Lee Lowenfish

I was so riveted watching "Tender Mercies" on TCM's 31 Days of Oscar earlier this week that I forgot about the first innings of the USA-Italy game in the World Baseball Classic.  I had never seen "Mercies" before and Robert Duvall's Oscar-winning performance as a country music singer trying to recapture his mojo really moved me. Horton Foote's great dialogue provided the title for this post when a music fan asks Duvall, "Hey, Mister, were you really Mac Sledge?"  "I guess I was," he replies.  The exchange reminded me of the story of the old coach leaving a baseball clubhouse and an autograph-seeker asks, "Who did you used to be?"

Some might find the ending of "Tender Mercies" corny as Duvall has a leisurely catch with a football he had gifted his stepson who of course is named Sonny. But I thought it worked fine given the tragedy you knew was coming earlier in film when Sledge's daughter from an earlier marriage (acted by a memorable Ellen Barkin) dies in an auto accident.

TCM has a slate of baseball movies coming up tomorrow Friday night Mar 13 through 6A Sat morn Mar 14.  

8P "Field of Dreams" (1989).  I still think the biggest fantasy in the film is when Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones go to a concession stand at Fenway Park and there is no line and three people are ready to serve them.  

10P "Bull Durham" (1988) written and directed by former Oriole farmhand Ron Shelton who never made the majors because in the days before free agency he was stuck behind Bobby Grich in the Baltimore farm system. Shelton's book on the making of the film "The Church of Baseball" (Knopf, 2022) is a good read and rumors are still floating around of a possible musical in the works.

12 midnight "Bang The Drum Slowly" (1973) definitely on a short list of great baseball films adapted from Mark Harris' novel of same name.  The film that

made Robert DeNiro a star. 

145A "Pride of the Yankees" (1942) the Lou Gehrig story starring Gary Cooper with Teresa Wright as Eleanor Gehrig and Babe Ruth plaiying himself.  Crusty non-baseball fan Samuel Goldwyn was so moved by the story that he paid a sum in low five figures to Irving Berlin for use of "Always" in the film.

4A "The Stratton Story" (1949) the film that cemented Jimmy Stewart's stardom based on the real story of once-budding White Sox pitcher whose career

was curtailed by a hunting accident. 

Oscar night is Su Mar 15 and a week later Mar 22 at midnight Noir Alley returns.

Now let's talk real baseball not reel baseball. After "Tender Mercies" was over, I did eventually turn to the USA-Italy game and picked it up with the Italians, managed by former Yankee catcher Francisco Cervelli, surprisingly ahead 3-0.  Before long it was 5-0 and then 8-0 heading into the late innings.  FOX announcers Joe Davis and John Smoltz, the latter still looking for his funny bone, had all but given up and their moaning was annoying.  In a game played in Houston's cozy bandbox now known as Daikin Park, the lead didn't look insurmountable to me given the firepower on USA led by captain Aaron Judge. Sure enough, a home run barrage started by Oriole Gunnar Henderson followed by two blasts from Cub and former Met farmhand Pete Crow-Armstrong brought USA within 2 runs, 8-6.  But Red Sox and former Yankee reliever Greg Weissert did get the save for Italy by striking out Henderson and Judge for the final two outs.

The sighs of relief from USA manager Mark DeRosa must have overturned furniture in MLB and FOX television offices when Italy routed Mexico in their game last night (Wed Mar 11). DeRosa admitted that he didn't understand the rules of the WBC and he thought his team had already clinched a spot in WBC quarter-finals before the Italy game.  The quarter-finals are now set for the upcoming weekend with Italy a surprise and undefeated entrant - the other seven teams were all expected to make it to the closing rounds. 

Here's the TV schedule, all times EDT, all games on FOX channels with home team listed last:

F Mar 13 630P in Miami on FS2 - Korea v. Dominican Republic with red-hot Vladimir Guerrero Jr. 

   Mar 13 8P USA v Canada in Houston on FOX

Su Mar 15 8P FS1 Miami semi-final

Sa Mar 14 3P FS1 in Houston, Puerto Rico v Italy

     Mar 14 9P FOX Venezuela v Japan with Shohei Ohtani

M Mar 16 8P FS1 semi-final in Miami

Tu Mar 17 8P WBC final in Miami

Inevitably, the WBC has taken attention away from spring training games, but with a pitch limit of 65 in first rounds and under 90 in the last rounds danger of pitching injuries may be reduced.  Running bases is another story, however.  Italy lost its starting catcher Kyle Teel of the White Sox to a hamstring injury incurred as he was stretching a single into double against USA.  Yet so far Italy has shown depth in every area of the roster.

Before I close, here's a salute to the NYC area Division III basketball teams still alive in their version of March Madness. 

On F Mar 13 at 730P the NYU women host a frequent post-season rival Hardin-Simmons from Texas at their Paulson Athletic Center on Bleecker near Mercer Sts.  The Violets won their 89th in a row last weekend breaking the UCLA men's record.  At 5P U Wisconsin-Lacrosse meets Southern Maine.

Also on F Mar 13 at 7P U of Scranton, who lost to NYU last season, hosts Bates of Maine. I still quote a warmup T-shirt Scranton players wore last year:

EVERY DRILL, EVERY REP, EVERY DAY.  It's up there with the T-shirt I once saw in a Tampa Bay Rays baseball clubhouse:  CHAMPIONS ARE MADE WHEN NO ONE IS WATCHING.  The Scranton regional opens at 430P when John Hopkins of Baltimore tangles with Concordia-Moorhead MN.

The D-III women's Final Four is at Roanoke College in Salem, VA Th Mar 19 and Sa Mar 21.   Check ncaa.com for streaming information because there is sadly next to no cable or regular TV coverage.  

Also on F Mar 13 at 1P, the Yeshiva University men in upper Manhattan travel to Emory U in Atlanta in their D-III tournament.  Unfortunately, the Montclair Red Hawks men's team that had won 24 in a row in regular season lost their last 3 games and their season is over.   

Tomorrow F Mar 13, I'm heading up to Ithaca to root on my Columbia women's team against Harvard in the 730P game of the Ivy League tournament.

My Lions lost the regular season finale to Harvard last Saturday enabling Princeton to become top seed in the tourney.  More details on my adventure on alumni bus in the next post.  My Wisconsin Badgers men start the Big Ten tourney against U of Washington today Th Mar 12 at 230P EDT on Big Ten Network.  An erratum from last post I want to fix now. Vital Wisconsin sixth man Carrington's first name is Braeden! 

In the meantime, always remember:  Stay Positive, Test Negative and Take It Easy But Take It!  

All the major MLB awards have been given out and I have no real problem with the award-winners.  I am a little concerned that there are repeat winners in three big categories - Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani as MVPs, the Guardians' Stephen Vogt and the Brewers' Pat Murphy as Managers of the Year, and the Tigers' Tarik Skubal and the Pirates' Paul Skenes as Cy Young winners.  The result suggests that there are no new teams and pitchers breaking into the limelight. 

 .

I certainly hope that Skubal stays with the Tigers at least through the end of 2026 when he will be a free agent.  His owner Mike Ilitch Jr., heir to the Caesar's pizza chain and according to a google bio "the producer of Christian movies," is not very visionary in his stewardship so there have been no hints of an extension being offered to Skubal and his omnipresent agent Scott Boras. 

Skenes is a different case in that he won't be a free agent until after the 2029 season and already rumors are floating that he wants to be a Yankee which he has denied. 

He is a remarkable athlete.  Was both a pitcher and a catcher in HS and attended the Air Force Academy to start fulfilling his dream of being a pilot serving his country. 

He was so good at the AFA that his coaches begged him to transfer to a top division I school to hone his talents against better competition.  All he did was to lead the LSU Tigers to the 2023 College World Series title.  Pittsburgh had no choice but to draft him number one in the country and he has not disappointed Sadly, the Pirates' lack of offense and very few winning players have left the loyal fans and Skenes himself frustrated. 

Skenes is a quick study in all he does. Recently he became one of the first players to sign baseball cards for the Japanese market in a rare language that combines Japanese and Chinese characters. Predictions for the price of those cards on the eBay market stretch into several hundred thousand dollars.  Skenes' girl friend Olivia "Livvy" Dunne, the star gymast he met at LSU, is also no stranger to creating big ticket marketing opportunities.  Late in the now-settled "House vs. NCAA" federal trial trying to establish a fair price for  the services of college athletes, Dunne was vociferous in charging that her economic worth had been grossly undervalued while at LSU. 

I predict that there is one happier note ahead. The World Baseball Classic - which stretches from early March until a week before the opening of the MLB regular season in late March - will be another feel-good story.  Almost every player wants to participate.  Skenes, who reportedly would like to start an Air Force career after his baseball work is done, was honored to be selected to the American team.  There were NINE nationalities represented in the just-concluded thrilling World Series and some of those players are also likely to be on WBC rosters.  

The WBC is reportedly the one enterprise in MLB that the owners and the players share equally in its production. But I also predict a more troubling occurrence once the MLB season starts:  the rise of a barrage of stories about a likely lockout of the players by the owners after the current Basic Agreement ends at the end of December 2026.  I don't think the lockout will work - rich teams like the Dodgers, Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies, Mets, Blue Jays - want the revenue from TV and the box office plus the glory of carrying a trophy around. (Although it pales aesthetically compared to hockey's Stanley Cup.) It promises to be a particularly ugly negotiation. Commissioner Rob Manfred has been openly telling players that the MLBPA has served only their richest brethren.  Recent stories have also been broken in major outlets like espn.com and The Athletic about misapproporiation of funds by MLBPA director Tony Clark. 

Baseball has a long history of owner-player struggles that I described in three editions of THE IMPERFECT DIAMOND, 1980, 1991, and 2011.  I made reference in the first edition of the late Mort Sahl's comment about Richard Nixon's memoir SIX CRISES - it should have come out in a looseleaf edition so you could add the crises.  Baseball has tried lockouts many times and they have not been successful. It is possible that saner heads may prevail sometime in 2026 before the deadline.

Here's some ideas: 

**Adjustment to the one-year qualifying offer for a player not yet a free agent is one area for reform.  Attached to a draft pick the signing team must surrender, the price tag of over $20 million seems quite high. Can it be reduced somewhat without players' claiming foul? 

**Establishing a salary floor that the non-big spending teams must obey is another area for possible reform.  Even reducing the number of years for free agency eligibility to 4 or 5 years seems like a workable idea from afar, but reason has never been a strong suit in baseball labor history.

One thing I will say in defense of the Phillies Bryce Harper who had a well-reported run-in with Rob Manfred when he visited the team during the season.  Harper noted that when he signed out of a community college in Las Vegas, he received a bonus of over $10 million as the number one pick in the country.  15 years later, that pick's bonus has not been any higher and for some players considerably lower.  Of course, no one is going to shed tears for the players in this battle.  It does show what monopoly rule by the owners can achieve as their franchise values soar and soar. 

 For now let's relax, prepare to enjoy the blessedly non-religious holiday of Thanksgiving, and become aware of some TCM highlights ahead.

Su Nov 16 12:15A & 10A - Noir Alley:  "High and Low" (1963) a classic Kurosawa film about a prominent father who has to cope with a serious legal charge against his son 

8P Jeff Bridges and John Goodman in the classic "The Big Lebowski" (1988)

Followed at 1015P Jeff and his brother Beau (sons of Lloyd Bridges)/Michelle Pfieffer in "The Fabulous Baker Boys" (1989) a believable take on struggling jazz musicians

M Nov 17 6P "M" (1931) the original German film about the hunt for a child killer played by Peter Lorre, directed by Fritz Lang

W Nov 19 from 6A-8P Films written by Billy Wilder, born in Vienna who as a teenager traveled to Berlin to write stories about the touring Paul Whiteman band and the great doomed trumpeter Bix Beiderbecke.   

6A "People on Sunday" (1930) Robert Siodmak follows young Berliners one Sunday cavorting in a park in what will turn out to be the last 3 years of the Weimar Republic. Siodmak in America in the 1940s will make some great Noirs including "The Suspect" with Charles Laughton, "Christmas Holiday" with Gene Kelly as a real bad guy snd Deanna Durbin, "The Killers" that made Burt Lancaster a star, and in a lighter vein George Sanders being overly protected by his sister the stunning Geraldine Fitzgerald (on a LIFE cover in the summer of 1945), "The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry".

9A "Ninotchka" (1939) Wilder works with Ernst Lubitsch on a hilarious and rather profound story set in Paris about the romance of an American, Melvyn Douglas, with a ultra-serious Russian commissar Greta Garbo - "Garbo laughs" went the promotional trailer and she does.  Sadly, she made very few films if any after this one.

130P "Irma La Douce" (1963) with Shirley MacLaine also set in Paris but the times in the 1960s were changing and Wilder doesn't really ride well with them

4P "Witness for the Prosecution" (1957) maybe Wilder's best last film - with Charles Laughton, Elsa Lanchester, Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich - ads at the time forbade fans to give away the ending, I won't either! 

6P "One, Two, Three" (1961) with James Cagney - A Coca-Cola executive travels to Berlin to prevent his boss's daughter from marrying an East German Communist. with Arlene Francis, yes that Arlene Francis of "What's My Line?" fame. 

Th Nov 20 Neo-Nors including

8P "Point Blank" with Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson

10P "The Late Show" (1977) with Art Carney, Lily Tomlin

Sat Nov 22. Nathan Lane introduces a classic noir and classic neo-noir:

8P "Double Indemnity" (1944). Edward G. Robinson under control without much screen time investigates Fred MacMurray/Barbara Stanwyck

10P "Chinatown" (1974) Polanski slices Jack Nicholson's nose, literally, but you keep watching. With Faye Dunaway.

1230A repeated Sun at 10 Noir Alley presents "The Strip" (1949) with Mickey Rooney as a struggling jazz drummer and Louis Armstrong playing and singing "A Kiss To

Build a Dream on". 

That's all for now - always remember:  Stay Positive Test Negative, and Take It Easy But Take It!