Lee Lowenfish

Here's to the Toronto Blue Jays for winning a classic 7-game ALCS over the Seattle Mariners. They have home field advantage over the Los Angeles Dodgers who swept the Milwaukee Brewers behind great pitching and a record-setting Game 4 in which Shohei Ohtani hit 3 home runs and struck out 10 in 6 shutout innings.  They will be clear favorites over the Blue Jays but don't count them out. They won the AL championship in a gripping Game 7 and will enter their first World Series since 1993 when they completed a two-peat on Joe Carter's walkoff homer. 

 

George Springer's 3-run-shot this past Monday Oct 20 was not quite a walkoff - it was only in bottom of the 7th - but it turned the dramatic Game 7 on its head because Seattle had been leading 3-1 since the early innings.  Former Met Chris Bassiitt, a veteran thinking-man's RHP and a free-agent-to-be, threw a spotless 8th and so did closer Jeff Hoffman in the 9th. But not before some drama.  

 

Signed as an amateur by Toronto 10 years ago, Hoffman was traded in 2016 and after stops in Colorado and Philadelphia, he returned home this season. Two organizations, including my Woerioles (I am holding my tongue or fingers in this post about how the axis of newby owner David Rubenstein and overrated GM now President of Baseball Operations no less may never be ready for AL East prime time). Back to Jeff Hoffman who could injured in the future - who couldn't? but this year he stayed healthy although he did allow 15 regular season HRs (though not many recently). In the top of 9th on Monday, Jeff needed almost 10 pitches before striking out Julio Rodriguez, leaving slugger Cal Raleigh waiting on deck. Both had homered earlier in Game 7 so it made the last AB an exquisite exercise in ultimate baseball pressure. 

 

Vladimir Guerrero Jr is red-hot at the plate, adequate in the field, and a definite leader in the clubhouse.  Though Springer hit the final big blow, Guerrero Jr was a worthy ALCS MVP. He walked into the clubhouse before Game 7 wearing Auston Matthews' #34 Toronto Maple Leafs jersey.  The hockey superstar has not delivered a Stanley Cup yet. Neither has any Leaf player since the mid-1960s.  The awful but funny joke (if you are not a Toronto fan) is "Toronto is the only city where the Leafs fall in April."  Guerrero Jr.'s gesture was as if to say, "We want none of that, we will win it for our city and country." 

 

It looks another longtime offensive threat for the Jays, shortstop Bo Bichette (another son of a major leaguer, former Rockies and Yankees outfielder Dante Bichette- Vlad Sr. was a star on Montreal Expos and LA Angels and is in Hall of Fame) will be on the World Series roster though it won't be finalized until this Friday Oct 24.  When he is hot, Bo Bichette is an extremely productive offensive player.  He is not the greatest defensive shortstop but to me he is not horrible.  He will also be a free agent after the season so he has a lot to play for, especially if he is healthy after banging up his knee sliding into home against the Yankees in early September.)   

 

It was a tough ALCS loss for the Mariners, still the only one of the current 30 MLB franchises never to play in a World Series.  It is hard not to criticize manager Dan Wilson for his Game 7 pitching decisions. I would have let Game 7 starter, 4-year veteran George Kirby originally from nearby Rye NY, pitch more than 4 innings. I certainly would have let Bryan Woo pitch out of the jam in the 7th inning.  (With that name, pitching Woo is a baseball romantic's dream.) 

 

When Wilson chose one of his lower leverage relievers, well-traveled Eduardo Bazardo, to replace Woo with two runners in scoring position and Springer coming up, I sensed trouble.  And sure enough on Bazardo's second pitch,  Springer unloaded a long 3-run HR to left center.  So went up in smoke Seattle's 2-0 and 3-2 game leads in the series.  In hindsight, their offense left too many men on base and their defense and base-running betrayed them at key moments. Although a vital contributor on offense, first baseman Josh Naylor was the culprit twice on the bases.  In game 4 as the Mariners were rallying, Naylor made the third out trying to go from first to third on a single that cut their deficit to one run.  In Game 7, he foolishly tried to break up a double play by standing up going into second and let the shortstop's throw hit him. After the umps huddled, he was called out.  

 

But enough of this post-mortem. Seattle has so much to be proud of in its season, not least finally conquering the almost-perennial AL West champions Houston Astros in a September sweep. And then winning a dramatic  15-inning elimination game against the Tigers in the prior round of the playoffs.  I want to give the last word about the ALCS to Northwest Baseball blogger Amanda Lane Cumming.  She fell in love with baseball when she was a young teenager, a time when the Mariners of Ken Griffey Jr.-Randy Johnson-Edgar Martinez literally saved baseball in Seattle when voters chose to support funding to build a new stadium to replace the dreary Kingdome. 

 

Amanda has since lived through the ups and downs of Mariners baseball - mainly downs - but shortly before Game 7 began, she posted this moving entry.  With her permission, I am quoting a couple of her passages describing how she has fallen in love again with her local team:   "Baseball still has magic . . . between the layers of dirty laundry, underneath the filth of billionaire owners, and right-wing players.  There is still magic."  She concluded: "It's not about winning. It never was. It's about believing."

 

As for picking a World Series winner, I'd like to see Toronto win it at home either in the sixth or seventh game.  Since I'm not emotionally involved, I will vote for a Game 7 which will fall on Sa Nov 1 assuming no rainouts in LA. (Toronto's Rogers Center, formerly known as the Skydome, has a retractable roof.)  A couple of hours later at 2A on Su morning Nov 2, we lose a hour of daylight with the return of Standard Time.  How fitting that if it goes seven, darkness sets in.  As the late former baseball commissioner (and Yale University professor and university president) Bartlett Giamatti memorably said, "Just when we need the game the most, it is taken away." 

 

As we head towards the free agent frenzy that officially starts after the end of the World Series, expect lots of false rumors and bad signings as well as the occasional good ones. There will plenty of chances to discuss these thorny issues than many people think will lead to a lockout after next season.  I try to accentuate the positive in this blog (except admittedly when my team the Woerioles will fall out of indefinite non-contention under current management). But here are two gestures from late in the regular season that were such beautiful human interest stories that they deserve mention.

 **MIKE TROUT hit his 400th HR at Denver's Coors Field in mid-September.  A Rockies fan caught the ball in the bleachers and was glad to give it to Mike as a souvenir.  He asked for very little swag except a chance to play catch with his hero.  And guess what? After the game there was Mike and the fan having a catch along the third base line.

 

**Kudos to STEPHEN VOGT Guardians manager and Tigers LHP TARIK SKUBAL a likely two-peat winner next month of the AL Cy Young award (though Bosox lefty Garrett Crochet could nip him). Tarik expressed deep concern when Cleveland batter DAVID FRY fouled a Skubal pitch into his face in a taut ALDS Guardians-Tigers game.  Skubal, normally a cool customer on the mound, was so shaken that he lost the lead in that inning, ultimately getting a No Decision (ND). After the game, he insisted on going to the hospital to see how Fry was doing.  And manager Vogt drove well out of his regular route home to take Skubal to see his injured player.  Fortunately, it seems that Fry will have a full recovery.   

 

Now - it's time for some TCM tips for the the last days of October. Not many baseball references in them, but these films are worthy of seeing.

Th Oct 23 545P "The Great Dictator" (1940). Chaplin plays double role as a barber returning from years of amnesia after a WW I injury to find that the Nazis have taken over his shop. Chaplin plays a second role based on Hitler, Adenoid Hynkel, Jack Oakie was Oscar-nominated for his Benzino Napaloni, a character based on Mussolini, and Paulette Goddard plays the daughter of the leader of the under-siege Jewish community. 

Th Oct 23  8P "Death on the Nile" (1978) Peter Ustinov as Inspector Poirot tries to solve a murder/with Mia Farrow/Bette Davis

 

F Oct 24 6P "The Sunshine Boys" (1975) Richard Benjamin tries to induce old comics George Burns/Walter Matthau to return to the stage - a Neil Simon classic 

The next two films go directly against Game I of the World Series starting on Oct 24 after 8P on FOX

8P "Suspicion" (1941) Hitchcock thriller with Joan Fontaine/Cary Grant/Cedric Hardwicke

10P "The Fury" (1978). a Brian De Palma thriller about a distraught CIA operative with John Cassavetes/Kirk Douglas/Charles Durning who BTW once acted in a one-man show about Casey Stengel which is hard to find in print or video - Please contact me with leads if you have them.

 

Sa Oct 25. quite a feast of films, here are some of the highlights:

12N "Tales of Hoffmann" (1951) another Powell/Presburger classic based on the story of a man lamenting three of his loves - "Tales" was also, of course, a 19th century Offenbach opera still in the corpus of many opera companies all over the world.  The film stars Moira Shearer who was a huge hit in the Powell-Presburger 1948 film about ballet "The Red Shoes" 

415P "The League of Gentlemen" (1961) Basic Dearden directs bankers who plan a big heist

615P "Dr. Strangelove or How I Stopped Worrying And Learned to Love the Bomb" (1964)  TCM plays it a lot and it is always rewarding in a macabre kind of way fitting for 2025  

And for more counter programming in the middle of the World Series:

930P" "Rosemary's Baby" (1968) Roman Polanski's horror film based on true story written by Ira Levin about a woman fearful of giving birth to a child who might grow up to be Satan/with Mia Farrow/John Cassavetes/Ruth Gordon 

12M - repeated Sun Oct 26 10A. Noir Alley presents "Southside 1-1000" (1950) with Don DeFore, a year after he unravels Lisabeth Scott's dirty doings in "Too Late For Tears" (1949) and two years before he settles in as Ozzie and Harriet's neighbor in TV show of the same name.  I hope informed readers know that before Ozzie became a national big band leader, he played football at Rutgers "the state university of New Jersey".

 

Later on Sun Oct 26 following Noir Alley, there is an unusual back-to-back noir:

1145A "The Unfaithful" (1947) starring a rather talented trio:  Ann Sheridan (who hated being called by publicists the "oomph girl" because "oomph" reminded her of the sound a fat man made when he sat on a couch)/Lew Ayres who became a pacifist as did many others who worked on Lewis Milestone's searing "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1931). Ayres did work in a miitary medical corps in WW II. Another fun fact is that Ben Alexander, a child actor at 6, was around 18-19 when he played a German soldier eager to go into World War I. In the 1950s, Ben played Officer Frank Smith opposite Sgt. Jack Webb in the first TV "Dragnet". Also appearing in "The Unfaithful" is Zachary Scott who made a good living playing particularly smooth cads, notably in the classic "Mildred Pierce" (1945).  

 

No baseball on Sunday night but TCM brings two classic Hitchcocks back to life:

8P "Psycho" (1960) Bernard Herrmann's engrossing if unnerving score and Anthony Perkins doing in Janet Leigh who to me had far better roles in her career but she is too often mentioned for this one

10P "Shadow of A Doubt" (1943) Joseph Cotten after "Citizen Kane" and before "The Third Man," and Teresa Wright after "Pride of the Yankees" and before "Best Years of Our Lives"

 

M Oct 27. these films go head-to-head with Game 3 of World Series, the first one in LA

8P "Going My Way" (1944) actually most baseball references in this selection of TCM films appear here - young priest Crosby wears St. Louis Browns sweatshirt and utters several baseball comments  After World War II, he became a part owner of Pittsburgh Pirates (and Bob Hope also owned a slice of then-Cleveland Indians)

1015P "Papa's Delicate Condition" (1963)  Have not seen this one but talk about odd couples - Jackie Gleason is described on TCM as "small-town family man" with drinking issues.  British actress Glynis Johns . gifted with good looks and a notably husky and haunting voice - presumably tries to help Jackie. 

 

Tu Oct 28 here's an early morning one I must list and must see.

8A "Tennesse Johnson" (1942). One of Hollywood's post-Civil War historical dramas made at a time when we were trying to look to our history for inspiration for our fight against the Nazis.  How quaint today.  As a Branch Rickey biographer, I have a special interest in this film because TIME Magazine when they prolifed Rickey in early 1940s compared his speaking style to "Lionel Barrymore playing [arch-abolitionist US Senator] Thaddeus Stevens" in this film.  With Van Heflin as Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's successor and Ruth Hussey as AJ's wife.  William Dieterle directs.

 

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

 

I've never been a master of the sound bite. I did come up with "It's a big book about a big man" to describe my 600-page Branch Rickey biography. 

 

i surprised myself at the beginning of June when, as the trailer for the 1951 comedy-fantasy "Angels in the Outfield" was being loaded into a DVD player for my talk about that movie at the annual Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, I blurted the above advice to those drunk on analytics, Sober Up! 

 

I went on to mention that when Branch Rickey was once asked how much of baseball he really knew, he replied, "No more than 55%." Yet baseball now is overwhelmed with Ivy League and elite business school grads who think their new-fangled statistics will provide answers for baseball's eternal imponderables. 

 

Too often these young guns dismiss the opinions of eyes and ears scouts with a lot more experience. 

I've often wondered how Branch Rickey - who died almost poetically in December 1965 not long after giving a speech on "Courage--Physical and Spiritual" - would have responded to the wave of high-powered technicians who have taken over virtually every franchise. 

 

He would have loved new information I am sure of that, but he also would have warned about relying too much on data and forgetting that the letter killeth but the spirit giveth life.

 

One of the things I learned in researching "Angels in the Outfield" was Rickey's role during his first year as Pirates president and general manager in bringing some of the filming to Forbes Field early in the 1951

season.  It was the honeymoon period for Rickey in Pittsburgh after losing the power struggle to Walter

O'Malley for control of the Brooklyn Dodgers after the 1950 season. 

 

With the encouragement of Rickey and talented producer-director Clarence Brown, Pittsburgh minority owner Bing Crosby was one of four people who made cameo appearances in "Angels," speculating on if angels could possibly help a team.  The other three were Ty Cobb, Joe DiMaggio, and songwriter Harry Ruby.

 

With partner Bert Kalmar, Ruby wrote such immortal tunes as "Who's Sorry Now?", "A Kiss To Build A Dream On," and "Three Little Words," which was the title of the 1950 bio-pic starring Red Skelton as Ruby and Fred Astaire as Kalmar.  Ruby also wrote "Hooray for Captain Spaulding" for his good friend Groucho Marx, a song that appeared in the movie "Animal Crackers" and later was a theme song on Groucho's quiz show "You Bet Your Life".  

 

Yet Harry Ruby loved baseball more than anything on earth. Ruby was a so-so infielder who once actually gave up a movie gig to play in an exhibition game for the Washington Senators.  Albert von Tilzer, composer of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," was not a baseball fan and he signed his copy of the song "to Harry Ruby who should have written this song."

 

An autodidact who never finished high school in NYC, Ruby became an avid collector of original classic editions. it was said that his favorite evening would be spent reading the works of Thomas Aquinas and the latest edition of the Sporting News.   

 

**Among the highlights of the Cooperstown Symposium was a sweet tone-setting keynote speech by Tyler Kepner, New York Times national baseball writer. Like most of us, he fell in love early with the glass-enclosed bulletin board next to the Hall of Fame that always lists the results of the prior day's games. He added that the difficulties of reaching centrally isolated Cooperstown - 70 miles west of Albany - matches the difficulties of the game of baseball itself. 

 

**Lipscomb University profs from Nashville, Tenn. Willie Steele and Mark McGee, presented fascinating papers on the genuine baseball love of bluegrass legend Bill Monroe and country singer Conway Twitty, respectively.  Born Harold Lloyd Jenkins, Twitty was a star HS baseball player in Helena, Arkansas and had he not been drafted for the Korean War, he might have signed with the Phillies. 

 

**Judith Hiltner, co-author with Jim Walker of the outstanding Red Barber biography, gave an informative talk on the writings of the memorable broadcaster after he left the radio booth.  As early as 1969 he was calling for baseball to broaden its interest among women and the younger generation. 

 

**Chris Bell, English professor at U. of N. Georgia, explained how he used the terse and crisp text on the back of baseball cards as a tool for getting students to appreciate clear writing.  In an effort to demystify hallowed texts, he said that he also suggested edits to the awkward language of the Second Amendment!

 

Next year's Symposium will be held from May 29-31 at the Hall of Fame. For more info, contact either Cassidy Lent at clent@baseballhall.org or Professor Bill Simons at william.simons@oneonta.edu 

 

And now for news about the high school and college baseball playoffs. Congrats to the PSAL baeeball champions, Hunter winners over Metropolitan, 2-1 in the AA final, and Tottenville conquerors of Luperon, 7-4 in the AAA final. 

 

Both games were played on M June 12 at Yankee Stadium earlier than schedules because of threatening weather. 

 

The Final Eight is set for the College World Series starting in Omaha on F June 16. The winners of each

double-elimination bracket will square off in a best-of-three series June 24-26. 

 

For the first time in recent memory, there are two heavy favorites, #1 seed Wake Forest, seeking to match their only title of 1955, and perennial contender #2 Florida. But the Joaquin Andujar Rule applies to college baseball as well as pro baseball, Youneverknow!   All games to be televised on ESPN/ESPN+ with times listed as EDT.

Fri at 2p Oral Roberts vs. TCU followed at 7p Virginia vs. Florida

Sat at 2p Stanford vs. Wake Forest followed at 7p by Tennessee vs. LSU 

 

Before I close, here is a tip on an excellent play closing Su June 18 at the Manhattan Theater Club's home in the historic City Center on 55th St between 6-7 Aves in Manhattan.

Rajiv Joseph's absorbing and humorous two-character play "King James" set in Cleveland from 2008 through 2016 during the years of Lebron James' arrival/departure/return. 

 

Without ovedramatizing the black-white differences in the characters, playwright Joseph and director Kenny Leon drive home salient points but the love of basketball exudes throughout. Excellent performances by Chris Perfetti and Glenn Davis, the latter artistic director of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater where the play originated. 

 

Su Jun 18 Father's Day PBS Channel 13 and other areas of the country will get to see Ted Green's documentary, "The Best We've Got: The Carl Erskine Story".  Narrated by Charley Steiner, Long Island native and former Yankee/now Dodger broadcaster, this is must-see fare.

 

The first half is devoted to Carl's emergence as a Brooklyn Dodger pitcher and proud teammate of Jackie Robinson.  The second half is the story of Carl and Betty Erskine's devotion to their son Jimmy who was born with cognitive challenges.

 

Thanks to the efforts of the Erskines, both of whom are still with us, Jimmy and others have led full lives, competing in Special Olympics and holding down jobs. Indiana, once a state that lagged miserably in the area of support for the challenged, is now a national leader. 

 

That's all for now.  Always remember: Take it easy but take it,  and stay positive and test negative.