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!  

The turning of the calendar to March is always a great sign that winter is edging into spring. This coming early Sunday morning March 8 at 2A also marks the return of Daylight Saving Time.   

Our winter in NYC has been virtually snow-free and I don't believe we will escape Old Man Winter entirely.  I'm sorry for the people in the ski and winter sports industry who are having hard times economically, but as someone in his upper 70s I don't miss one bit the hazards of slipping on ice. 

 
I'm happy to report that my favorite basketball teams, the Columbia women and the Wisconsin men, continued their winning ways this past weekend and start March each with six game winning streaks. The Lions have made for the first time the four-team Ivy League Tournament that will be play at Harvard Fri and Sat March 13-14.

 
Columbia will have to deal with the absence of star sophomore Sienna Durr who broke her foot in action at Harvard on Friday.  But winning is a fever that is not easily abated. Congrats again to coach Megan Griffith and her staff and players that have been a delight to watch in 2019-20.

 
Wisconsin was picked for no better than sixth in pre-season polls and has never been nationally ranked at all this year. They now have a chance to win the regular season Big Ten title.  They are still vulnerable to quicker teams but their will to win has been wonderful to watch. 

KUDOS TO TCM!
Here's a shout-out to one of my favorite cable stations, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), for saluting the great comedian-actor-baseball lover Joe E. Brown with an array of his films every Wednesday in March.   All times below are Eastern.

 
The series starts on WED MAR 4 with a 8p showing of "Circus Clown" (1934), a semi-autobiographical film because Brown started his career as a circus acrobat before he was even a teenager. Part of a family that worked hard without earning much money, he liked to say he's the only person who ever ran away from home to join the circus with his parents' permission.

 
For night owls later that night, check out one of his first Hollywood films, "On With The Show" (1929 at 130A) followed by "Sally" (1930) at 330A. Originally a Broadway musical, "Sally" features one of Jerome Kern's great ballads, "Look For The Silver Lining". 

 
In many ways that song summed up Joe E Brown's outlook on life.  As did the title of his autobiography, "Laughter Is A Wonderful Thing" (1956 as told to Ralph Hancock).  

"Laughter" was published by the then-prominent sports publisher A. S. Barnes in NYC.  It's not surprising that Brown chose Barnes as his publisher because he was an excellent all-around athlete who performed all his movie stunts and was a huge fan of all sports. 

He genuinely believed that the rise of his son Joe L. Brown to the general managership of the Pittsburgh Pirates - replacing Branch Rickey after the 1955 season -  to be the greatest achievement of anyone in his family. 

 
Joe E. accumulated one of the most comprehensive collections of sports memorabilia. He called it "His Room of Love" in his LA mansion, but unfortunately much of it was lost in two southern California forest fires. 

 
TCM's tribute to Joe E. Brown on WED MAR 11 will be of special interest to baseball fans.  Starting at 8PM, Brown's baseball trilogy will be shown back-to-back-to-back. 

 
It begins with "Fireman Save My Child" (1932), inspired in part by one of Brown's favorite players the eccentric brilliant southpaw Edward "Rube" Waddell.  (Brown always wanted to devote a whole film to Waddell's story but never could get the funding.) 

 
At 915, Joe E's favorite of all his films, "Elmer the Great" (1933), will air.  Warner Brothers execs doubted Ring Lardner's story could work on the screen, but when Brown made such a success of it in Los Angeles-area dinner theatre, the film was made. 

At 945, "Alibi Ike" based loosely on another Lardner story will air.  It features 19-year-old Olivia DeHavilland as Joe E.'s girl friend in one of her debut performances that year.  Fans of "I Love Lucy" will recognize William Frawley as Brown's manager.

If you want to binge on March 11 into early Thursday morning March 12, there is at 130, "Six-Day Bike Ride" (1934) with Brown's frequent second/third banana Frank McHugh. 

 
The swimming film "You Said A Mouthful" (1932) follows at 245. Ginger Rogers has a prominent role before she rocketed to fame in the "Gold Diggers" movies of Busby Berkeley and then as Fred Astaire's dancing partner. 

 
And if you want to stay up all night - or get up early - at 515A there is "Eleven Men and A Girl" (1930), a football movie that to me is a lineal descendant of the Marx Brothers' "Horse Feathers" of a couple of years later. 

 
There will be lesser Brown films on Wed March 18 but I'm curious to see "The Daring Young Man" (1942) where Brown is a Nazi hunter.  It will be on sometime after 11PM. "Earthworm Tractors" (1936), one of Brown's last popular hits, is listed at 930, but the current TCM listing has two films listed at 8PM and that can't be right.  I hope the website at tcm.com makes a correction soon.

Wed March 25 will be the final night of the Brown extravaganza, opening with the never-grows-old "Some Like It Hot" (1959) at 8PM.  

At 1015, the rarely seen "Midsummer Night's Dream" (1935), directed by Max Reinhardt with the assistance of William Dieterle, will be shown.  It features Olivia DeHavilland in her second of her two films in her debut year. 

Brown as Flute the bellows worker basically steals the film from such stars as James Cagney and young Mickey Rooney, even ad-libbing on Shakespeare at one point. (Wes Gehring's Joe E. Brown book has been an invaluable source for me.)  

 
While I'm giving TCM listings, might as well tell you that on March 29 at 1015PM the classic "Pride of the Yankees" (1942) will air with Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth as himself, and the wonderful Teresa Wright as Eleanor Twitchell Gehrig.

Wright was not a baseball fan until late in her life when she befriended Gehrig's splendid biographer Ray Robinson and she was became a regular visitor to the Yankees during their last dynasty starting in the late 90s.

 
On Tues March 31 TCM will devote its daytime hours entirely to baseball films.  One is so rare that I've never heard of it: "They Learned About Women" (1930) airs at 9A.  It's about baseball vaudevillians who are doing very well "until love gets in the way," according to the TCM guide.

More familar films follow including at 1030A "The Stratton Story" (1949) with Jimmy Stewart as the big league pitcher who injures his leg in a hunting accident.

Then at 1230 "The Winning Team" (1952) with Ronald Reagan as Grover Cleveland Alexander with Doris Day as his wife - not as bad as you might think.

At 230 "The Babe Ruth Story" (1948) with William Bendix miscast as the Babe and so bad that it is memorable. Charles Bickford as Brother Matthias, Babe's mentor at the reformatory, never changes costume though 40 years have elapsed.

At 445p Jackie Robinson plays himself in "The Jackie Robinson Story" (1950)

And the tribune to the Grand Old Game ends with "Take Me Out To the Ball Game"

(1949) a Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra romp.

Which reminds me that Richard Greenberg's "Take Me Out" is being revived this month off Broadway.  The story of a gay baseball player is uneven and too melodramatic,  but it has some beautiful writing.  One character's speech on how baseball is better than democracy is exceptionally pertinent. 

Well, that's all for now.  I'm off to the NINE baseball magazine conference in Phoenix this week.  Will be back soon with word of that enjoyable and usually penetrating delving into the culture of my favorite sport (still favorite despite the current mismanagement). 

Always remember:  Take it easy but take it!