Lee Lowenfish

In my last post, dear readers, I was skeptical that the World Series could match Toronto's thrilling come-from-behind ALCS win over Seattle.  Boy, was I wrong!  The deep and plucky Blue Jays have once again shown their mettle.  After losing that 18-inning classic in Game 3 on old reliable Freddie Freeman's solo HR, they soundly beat on LAD's home turf the defending champions in Games 4 and 5. They now need just one win at home at the raucous Rogers Centre to become World Champs for the first time since their 1992-23 back-to-back titles. 

 

For the first time all post-season, I am rooting for Toronto to finish the job without a Game 7 when "anything can happen," to quote the old baseball cliche. What the Blue Jays have proven all season and now in October is that they know how to come back from deficits and hold on to leads. Hall of Famers Earl Weaver and Yogi Berra loved to talk about "deep depth" as the key to a winning team. Well, these Blue Jays are replete with efficient "next man up" players.

 

Game 5 provided a perfect example. When George Springer, leadoff man extraordinaire and igniter of the Toronto offense, was sidelined with an oblique injury incurred on a swing during the Game 3 marathon, others have stepped up. Like Davis Schneider in Game 5, who smacked big ticket LAD acquistion Blake Snell's first pitch for a home run.  Two pitches later, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. did the same thing and Toronto never gave up the lead in its 6-1 win. 22-year-old RHP Trey Yesavage, still listed as a rookie because he only arrived in MLB in September, was masterful, pitching 7 innings of 1-run ball with 0 walks and 12 strikeouts.  

 

When the Dodgers briefly cut the deficit to 2-1 on Enrique "Kike" Hernandez's 3rd inning solo homer, the Blue Jays immediately answered. Dodger right fielder Teoscar Hernandez (no relation to Kike and who will not make people forget Aaron Judge as a fielder) misplayed Daulton Varsho's single into a triple. Then third baseman Ernie Clement, one of the many unheralded players on Toronto, quickly drove in Varsho with a sacrifice fly to restore the 2-run lead.  (Varsho is named for the late Phillie catcher Darren Daulton who played with Daulton's father Gary Varsho on the 1993 Phillies that lost the World Series to Toronto.)   

 

Ernie Clement is a grinding player I liked when he played for Cleveland. I didn't realize he had actually been DFAed twice by the Guardians (designated for assingment) and once by another organization before finding a home in Toronto.  He's from Rochester NY - not far away across Lake Ontario - where he played high school hockey as well as baseball.  Intelligent scouts love to sign players who participate in other sports, especially ones where they may not be stars.  It can provide a sign on what kind of a teammate the baseball prospect may be in a situation where other athletes are better. 

 

Another of my favorites on the likable Toronto team is starter Chris Bassitt, the former Oakland Athletic and New York Met RHP who has pitched flawless baseball as a bullpen set-up man.  Bassitt is a thinking man's pitcher who doesn't light up the radar gun with triple digits but if the moment is right, the Toledo O native who pitched for Akron University will slip in a 72-mph pitch to confound a batter.    Bassitt is a free agent after the season and there are rumors that the Orioles are interested as well they should be. There could be a good competition for the hurler who will be 37 next season. 

 

Toronto shortstop Bo Bichette will be another, higher-priced free agent available 5 days after the World Series when free agency officially begins. I happened to be watching TV in early September when Bichette hurt his knee awkwardly sliding into home plate and thrown out on a great throw from Yankee right fielder Cody Bellinger.  A diminished but still dangerous Bichette certainly deepens the Toronto lineup. With a healthier former Met Andres Gimenez now entrenched at short, Bichette is playing second when he is in the field. He is likely to get huge ovations this weekend in what could well be his swan song as a Blue Jay.  BTW Bellinger is also going to be a free agent and should be highly coveted. 

 

But enough of the business side of baseball.  There will be plenty of time to discuss that in the months ahead. I for one believe that the owners may try to lock out the players after next season's World Series, but I also believe that the strategy won't work becaause nothing will stop the rich owners from spending.  The big problem remains that their weak partners don't want to spend on players and just covet the rising franchise values, the slice of revenue sharing from richer owners, gambling money, the supposed coming bonanza on TV streaming rights, and expansion money in the billions if two more franchises are added to make 32 teams, perhaps by the end of the decade. 

 

There will be plenty of time to discuss this and I will try to shed light on this dreary and annoyingly repetitive subject which has been going on since professional free agency started a half-century ago. See the third and last edition of my first book THE IMPERFECT DIAMOPND: A HISTORY OF BASEBALL'S LABOR WARS.  For now I prefer to savor the coming end of an exciting October.  If the Dodgers score just a few runs for 6th game starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto, they could well force Game 7. They still have Shohei Ohtaini to lead off and Mookie Betts to hopefully find his missing batting stroke. But I do think former Oriole number one draft pick Kevin Gausman will compete well against Yamamoto.  We'll find out soon enough.

 

Not much to report on TCM tips for early November but I do want to mention that Sun Nov 2 will be TCM's salute to the late Robert Redford.  So Noir Alley only appears at 12M not 10A.  It's a rarely shown British crime caper "The Great Jewel Robber" (1950). 

 

The Redford films start at 9A "Barefoot in the Park" (1967) with Jane Fonda; 11A "Downhill Racer" (1967) with Gene Hackman; 1P "The Candidate" (1972 with Peter Boyle and Melvyn Douglas; preceded at 1245P with "How to Vote" (1936) a hilarious and approprioate Robert Benchley short with Election Day coming on Nov 4; 3P "All The President's Men" (1976) with RR as Bob Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein; 530P "The Sting" (1973) with Paul Newman and Robert Shaw; 8P "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969) withl Newman; and 10P "The Way We Were" (1973) with Barbra Streisand. 

 

I once shook Robert Redford's hand at a Jackie Robinson Foundation dinner.  It was early this century at a time when Redford was being considered to play Branch Rickey in the movie "42," a role that Harrison Ford ultimately won and inhabited brilliantly..  Speaking of Robinson here is a note on an event of interest in New York City.

Th Nov 6 at 6P A forum on Jackie Robinson's Military Role and Legacy. Co-sponsored by the New York Statre Department of Veteran Services. It will be held at main offices of Jackie Robinson Foundationl, 75 Varick Street just off Canal Street and near #1 train.   Further information at jackierobinsonfoundation.org  

 

One last TCM film note:  Fri Nov 7 6P "Smart Girls Don't Talk" (1948) a crime picture with Bruce Bennett that came out in the same year he had a crucial if small role in "Treasure of the Sierra Madre". I argue that Bennett might have been the best American athlete ever to make a successful transition to a film career.  He played lineman for a Washington Huskies football team that lost the 1926 Rose Bowl to Georgia led by future western star Johnny Mack Brown.  Bennett became silver medalist in the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics but failed to make the 1932 LA Olympics because of an injury suffered acting in a forgettable Hollywood film about football. He was in several Tarzan films drawing the praise of creator Edgar Rice Burroughs. He turned to serious acting in the later 1930s and among his notable roles were Mildred Pierce's first husband in the movie of the same name. He lived for over 100 years, remained married to the same woman, and in this age of NIL, get this: He said the only money he ever received for his sports ability was when an Olympic backer loaned him his car and filled it with gas so Bruce could attempt to make the 1932 American Olympic team.

 

That's all for now.  Stay Positive, Test Negative, and Take It Easy But Take It!    

 

  

   

It is hard to believe that it is over 13 years since the passing of Bill Shannon, 69, a bulwark on the NYC sportswriting/official scoring scene. At this time of year, I really miss the sound of Shannon's basso profoundo voice booming out "Greetings of the Season!" 

 

I met Bill Shannon when we were both Columbia College undergraduates in the early 1960s.  My sports involvement was limited to three years as a Columbia men's basketball manager.  I think my love for oranges came from slicing them up for the team at halftime.

 

Bill Shannon was already on his way to his wonderfully diverse sports career. We reconnected in the early 1980s when I started doing sports radio in the unlikely hyper-left-political hotbed at WBAI-Pacifica in NYC. No one wil ever forget Bill's post-game recitations of the line scores for pitchers - they were works of vocal art and then repeated in double time. 

 

Bill was also an author of a book on baseball stadiums and advocate for a New York Sports Museum. It never quite came to fruition but at least a lot of the Museum's capsule summaries of notable athletic personages are stored at the New York Historical Society on Central Park West at 76th Street.     

 

Another good memory about another Bill, who happily is still with us, has come back to me at this reflective time of year. Early in December Bill White missed by two votes election to the Hall of Fame. The 16-man Contemporary Baseball Era committee did elect manager Jim Leyland but Lou Piniella fell short by one vote. 

 

As far as I am concerned, Bill White remains a true champion. He enjoyed a 15-year career as a fine NL first baseman, coming up in 1956 to offer a little hope to my New York Giants.  He played well for the SF Giants until Orlando Cepeda and Willie McCovey's arrival led to his trade to the Cardinals where he became a four-time All-Star and winner of the 1964 World Series.

 

He finished his career with solid numbers: 1706 hits, .286 BA, .353 OBP (on-base percentage), .456 SA (slugging percentage), but numbers can't ever truly explain genuine leadership. He became a broadcaster for Cardinals-Phillies-Yankees, then National League president, and in his retirement author of a memoir "Uppity".  The no-nonsense title of the book reflects the bracing hard-hitting experience the reader can expect.    

 

I hold close a memory of my first encounter with White in the Yankee clubhouse. He was demonstrating a football running back's "straight arm," chortling, "They don't do that much any more, do they?" When I decided by the late 1980s that I had enough of WBAI's hyper-left-political hotbed, Bill gave me the names of more commercial radio people to contact. I decided that teaching and writing better fitted my talents and temperament but I will never forget his thoughtfulness.  

 

When Bill took over the NL Presidency after Bart Giamatti became commissioner, I interviewed him for the City Sun, a Brooklyn-based black weekly. 

I wrote a piece, "White on Black Progress," and sent him a copy. He actually called me up to thank me for its accuracy.

 

Like many of the black athletes in the post-Jackie Robinson generation, White didn't ask that jobs should be given because of race, but he insisted that qualified black candidates be brought into and kept in the pipeline.  William DeKova White turns 90 on January 28, 2024.  Here's a warm happy birthday wish to him.

 

Leaving memory lane for a while, what can I say about the baseball off-season so far?  The "big ticket" free agents have found a home. 

What shouldn't have been a surprise to anybody, Shohei Ohtani left the LA Angels of Anaheim and moved north to the LA Dodgers signing a massive long-term deal with the perennial NL West champions who perennially flame out in the playoffs. 

 

Ohtani underwent his second Tommy John operation late this past season and he won't pitch until 2025.  Pitchers don't usually recover very well from

a second TJ surgery. Ohtani is a very likable personality and very thoughtful about the luxury tax penalty LAD would pay if he took his mammoth salary up front. 

 

So Ohtani is actually accepting only $2 million salary for at least this season.  Since it seems the commissioner of baseball doesn't seem to care about the violation of the luxury tax - nor do the other owners and the players - this will go through.  

 

Although Ohtani's DH bat will certainly lengthen the LA Dodger lineup, the team needs more durable pitching. So they went out and signed Yoshinobu Yamamoto, a Japanese import, to another huge long-term deal.  He will be 26 when the 2024 season starts - Ohtani will be over 30. 

 

Shohei is clearly a winning personality - competitive and yet vulnerable.  We don't know yet about Yamamoto. He has thrown a lot of stressful pitches in his young career.  He is listed at 5' 10" which may be an exaggeration. 

 

The Dodgers may still need bullpen help.  It wouldn't be a surprise if they went after Josh Hader, the best reliever still on the market.  Whether all this

spending is good for baseball is subject to debate.  It is good for the agents, that is for sure.  It is good for the endless coverage by the MLB network.  Whether it is good for the teams that cannot afford these mammoth contracts is far less clear.  I didn't even mention that the Dodgers also traded for the talented oft-injured righthander Tyler Glasnow.

 

Baseball remains a team game and like many people I root for the underdog.  With the Oakland A's seemingly headed to Las Vegas sometime later this decade, here's a good word for the Oakland B's, an indepedent league team that will be play in the Bay area in 2024.  They will be managed by the long time coach and instructor Don Wakamatsu. 

 

I guess if I want to give a left-handed compliment (boy, is that hoary metaphor a dig on my southpaw friends!), at least baseball doesn't have a transfer portal that has created havoc in the NCAA. 

 

At least baseball had nothing to do with Sports Illustrated, a shadow of its distinguished self now thtat is primarily online, naming Deion Sanders as

Sportsman of the Year after coaching the Colorado Buffaloes to a 4-8 record.  

 

Before I go, deep RIP wishes to the superlative scout Paul Snyder, who spent his entire career with the Braves, who passed away on Nov 30 at age of 88.

Frank Howard, aka Hondo and from his years in as a Washington Senator, the Capital Punisher, who passed away earlier on October 30 at age 87.

 

I'm getting upset at inconsistent schedule listings by TCM.  No sports-related movies that I've detected for the remainder of December but for those who maybe wisely stay home on New Years Eve, at 8p Mel Brooks' "Spaceballs" (1987), then no listing until 1130p "This Is Spinal Tap" (1984).

 

And here are a couple of Columbia basketball listings.  The men off to a good start at 8-3 - though schedule has been softened with Div III cupcakes -

play Fordham on Rose Hill in the Bronx Dec 30 1p.  It is the Tom Konchalski Classic in honor of the late basketball scout.  More on that in next post.

 

Speaking of my favorite subject of scouting, the New York Pro Scouts Association has its annual banquet on Fri night Jan 19 at Leonard's of Great Neck on Northern Boulevard.  It's truly the start of the new season. 

 

Tickets are $100 and are available through Jan 12.  No tickets will be sold at the door. Longtime scout Billy Blitzer is the main conduit at 3759 Nautilus Ave, Brooklyn NY 11224 or reachable at. BBSCOUT1@aol.com   

David Cone is the scheduled guest speaker and the Yankees longtime area scout Matt Hyde has been voted by his peers the Scout of the Year. 

 

Sat Jan 6 2p on Morningside Heights Levien Gym, 120th St/Broadway Columbia women, off to 7-4 start against excellent opposition, open defense of Ivy League co-title against Penn.

 

That's all for now - always remember:  take it easy but take it, and stay positive, test negative.  I'm on the mend myself which is very good news.