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.    

       

 

 

The news during the weekend of December 20 that Rickey Henderson had died just a few days shy of his 66th birthday on Christmas Day hit the baseball

world very hard.  It was another hard blow after the recent loss of near-Hall of Famers Luis Tiant and Fernando Valenzuela and estimable Rocky Colavito and earlier in 2024 the departures of Hall of Fame immortals Willie Mays and Orlando Cepeda. 

 

I never engaged in a one-on-one with Rickey, but when he was with the Mets in 2000 and I was a WNYC sports commentator, I saw him in the clubhouse taking issue with a NY Post reporter who had questioned his hustle on the field. Rickey didn't stoop to the physical threatening of Bobby Bonilla or the bleach-spraying of Bret Saberhagen (both onetime Mets), but he said firmly that nobody should ever question his playing hard or his love of the game. 

 

I have always thought that Rickey's time in New York got off on a wrong note in 1985 when he was on the disabled list for the first weeks of season and he reportedly said to an inquiring reporter, "I ain't got no time for no press." Meanwhile, across town in Queens, another newcomer, Gary Carter, blasted an extra-inning Opening Day walkoff HR against the St. Louis Cardinals, and the next year he was one of the leaders on the 1986 World Champs.  Rickey's NYY teams were always good but never made the then-shorter playoffs and he was traded back to Oakland in mid-1989.    

 

Of course Rickey's statistics were worthy of first ballot Hall of Fame election in 2009. Not only the all-time base stealer but 3,055 career hits, .401 on base percentage and .820 OPS on-base + slugging average. But the outpouring of sympathy comes from the unique character of the man. Check out Rickey's Hall of Fame induction speech in 2009. It is a classic in which he began by noting that if Satchel Paige could start in the majors at age 45, he would play as long as his body held out. His last major league season was 2003, making it 25 in all (not counting his 2004-2005 in independent ball.) 

 

Rickey went on to praise his mother Bobbie who had insisted he give up football although he wanted to play for his adopted home town Oakland Raiders.  "I guess mom knows best," he said, smiling and nodding to her, his wife, and his daughters.  He thanked his Babe Ruth League coach for bribing him with donuts and hot chocolate to get him out of bed and to the ballpark. And his HS guidance counselor for giving him a quarter for every hit, stolen base, and run scored he made in a local game.

 

He thanked Jack "JJ" Guinn, the scout who signed him for the Oakland A's and ignored the nay-sayers who thought a position player couldn't succeed throwing left and batting right. He praised his first minor league manager Tom Trebelhorn, a future Milwaukee Brewers skipper, for teaching him how to slide and take leads from first base. Remembering the day in July 1979 when A's owner Charlie Finley phoned and told him to report to the majors, Rickey chuckled, "Charlie, wherever you at and that donkey, thank you for the opportunity." 

 

RIP Rickey Nelson Henley Henderson - maybe his entertaining originality was preordained when he was born in a family Oldsmobile in Chicago as his mother was being rushed to the hospital and Ricky Nelson music was on the car radio. 

 

HERE'S A COUPLE OF TOUCHING MOMENTS FROM THE END OF THE BASEBALL SEASON: 

**At the end of the Yankees-Royals divisional baseball series, Yankees DH Giancarlo Stanton put a consoling arm around a tearful Bobby Witt Jr. after the Bronx Bombers had eliminated KC. Giancarlo must have been telling the rising superstar shortstop that there will be other chances for him to be on the winning side. 

 

**Isaiah Kiner-Falefa, Pirates (and former Rangers-Yankees) shortstop turned down a $250,000 bonus for playing in a certain number of games so that Pittsburgh rookies just called up from the minors could see some major league action. In this age of blatant greed on all sides, Falefa's gesture deserves a tip of the cap.  Last I looked, Isaiah, who will turn 30 in March, was still a free agent - he is the kind of grinder that every winning team needs.

 

My first post of the New Year will speculate more deeply on off-season maneuvers by MLB teams. I must say now that I don't know what the Cleveland Guardians are doing in trading superior middle infielder Andres Gimenez to the Blue Jays and slugging first baseman Josh Naylor to the Diamondbacks without a seemingly adequate return.  Gimenez's bat has slipped but his defense is world class.  The reverse is true about the burly but productive Naylor who is still only 27.

 

But I must take the time now to list the Sydney Greenstreet films celebrating his 145th birthday that will be on TCM Fri Dec 27 from 845A until 8P.  The day is sentimental for me because it is my half-birthday and also the birthday of my late sister Carol Ann Lowenfish Norton who would have been 86 on Dec 27.  She always knew the game was in my blood although after attending an Orioles game with me in Baltimore, she looked around at the crowd and wrote in a suburban newspaper that the national pastime was not baseball but eating.  

 

845A "That Way With Women" (1947) with Dane Clark and Martha Vickers, Lauren Bacall's precocious little sister in "The Big Sleep" from the year before.

 

*1015A "The Maltese Falcon" (1941) the first Greenstreet-Peter Lorre collaboration.  Starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor. John Huston's first directorial hit and watch for his father Walter Huston making a cameo as the man that brings the falcon to Bogart's office.

 

12N "Background to Danger" (1943) set in Turkey directed by Raoul Walsh with Brenda Marshall and George Raft

 

130P "Conflict" (1945) with Bogart and the underappreciated Alexis Smith years before she became a Broadway musical star

 

3P "Mask of Dimitrios" (1944) with Zachary Scott (just before he treats Joan Crawford and Ann Blyth badly in "Mildred Pierce") and Faye Emerson (several years before she hosts with then-husband bandleader Skitch Henderson "Faye and Skitch", a NYC talk show in the early days of TV  

 

*445P "Three Strangers" (1946) with Geraldine Fitzgerald. Ireland's temporary gift to America (she played a memorable bitchy character in Siodmak's "Strange Affair of Uncle Harry" that I saw last week at the director Robert Siodmak Retrospective) and Peter Lorre.  A wish for the new year is made by three strangers.

 

630P "The Verdict" (1946) based on an Israel Zangwill story about a prosecutor who sentences an innocent man to death. With Lorre & Joan Lorring.

 

Sun Dec 29 has quite a lineup, too, starting at 12:15A with Noir Alley's "Postman Never Rings Twice" (1946) James Cain's classic story directed by

Tay Garnett with John Garfield and Lana Turner as the illicit lovers/Cecil Kellaway as the victimized husband/Leon Ames as the prosecutor. Repeated at 10A

 

12N "Ball of Fire" (1942) the original one directed by Howard Hawks with tough gal Barbara Stanwyck loosening up the linguistic professors including Gary Cooper.  Dana Andrews in a rare comic role as Stanwyck's mob boyfriend.

 

And the day ends back-to-back:

8P "Mildred Pierce" (1945) followed I hope by Carol Burnett bringing along her spoof of the movie

 

1030P "Double Indemnity" (1944) with Fred MacMurray/Stanwyck as the illicit lovers and Edward G Robinson sadly figuring it out - the Noir that started it all although I'd vote for Alan Ladd/Veronica Lake in "This Gun For Hire" (1942) with Robert Preston years before his Harold Hill days in "Music Man". One senses the hand of screenwriter W.R. Burnett all over this movie

 

That's all for now.  Here are the mantras, please follow them in these turbulent years of history that I hope won't engulf us all.  But understanding and appreciating the history of baseball, movies, and music will certainly help if only for consolation. 

So all together now:  Stay positive, test negative, and a new one:  stay healthy and stay sane.

 

And as always, take it easy but take it.   Happy New Year!!