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! 

 

 

  

 

 

 

    

Blame me, Oriole fans. The Prince of Paranoia went out of character and conceived a new alter ego, Agent 161 031 221, in the wake of the Orioles' 17-5 rout of the Yankees on Thursday afternoon June 20.  That was the line score on a day the Birds scored in every inning but the 4th. 

 

It was my first jaunt to Yankee Stadium this season and I never expected a laugher, but once Juan Soto didn't react to Gunnar Henderson's first-pitch liner to right and it became a double, the die seemingly was cast on this very steamy afternoon.

 

It was a rare off-day for the Yankees' surprise ace so far, Luis Gil, who came in with a 9-1 record and a low ERA.  He was knocked out during a six-run Oriole second inning and Yankee relievers didn't fare much better.

 

I didn't really expect future games would be so easy.  I knew that the Astros are improving and are loaded with talent with championship pedigree and a good farm system. But I didn't expect a sweep this past weekend at Minute Maid Park, especially with our two best starters working the first two games, Grayson Rodriguez and Corbin Burnes. 

 

A sweep is what happened because the baseball gods are very capricious and are wary of overconfidence. Rodriguez seemed in control on Friday night with a 3-2 lead in the bottom of the 5th, but with two out and two on - both well-stroked singles on fastballs - he hung an off-speed pitch to center fielder Jake Meyers and in a twinkling it was 5-3 Astros.

 

This is Grayson's first full year in the majors so he remains a young pitcher, but with three Baltimore starters out for the year and longer - Kyle Bradish, John Means and Tyler Wells - Rodriguez needs to step up.  He didn't get an out in the bottom of the 6th and the rout was on. 

 

The Orioles did make Friday's game interesting with a barrage of 7th and 8th inning homers but that only cut the deficit to 14-11. To coin a phrase (LOL), "Close only counts in horseshoes and grenades." 

 

In the Sa/Su day games, Houston starters Ronel Franco, who pitched a no-hitter earlier in season, and veteran southpaw Framber Valdez simply outpitched Baltimore's ace Corbin Burnes and reclamation project Albert Suarez. 

 

The Astros are now only two games under .500 and just five games in lost column behind the first-place AL West Mariners. Houston has lost their share of pitchers for the season, too, notably Jose Urquiddy and Cristian Javier and are also temporarily missing powerful right fielder Kyle Tucker, but they still have a potent lineup from top to bottom. 

 

Next up for the Orioles at home are the Cleveland Guardians who have lost two less games than the Orioles at 49-26 and are leading the AL Central 

by 7 games in the loss column over Minnesota.  The Texas Rangers come into Baltimore the last weekend of June and they are now only 3 games

below .500 and Max Scherzer was excellent in his first start of the season on Sun Jun 23. 

  

There is no word but EPIDEMIC to describe what is happening to pitchers this season.  There is no easy explanation except that the reward system for amateur signings and big contracts is heavily weighted towards Velocity and Spin Rate.  Until organizations stress Pitchability and Durability, the casualty rate will go on and on.  

 

AND NOW THE TRIBUTES TO MAYS AND SUTHERLAND:

The timing of the passing of Willie Mays was eerily appropriate.  Mays died on Tues June 19 at the age of 93 as MLB was preparing to celebrate the Negro leagues at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama. MLBTV was covering a minor league game at Rickwood when the TV coverage was interrupted with the news of Mays' death.  Rickwood later hosted an exciting MLB game between the surging Cardinals and the sagging Giants. 

 

A tip of the cap to Richard Goldstein whose NY Times obituary of Mays contained a fact I didn't know.  Condoleeza Rice's mother taught Willie at Fairfield Ala. Industrial HS.  She was tolerant of some of his absences because of his baseball responsibilities.  (I knew that Condi's father was one of the recipients of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from A Birmingham Jail" - the senior Rice did not believe that educated Blacks should take part in demonstrations.) 

 

Another kudo to Anthony Castrovince of mlb.com for his June 12 piece, "How Hollywood Saved Rickwood Field." In a twist of remarkable irony, it turns out that when Ron Shelton was looking for a site to film his bio-pic "Cobb" in the early 1990s, he chose Rickwood Field because it dates back to 1910 during the heyday of Cobb's career. 

 

"Cobb" is not a great movie, marred by Shelton's reliance on sportswriter Al Stump's questionable recounting of interviews in the last year of Cobb's life.  Yet this connection made me think of something Branch Rickey said in his only book, THE AMERICAN DIAMOND:  The only player he ever saw that had a greater will to win than Jackie Robinson was Ty Cobb. 

 

Rickey also once uttered a potent description of Willie Mays:  "The secret to his success is the frivolity in his bloodstream."  I don't have many memories of games that Mays played as a New York Giant, but I do remember going with my father to the Polo Grounds to see pre-game fielding and batting practice at the Polo Grounds.  During every pre-game fielding drill, Mays showed off his cannon of an arm in throws to home, third, and second.

  

Here's one other Mays story to share.  Sometime before the pandemic, I won a raffle at a NYC Baseball Writers Association dinner.  The prize was a painting of me and my favorite NY ballplayer. I sent a photo of yours truly to artist John Pennisi and I have the result framed in my living room with a caption added by the artist.

 

Lee:  "Say Hey Willie, Leo says if Thomson gets on, I'm pinch-hittin' for you."

Willie: "Lee, how did you get on the field?" 

 

Here's also a fond farewell to actor Donald Sutherland, 88, who passed away two days after Mays on Jun 20.  He too deservedly received of a front page obit in NY Times (though understandably not nearly as large). 

 

I never met Sutherland but I loved his work on film including "M*A*S*H,"  "Klute," and the remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". How could a sports fan like me ever forget Sutherland's character who gets so infested with the alien pods that he loses interest in the NBA finals.  (That was in early 1980s when the entertainment aspect of NBA hadn't take over, but that's another story.) 

 

Sutherland was a genuine baseball fan and as a native of Canada, he especially adored the Expos who entered MLB in 1969. I love the story of Sutherland on a film assignment in Europe in October 1981, spending a few hundred dollars on a phone call to North America so he could follow a radio broadcast of the Expos-Dodgers NLCS playoff.  He was a true fan and never used his celebrity to draw attention. 

 

That's all for now.  Next time I post i'll be an 83-year-old.  Just remembered that 1983 was the last world championship year of the Orioles.  The Prince of Paranoia doesn't really believe in omens or jinxes but I just may retire Agent 161 031 221. 

 

Stay positive test negative, and take it easy but take it over.