely broke them off with the aid of an admiring entourage. Without the purest of motives and egged on by her mother and later Hollywood gossip hounds not thrilled with Chaplin's pro-Soviet politics, starlet Joan Berry fought back. To Diane Kiesel's eternal credit, she makes all these characters come to life. She is a retired judge but also a gifted writer.
While I'm on this topic of films in large historic contexts, if you never watched this classic:
W Dec 17 5A "Ninotchka" (1939) is a light and hilarious putdown of Soviet Russia's ideology as only Ernst Lubitsch could direct. Melvyn Douglas romances commissar Greta Garbo in a film where "Garbo Speaks," as the ads proclaimed. She was good in this film, too, but it was her last one.
And how could I not list:
F Dec 19 1130A Billy Wilder's "Stalag 17" (1953) with William Holden as a cynical leader in a German POW camp in World War II who is trying to ferret out an informer. I wasn't ready for it as a 11-year old when my mother took me and my sister to a double bill on the long gone 68th Street Playnouse on Lexington Ave. (Other film was "A Place in the Sun").
I'm ready for it now.
That's all this time. Always remember: Take it easy but Take it, and Stay Positive Test Negative!