Lee Lowenfish

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! 

 

 

 

I have never sought a job in MLB or MiLB but have been to a few winter meetings, which are slightly mislabeled because they always occur before the

official start of winter on Dec. 21. I was in San Diego in 1984 not long after Calvin Griffith sold the Minnesota Twins to banker Carl Pohlad.

 

No longer was the franchise in his family that had owned the original Washington Senators since 1919 (patriarch Clark Griffith after managing the New York Highlanders before they became the Yankees, actually arrived in DC as manager in 1912.). In 1984, Calvin, his adopted nephew, looked very relaxed, not worrying about losing his star players to free agency - that had started 8 years earlier - or worrying about extending them and finding their productivity decline.

 

I commended Griffith on the good work of his franchise's scouts over the years, finding future Hall of Famers like Walter Johnson and Harmon Killebrew and developing other less heralded but genuine major leaguers. He explained one of his secrets of scouting: "We always look in a boy's mouth. If he doesn't take care of his teeth, how will he take care of his arm?" 

 

In 1992, I was in Louisville when former Pirates president Carl Barger was preparing to take on a similar role in the expansion Florida (now Miami) Marlins. Speaking at an executive session of owners, Barger, who helped keep his home town team in Pittsburgh after the death of longtime owner John K. Galbreath in 1985, warned his colleagues about the rising salaries in baseball.

 

As reported later, Barger pleaded with them to stop their reckless spending and to consider the needs of the smaller markets. Taking a break from the session, Barger stepped out into a hallway and collapsed from an aneurysm and was dead before he arrived in a hospital.  He was only 58. 

The plight of the smaller markets and also the presence of many owners who do not want to spend money for proven players remains obviously a big issue in baseball. 

 

Until the end of the twentieth century, the winter meetings were actually organized by the National Association, the minor leagues' ruling body. There was a far more collegial spirit then - the annual award of King of Baseball honored such revered figures as Roland Hemond and Paul Snyder, the lifelong Braves player, developer and scout who passed away on November 30 at the age of 88.    

 

The Covid pandemic hastened the end of the National Association and now all control is located in MLB commissioner Rob Manfred's office.  There is still lip service given to the importance of player development in every organization, but the win-now pressure from the 24/7/365 media and newbie owners and their analytic-drenched staffs is very hard to resist.

 

Which brings me to the future of my Orioles. I'm all for building good farm systems and growing the core of your team from within.  Yet I'm holding my breath that the Orioles don't really think that their amorphous title of "Best Minor League System in MLB" leads them to ditch more vital veterans.

 

It was no surprise that Kyle Gibson, who turned 36 on October 23, will be wearing the uniform of the St. Louis Cardinals in 2024. Though his numbers did not impress the analytic crowd, his ability to change speeds led to his throwing 25 double play grounders, one of the highest rates in the majors. As I wrote here this summer, his understanding of the art of pitching was as good as it gets. 

 

I repeat it again via my paraphrase.  You have to know when (a) you don't have anything working and find a way to get through a game; or (b) when you have to choose correctly between the pitches that are working on a day when only a couple of them are going well; and perhaps most interestingly, is the almost zen-like or gallows humor-like, (c) you have to know not to blow it when all your pitches are working on that rare day. 

 

Now there is talk that Baltimore brass are thinking of trading Anthony Santander, their valuable switch-hitting DH and competent right fielder, because he might get as much $13 million through arbitration and will be a free agent at the end of 2024 season. Sure, there are talented Oriole prospects on the doorstep of the majors, including Heston Kjerstad and Colton Cowser - both of them who got a taste of MLB in 2023. There is also Kyle Stowers who showed some promise in 2022 but 2023 was consumed by injuries. 

 

I am not the only one in Oriole fandom who would rue the day that "Midnight Tony" (a nicknamed bestowed early in his career as a Rule 5 pickup from Cleveland because he wore sunglasses night and day) is no longer an Oriole. I would buy out at least one of his free agent years coming up after his coming last year of arbitration.  He turned 29 on October 18 so he should be entering his prime years. 

 

Maybe I'm being too pessimistic (there remains a Masochist Mel alter ego lurking in my marrow!).  Am crossing fingers that general manager Mike Elias makes the right decisions because it seems likely that owner John Angelos doesn't want to invest in his stars. 

 

I think it is far too early to think about longterm signings of blossoming young stars Gunnar Henderson and Adley Rutschman.  But something more than a one-year commitment to Santander makes a lot of sense to me. 

 

Be patient, dear readers.  Days will start getting longer around Dec 21 and by Valentine's Day the trucks with baseball equipmentds will have arrived in Florida and Arizona.

 

Before I close, here are a few TCM movie tips for the first half of December.

 

The only baseball film of note the first half of this month is Su DEC 10 1130A "Pride of the Yankees" (1942) - preceded oddly by Noir Alley's

    "I Wouldn't Be In Your Shoes" (1948) with Regis Toomey/Elyse Knox

 

**Every Friday in December will be Cary Grant Night. 

DEC 8  features 4p "Once Upon Hollywood" (1942) Directed by Leo McCarey with Ginger Rogers, Walter Slezak 

  6p "Dream Wife" (1953  dir. Sidney Sheldon - before he became a best-selling novelist - with Deborah Kerr/Walter Pidgeon

  10p "Holiday" (1938) based on Phillip Barry's Broadway play, with Katherine Hepburn

 

DEC 15-actually early morning Sa Dec 16 two Hitchcock classics 

  2a "Suspicion" (1941) with Joan Fontaine

  4a "North By Northwest" (1959) with Eva Marie Saint/James Masons

 (unfortunately no "Notorious" with Ingrid Bergman all month) 

 

W DEC 6 is the first of two gifted writer Paddy Chayevsky Nights

  8p the classic "Marty" (1955) with Betsy Blair/Ernest Borgnine

  2a "Middle of the Night" (1959) with Fredric March/Kim Novak

 

W DEC 13 how about this back-to-back-to-back trio of Chayevsky!

  8p "Network" (1976) with Faye Dunaway/Peter Finch/William Holden

  1015p "The Hospital" (1971) Chayevsky's Oscar with George C. Scott/Diana Rigg/many others

  1215a "Americanization of Emily" (1964) with Julie Andrews/James Coburn/James Garner/Melvyn Douglas

  Set before D-Day, with the wonderful Johnny Mandel song "Emily" - sadly, itt didn't qualify for a Best Song Oscar because

  it was never completely performed in film, but an immortal song and a wonderful if biting movie. 

 

That's all for now - take it easy but take it!