Lee Lowenfish

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving Wisconsin's football season ended with a thud on a snow-covered field in Minneapolis. There was a brief hope in the third quarter that the Badgers might actually take the lead or at least tie this fierce rivalry game against Minnesota for possession of Paul Bunyan's axe, the oldest college rivalry game in the country. But in field goal range, reserve quarterback Hunter Simmons threw an interception that snatched away the last chance for victory as the Gophers won 17-7 in a game that wasn't really that close. Wisconsin has an improving defense but a woeful offense even on a dry field. The Badgers finished 4-8 and missed a bowl game, however minor, for 2nd straight year.

To be brutally honest, every one of the quarterbacks on the Wisconsin roster were "reserve QBs" and virtually all of them got injured this season.   I wouldn't dismiss the possible growth of the healthy true freshman Carter Smith from Fort Myers Florida who I doubt ever played in the snow before.  (I love the term "true freshman" as opposed to false freshman or lying, cheating freshman). Smith is a promising runner, but is a work in progress as a passer.  Yet how many times can Badger fans put up with bringing in via the transfer portal a supposed savior who is secretly injured? 

On a long-term very expensive contract, coach Luke Fickell will have at least another year or two to figure this out.   Ohio State people swear by the talent and character of the former Buckeye player and coach. Although I'm not a Buckeye fan, I have to tip my cap to Ryan Day's undefeated team that finally exorcised the 4 recent osses to Michigan with a convincing 27-9 win in Ann Arbor.  Coach Day said all the right things after the game, stressing humility and the importance of his team's love for brotherhood more than its hatred of an enemy.  

Wisconsin men's basketball is not looking too good right now either. They have only lost two games but they were bad losses in which they reminded me a little too much of the football team.  Just not ready for prime time.  Except unlike football, basketball defense is suspect and the team has not really been competitive in its two losses to Brigham Young, who ousted them from the Big Dance last year, and TCU.  The Horned Frogs under coach Jamie Dixon - who went to Texas Christian U - beat Florida, last year's national champion, in a Thanksgiving tourney, and then throttled Wisconsin handily. It's obvious that the Badgers cannot rely only on guards Nick Boyd, the San Diego St. transfer, and John Blackwell to be the chief scorers. I'm not throwing in the towel after 7 games but my level of concern is rising.  

I am happy to report that loyal Wisconsin fans have both men's and women's hockey teams to cheer on to good seasons this year.  And also that the top-notch women's volleyball team is getting hot at the right time as the national playoffs near. The Wisconsin women's basketball team is showing some promise too under a new coach.  The boo hounds undoubtedly will pick up their chorus for the ouster of men's coach Greg Gard. I say that after blowing up the football program by hiring the former Buckeye Luke Fickell, I would be careful about doing the same thing to basketball.  Especially if the deservedly embattled athletic director Chris McIntosh is making the decisions.  

Locally, there is better news about my other alma mater Columbia whose women's basketball team just completed its tough early schedule with a 4-4 record.   Coach Megan Griffith in her 10th year at her alma mater has a player of the year candidate in junior Riley Weiss who found her shooting touch in a Thanksgiving tournament at the Cancun resort in Mexico.  She tied a school record with a 19 point.4th quarter in a win over S. Dakota State.  She added 31 in a loss to nationally ranked UNC-Chapel Hill, a game that was close until the veteran Tarheels broke it open in final period.  What I love about Griffith's teams is their aggressive running style and commitment to defense. There is no better spokesperson for defense than co-captain Perri Page. Check out some of the interviews at gocolumbialions.com 

The women's team has 4 games in December in this area, two at home at the Levien Gym, just east of Broadway at 120th Street:  '

Sat Dec 6 at 2P against Wagner from Staten Island

Sat Dec 20 University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) 1p. 

And on the road at Manhattan Riverdale NY, Wed Dec 3 7P 

Seton Hall, South Orange NJ - Tu Dec 9 6P 

Ivy League season begins on Sat Jan 3 2P against Cornell

Having lost only one game, the Columbia men's team is having a very exciting season under new head coach Kevin Hovde.  They have 4 remaining home games in December:

W Dec 3 Hofstra 7P

Sa Dec 6 U Albany 530P (part of a double admission doubleheader after women's game against Wagner)2P

Tu Dec 9 at Stony Brook 7P

W Dec 31 Penn State at Abington 

Ivy League home season begins Sa Jan 10 against Harvard 2P 

I''ll have more to say next post about MLB trades and free agent signings when there are facts and not rumors and hallucinations. I don't consider the Blue Jays' extravagant 7-year contract to former Padres RH starting pitcher Dylan Cease big news except to note that rich owners like Toronto's James Rogers love to spend money to bring home the proverbial moose on the wall for their living room and also satisfy hungry fans that think money alone brings championships.  Perhaps the Orioles are improved by trading for Taylor Ward, 31, and giving up on RHP Grayson Rodriguez who was always injured.  Perhaps Ryan Helsley will be a free agent signing that will help Bird bullpen.  I'm still waiting for the core of young players that all regressed last season to take steps forward.  I will try to be patient.

And now here's the cornicopia of TCM listings:

I don't know how much of a baseball fan Richard Pryor really was, but he does appear in a Cubs uniform early in this film. You can see for yourself:

M Dec 1 10P as Pryor stars in TCM's showing of "Brewster's Millions" (1985). He plays a onetime minor league pitcher who will inherit a rich relative's bequest of $300 million if he spends $30 million in 30 days.  John Candy plays a catcher and the cast includes Lonette McKee (who I saw as Rachel Robinson in the ill-fated Broadway musical a few years earlier in "The First" with David Alan Grier as Jackie Robinson and David Huddleston as Branch Rickey (younger readers will remember the actor for playing the richer Lebowski iopposite the "Dude" Jeff Bridges in the Coen Brothers' "The Big Lebowski").  Others in "Brewster" cast include Tovah Feldshuh and Pat Hingle.   

TCM's Pryor festival begins at 8P with "Silver Streak" (1976) co-starring Gene Wilder and continues at 1145P with Pryor "Live from Sunset Strip" (1982) and goes on until dawn.

Tu Dec 2 230P "Requiem for a Heavyweight" (1962) Not as good as the TV version 3 years earlier but this one about a boxer down on its luck turning to wrestling has an interesting cast:  Mickey Rooney, Jackie Gleason, Anthony Quinn. With cameos by boxers Jack Dempsey, Willie Pep, and wrestler Haystacks Calhoun.  Reportedly Rod Serling was a script writer.

Th Dec 4 6A "The Bob Mathias Story" (1954) the Olympic decathalon champion in both 1948 and 1952 playing himself

730A "Crazylegs" (1953) Elroy "Crazylegs" Hirsch" great Wisconsin player (and later Badger athletic director) creditably plays himself

 - directed by Harmon Jones who the year before directed Dan Dailey as Dizzy Dean in "The Pride of St Louis" (1952)

9A "The Babe Ruth Story" (1948) William Bendix miscast as Babe Ruth, veteran Charles Bickford who doesn't age as Brother Matthias in first and last scenes and Claire Trevor

not exactly memorable but always watchable as Ruth's missus.  It's not every film that you get to see onetime prominent newscaster H.V. Kaltenborn

11A "Jackie Robinson Story" (1950) in which JR plays himself, Ruby Dee as Rachel, and character actor Minor Watson (who played Katherine Hepburn's father in "Woman of the Year") as Branch Rickey

1230P "Knute Rockne, All American" (1940) Pat O'Brien in title role and a member of Warner Brothers acting stable named Ronald Reagan as George Gipp

215P "Jim Thorpe, All American" (1951) Burt Lancaster in title role/Reagan returns as George Gipp, Michael "Casablanca" Curtiz director

415P "Somebody Up There Likes Me" (1956) life story of boxer Rocky Graziano played by Paul Newman.  Rowland Barber adapts his biography for screen. A few years later Barber was co-author of HARPO SPEAKS the indispensable biography of the sweetest and most engaging Marx Brother.  Harpo was a huge New York Giant baseball fan watching his team for free from Coogan's Bluff high above the Polo Grounds' left field.  Harpo said his favorirte Giant was left fielder Sam Tertes the only Giant who he could see from his perch.

615P "When We Were Kings" (1997) Leon Gast's documentary of Muhammad Ali's "rumble in the jungle" against George Foreman in Zaire with plenty of good rock and soul music

745P "How To Watch Football" (1938) Robert Benchley ends this marathon with one of his priceless comedy shorts

NB at 945P "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" (1941) Robert Montgomery plays a boxer who comes back to life with the help of a divine emissary Claude Rains/also with Evelyn Keyes

F Dec 5 doesn't have sports-themed movies but quite an impressive lineup: 

1245P "Johnny Belinda" (1948) Jane Wyman's Oscar as deaf young woman raised by Charles Bickford. Lew Ayres as her caring doctor and Stephen McNally playing a horrendous town bully, a character in today's America who would probably become a Trumpian Hollywood ambassador. 

4P "Citizen Kane" (1941)

8P "Cover Girl" (1944) a musical with Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth and songs by Jerome Kern/Ira Gershwin including "Long Ago and Far Away" 

10P "New York, New York" (1977) Scorsese's uncut version of a jazz band on road with DeNiro/Liza Minnelli/Lionel Stander

Su Dec 7 Noir Alley 12M, repeated at 10A. "Cry of the City" (1948) another intense and watchable Robert Siodmak film with Richard Conte, Victor Mature, Fred Clark. I became aware of things in the early 1950s when Fred Clark was one of the neighbors of George Burns and Gracie Allen.  Only recentily did I realize the range of his acting that included trying to save Montgomery Clift's life in "A Place in the Sun" and being a business associate of Fred Astaire in "Daddy Longlegs".)   

That's all for now.  My mantra remains: Stay positive, test negative, and Take it easy but take it! 

It's a wonderful feeling in life when one's expectations are exceeded.  Such was my experience last week when I taught for the third time a Baseball and American Culture class in the Special Studies department of the Chautauqua Institution.

Chautauqua is an adult education and vibrant cultural mecca in the southwestern corner of New York State near the Pennsylvania border. It was founded shortly after the Civil War as a retreat for Methodist Sunday school teachers. (Am amazed that Branch Rickey evidently never came to Chautauqua though he was probably so busy with baseball and his Delta Tau Delta fraternal activities to come there.) 

 
There's nothing like teaching and talking about what you love in front of students who appreciate your interests and genuinely want to learn more.  I've long believed that a teacher always learns as much from students as they learn from him or her.

I felt good about talking about the rich if complicated history of baseball - from the late 19th century labor battles between John Montgomery Ward and Albert Spalding to the rise of the great management leaders Ban Johnson and his replacement as lord high commissioner Landis. And the pioneers Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson and the later labor wars surrounding Marvin Miller and Bowie Kuhn and Bud Selig.

But the happiest moments for me in teaching are always the unique responses of the students.  Here are some examples:

**During the opening session everyone introduces themselves. One woman from western Michigan described how she fell in love with Sandy Koufax when he was a bonus baby starting out with the Brooklyn Dodgers. There was something about seeing him struggle on TV that made her a lifelong fan.

 
As an adult she made pilgrimages to LA to follow him live.  She framed a photo of him and his onetime Brooklyn teammate Sal Maglie and placed it on her bedroom wall. Her husband wasn't too impressed - soon he was an ex-husband. (I don't do justice to her timing in telling this story.)

**Another priceless moment was a student writing down from my typed notes the words on an Irish towel that one of my first undergraduate students gave me as a present over a half-century ago: 

"Baseball (as explained to a foreign visitor).

YOU HAVE TWO SIDES ONE OUT IN THE FIELD AND ONE IN.

EACH MAN THAT'S ON THE SIDE THAT'S IN GOES OUT AND WHEN HE' OUT HE COMES IN AND THE NEXT MAN GOES IN UNTIL HE'S OUT.

WHEN THREE MEN ARE OUT THE SIDE THAT'S OUT COMES IN AND THE SIDE THAT'S BEEN IN GOES OUT OAND TRIES TO GET THOSE COMING IN OUT.

SOMETIMES YOU GOT MEN STILL IN AND NOT OUT.

WHEN BOTH SIDES HAVE BEEN IN AND OUT NINE TIMES INCLUDING THE NOT OUTS

THAT'S THE END OF THE GAME (EMPHASIS ADDED)."

**Then there was the moving sight at my last class when 15 students stood up to watch on my little laptop with a weak sound system Buster Keaton's baseball pantomime from "The Cameraman," his last great silent film. Buster had hauled his equipment to Yankee Stadium looking for a story but had read the schedule wrong. NO GAME TODAY appears on the screen.

 
So Buster takes the opportunity to walk to the mound and imitate the pitcher and catcher and umpire and other players on the diamond.  It's a classic clip of just a little over three minutes before a policeman chases him away. 

 
I felt it was particularly appropriate to show some baseball comedy in my class because it was Comedy Week at Chautauqua. It was an event co-sponsored by the newly-established National Comedy Center in nearby Jamestown NY - the hometown of Lucille Ball who, by the way, has recently been honored with a more accurate and artful sculpture. 

 
One of the great highlights of Comedy Week was the Smothers Brothers coming out of retirement to commemorate their law suit against CBS for kicking them off the air nearly 50 years ago. "I'm still pissed" were Tommy's first words to the appreciative audience.

Both he and younger brother Dick looked in amazingly good shape for people in their early eighties. They contributed a witty opening skit before discussing their careers with moderator NPR's David Bianculli.  A good selection of skits from their heyday were shown. 

It was announced that the Smothers archives will be going to the Jamestown center. The organization already has the papers of George Carlin and Richard Pryor and several other comedians. (By the way, I had to share the classic Carlin skit on "Baseball and Football" with my class.)

 
A panel on Ernie Kovacs, the great comic creator of early TV, was very informative and included trenchant commentary by "The King of Rant" Lewis Black and masterful veteran comic writer Alan Zweibel.  Sirius radio host Ron Bennington and Bianculli also contributed very helpfully to the evening at the Jamestown center. 

Also very valuable was a discussion of the legacy of Robin Williams that featured Lew Black again and Williams' longtime manager David Steinberg (not the Canadian-born comedian). During the question period Steinberg confirmed that Jonathan Winters had been a big influence on Williams during their "Mork and Mindy" days.  (Yes, I did share with students a few YouTube selections of Winters' crusty baseball characters.) 

I planned my Chautauqua gig this year around two musical performances that didn't disappoint. The first was John Corigliano's 1991 opera "The Ghost of Versailles" with a libretto by William Hoffman. 

"Ghosts" is a free-wheeling time-traveling exploration of what would have happened if doomed Marie Antoinette had been saved by "The Marriage of Figaro" creator Beaumarchais.  Happily, the fit-looking 80-year-old Corigliano was on hand to take some deserved bows at the end from the cheering throng at Chautauqua's impressive outdoor Amphitheater.   

 
Last but not least, I saw the Chautauqua Symphony's performance of two pieces that promised to and indeed stirred my Russian-American blood, Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony and Prokofiev's Second Violin Concerto. 

Both pieces have melodies that are reminscent of pop songs - a "La Vie En Rose" descending melody in the first movement of the Prokofiev - and a haunting six-note melody in the adagio late in the Rachmaninoff that I am still humming as I conclude this blog. (I think Chet Baker may have recorded it at one time but I am not sure about that.)

 
Looks like there will be some great pennant race baseball building in the last weeks of the season.  More on that in the next blog.  For now, always remember:

Take it easy but take it!