Lee Lowenfish

Are you ready dear readers?  The Prince of Paranoia boldly predicts that . . . The Days Will Continue To Get Longer Until The Summer Solstice! How about that for fearless prediction!  I guess I don't want to join the chorus of pundit naysayers who are sure that a year from now, the big MLB story will be: How long will the lockout last?  My guess is we'll know more about the lockout likelihood if the Tigers have traded ace Tarik Skubal to the Dodgers or perhaps another deep-pocketed owner before spring training. One of those owners could be Edward Rogers of the Blue Jays who I mistakenly IDed as James Rogers in a recent blog. My bad on that one.  Edward is one of the richest men in Canada as head of the big media combine Rogers Communications - he is the Rogers the Rogers Centre stadium is named after.   How far we have come from the days when Philadelphia A's owner/manager Connie Mack did not want Shibe Park named after him. 

 

I am crossing fingers that the recent acquisition by the Pirates of second baseman Brandon Lowe and outfielder Jake Mangum in a trade with Tampa Bay Rays and former Oriole All-Star first baseman/outfielder Ryan O'Hearn as a free agent increases the chances that Pittsburgh's great RHP ace Paul Skenes will stay on the beautiful hilly city on the three rivers (the Allegheny, the Monongahela, the Ohio) for at least another year.  Skenes won't be a free agent until after 2029 season but unless the Pirates improve on the field in 2026 - and even if they do - hard to see Skenes staying with Pittsburgh for another four seasons but the good baseball city of Pittsburgh deserves hope.

 

If I didn't know too well the bitter history of player-owner labor relations that traces back to the late 19th century, I'd like to think a possible compromise exists: A quicker route to free agency and a higher salary floor for the players in exchange for a limit on salary highs, the dreaded salary cap. Despite some disarray in the usually united Players Association, it is hard to see at this juncture any leaders on either side stepping forward with compromise on their mind.  It seems that the richest owner the Mets Steve A. Cohen has now seemingly joined the hard-line owner group.  He has replaced Phillies owner John Middleton on the 8-owner executive council that ostensibly advises commissioner Robert Manfred. Middleton was the owner who announced that he was going to do something stupid in free agency and in renewing his own players.  Now there is hardly a dove in that group that consists of John Fisher (Athletics), Ken Kendrick (Diamondbacks), John Stanton (Mariners), Greg Johnson (Giants), Paul Dolan (Guardians), Arte Moreno (Angels), and Bruce Sherman (Marlins). Keep this list handy because a miracle might happen and some owners not on the committee might step forward in the name of compromise. 

 

SAVE FRI NIGHT JAN 23!

The 59th Annual New York Pro Baseball Scouts Dinner will be held at Leonard's of Great Neck at 555 Northern Boulevard just off the Long Island Expressway.

Yankees radio announcer Dave Sims will be the guest speaker and several local scouts and coaches will receive honors including the Good Guy Award to Pirates associate scout Chris Clehane who is indeed a good guy and a highly regarded NYC area coach.  Tickets are $125 and checks should be sent to Billy Blitzer, 3759 Nautilus Ave, Brooklyn NY 11224.  No tickets will be sold at the door and checks must be received no later than Jan 16, a we before the dinner.  They should be made out to the NY Pro Scouts Association. Billy Blitzer can also be reached at bbscout1@aol.com 

 

LOCAL WOMEN'S BASKETBALL NOTES:

My favorite Columbia team entered Christmas break with a 8-4 record.  Their two most recent wins, against Seton Hall on the road and UTSA (University of Texas San Antonio) at home, weren't decided until the final seconds. Good experience for the players, a lesson in emotional control for the Prince of Paranoia.  Down in Greenwich Village, the defending Division III champion NYU Violets, unbeaten for well over 2 years, are rolling along with a 7-0 record, scoring over 100 points in 5 of the games and its closest competition came in a 90-48 win over Brooklyn College.  Here is their upcoming home schedule at their spiffy Paulson Center on Bleecker Street just west of Mercer Street.

M Dec 29 2P Hamilton College (from Clinton NY - not to be confused with Colgate University in Hamilton NY) [but game at tourney in Montreal].   

M Jan 5 2P Skidmore College (from Saratoga Springs, NY)

Home games against their league opponents in the UAA (University Athletic Association) start:

F Jan 16 730P U. of Rochester (NY)

Su Jan 18 Noon Emory U (from Atlanta)

 

TIME FOR TCM TIPS    

Christmas Night at 10P EST - Tune in for "Angels in the Outfield" the original 1951 film directed by Clarence Brown, the M-G-M director who made Greta Garbo a star among his many credits.  Even if you don't go for the fantasy of a little girl (Donna Corcoran in her debut) seeing angels in the outfield and hard-bitten manager Guffy McGovern (Paul Douglas) hearing them too, the photography of Forbes Field and its beautiful Pittsburgh neighborhood are worth seeing.  Morphing Phil Rizzuto, others in the cast are "not too shabby" either: Janet Leigh as the Household Hints writer for a Pittsburgh newspaper who tries to humanize Guffy/Keenan Wynn as a virulent sportswriter/Spring byington and Ellen Corby as nuns that bring little Donna to games/Bruce Bennett as veteran pitcher/and James Whitmore as the uncredited voice of the angel Gabriel. 

11:45P the 15-minute short "Donkey Baseball" (1935). Promoter Ray Doan's novelty sport. 

I don't see any other sports films of note in the days ahead but some major ones need mention: 

F Dec 26 8P "Kramer vs. Kramer" (1979) Robert Benton [NOT Sidney Pollack] directs Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep as they go through a nasty divorce

Sa Dec 27 8P Here Comes Mr. Jordan" (1941) some sports in here as Robert Montgomery is a onetime boxer who gets reincarnated with the help of Claude Rains

945P "Network" (1976) Paddy Chayevsky's diatribe against TV with stellar cast including William Holden/Faye Dunaway/Peter Finch who delivers the memorable line,

"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!"  Does that line still resonate as 2025 careens to its end. 

Followed at 1215A repeated at 10A Noir Alley brings you "Odd Man Out" (1947) Carol Reed directs James Mason/Robert Newton in story set in Ireland during IRA troubles

 

Two Woody Allen films of note:

Su Dec 28 1215P "The Purple Rose of Cairo" (1985) a big part of it set in movie theatres during Great Depression and filmed just north of NYC in Piermont, NY. With Mia Farrow.

M Dec 29 6P "The Front" (1976) Martin Ritt, who lived through the Hollywood blacklist, directs Woody who plays a front for a blacklisted writer.  Zero Mostel who also endured the blacklist is not to be missed.

[M DEC 31 Marx Brothers Marathon:  

530A "Room Service: (1938)

7A "At The Circus" (1939) with Eve Arden and memorable song "Lydia The Tattooed Lady"

830A "A Day At The Races" (1937) the passing of producer Irving Thalberg who did the earlier one is felt here 

1030A "A Night At The Opera" (1935) one of the immortal ones with the famous state room scene and Kitty Carlisle's most famous role

1230P "The Cocoanuts" (1929) the very first one filmed in Queens after its success on the stage

215P "Animal Crackers" (1930) Groucho as Captain Spaulding the African Explorer 

400P "Monkey Business" (1931) the next two have talented blonde beauty ill-fated Thelma Todd (instead of the more stately hilarious Margaret DuMont)

530P "Horse Feathers" (1932) college football was never the same after this one

645P "Duck Soup" (1933) the wonderful mirror scene and the most anti-war in politics - a 7-letter word causes war.  Can any reader ID it?  

 

That's all for now.  Happy and healthy New Year to all, Stay Positive and Test Negative, and Take it Easy But Take It!  

 

 

Once it became clear that the 2025 Orioles lacked the pitching and any consistency in other aspects of the game, it became inevitable that 31-year-old center fielder

Cedric Mullins would be traded by the July 31 deadline.  After all, he is a free agent after the season and his salaries have gone up through salary arbitration for the past

four seasons and he was likely to want a bigger (but not extravagant) longer free agent contract.  I guess it didn't help when it became known that Mullins recently was voted to the Players Association executive board. The storm clouds for another owners' lockout before the 2027 season are definitely forming.       

 

It is still a sad day for Oriole fandom because the 13th-round draft pick from Campbell University had emerged as a versatile player, quiet team leader, and fan favorite.. In 2021, he hit 30 homers and stole 30 bases on a bad Oriole team. He had the courage earlier to abandon switch-hitting and even accepted demotion to the minors to get his act together as solely a left-handed hitter. In a personal note, he did make a public admission that he was dealing with Crohn's disease but he kept it low key at a time when teammate Trey Mancini was dealing with a life-threatening cancer.  (Mancini played Triple-A ball this year but has no clear route back to majors.) 

 

Mullins used his great speed to become a stolen base threat and an often-spectacular fielder.  The analytics geniuses - who have an algorithm for everything and a limited feel for baseball itself - downgraded Mullins' arm and maybe criticized some of his routes to fly balls, but he sure went out with a bang this past weekend with timely hitting and two spectacular catches as the Orioles narrowly missed a 4-game sweep of the first-place Blue Jays.  

 

Word came just after my ode to Cedric that two more Oriole mainstays, first baseman/outfielder/DH Ryan O'Hearn and first-year-Oriole outfielder Ramon Laureano. had been traded to San Diego.  O'Hearn is a free agent after the season who revived his career in Oriole orange and black and was the team's only representative in the 2025 All-Star Game.  Laureano had a two-year contract and had so many big hits and outfield assists this year that his trade even surprised many analysts.

 

Last night (Wed July 30), we also said goodbye to infielder Ramon Urias, one of GM's Mike Elias' earliest and best pickups as a Cardinal farmhand. He was a Gold Glove winner at third base and could acquit himself well at any infield position.  He had surprising power, too. And at the Thursday deadline, the Tigers picked up RHP Charlie Morton, the 41-year-old curve ball master who rebounded from a terrible start to 2025 to become a reliable starter again.    

 

I haven't even mentioned most of the bullpen has been traded and perhaps the saddest news of all came in late July when closer Felix "The Mountain" Bautista suffered a serious shoulder injury, still not fully diagnosed, that could well keep him out for the rest of the season. The only somewhat good news is that starter Kyle Bradish is pitching in minor league games after missing over a year. (I'm happy to report, too, that Isaac Mattson who came from the Angels in the same trade for the now-retired Dylan Bundy has been working well in the Pittsburgh bullpen and with their closer Dave Bednar now traded to Yankees Mattson might get a shot of that role.)  

 

What shocks the system of this Oriole loyalist for over a half-century is that the Orioles have received no major league ready players but only "prospects," most of whom will likely become "suspects" before too long.  Many of the pitchers seem to be 6' 5" up to 6 8" which likely means they'll take extra time to develop if they ever develop. Attendance was way down in Baltimore for the Toronto series which featured some of the best baseball played by the Orioles all season with O'Hearn and Laureano as well as Mullins contributing mightily.  But the decisions to break up the team and save money were obviously made earlier.     

 

The only two people that mattered in the decision were "President of Baseball Operations" Mike Elias and new owner David Rubenstein who is finding out in his second full year at the helm that it is not easy being held accountable in an industry that operates in the fishbowl of public passion. Maybe Elias and Rubenstein felt lucky that Arizona outbid them for Corbin Burnes last winter and Burnes now is out through next year with Tommy John surgery. Maybe they felt glad that Toronto outbid them for former Oriole Anthony Santander who has been unproductive and now injured for his new team. I'd like to see him contribute in Toronto before too long. Team is doing fine without him

but another big bat never hurts.

 

The trick in baseball management is to keep on trying and be willing to spend if you know the makeup of the player and not just what the new-fangled algorithms tell you.

The 2025 Orioles were obviously a flawed team inundated with injuries - even announcer Ben McDonald fell 35 feet out of a tree while deer hunting! - and hampered by underperforming younger players.  I have always understood that evaluating players is the hardest job in baseball but you always need some veteran stability in a successful organization. 

 

I have no idea where such leadership will be coming from on the Baltimore current roster.  For the rest of the season, as someone who needs to root for someone not simply against a certain historically arrogant team in pinstripes, I'll have a lot of players to root for in different unis: Cedric in Queens, Urias in Houston, venerable Charlie Morton now in the Motor City, and O'Hearn and Laureano in SD where the Padres start August only 3 games behind the EEW (Evil Empire West) Dodgers who were relatively quiet at the trade deadline. 

 

And here's a shout-out to a couple of new baseball names that have entered the MLB universe: WARMING BERNABEL corner infielder for the Rockies who arrived in Colorado when Ryan McMahon was traded to the Yankees and already has two homers, and RYAN GUSTO, pitcher for the Houston Astros.

 

Happy August to all and stay positive, test negative & take it easy but take it.