Lee Lowenfish

I'm glad that there will be a full season of MLB ahead of us although as an Oriole fan I'm not looking forward to another season of losing.  

 

I just hope that the possible salary arbitration hearings of Trey Mancini and John Means (not Cedric Mullins as I mispoke in earlier edition) don't lead to bitter feelings and the departure from Baltimore of two of our more likable players.

 

Talented but inconsistent reliever Tanner Scott also is up for arbitration and if they trade him, i wouldn't mind.  The Mets don't have a left-handed reliever as of the morning of March 15.  I'd be glad to trade him for let's see - Jeff McNeil. LOL

 

**Mancini is a survivor of colon cancer who plays with super intensity. Probably beats up on himself more than he should, but he truly cares which is more than I can say for a lot of

players and certainly owners.  

 

**Mullins is not eligible for arbitration until after 2022.  He had a breakout offensive year in 2021 and has always been a top-notch center fielder.  We also recently learned that before last season he had surgery to alleviate the worst symptoms of the intestinal disorder known as Crohn's disease. 

 

**Southpaw John Means, the only somewhat proven starter on the Birds staff, is eligible for arbitration.  Hard to see how they could let him go but in an age where starters rarely go more than five innings, some genius in the front office might pitch an idea that we don't need starters at all.

 

Makers of the T-shirt JOHN MEANS WELL would be disappointed. So would I and my ideal T-shirt MEANS FINDS WAYS.  He did throw a no-hitter last May though the rest of his season was marred by injury and mediocrity. 

 

In the new Basic Agreement, the Rule 5 draft of bargain basement players discarded by other teams - the specialty of the house with the current Oriole front office crew - has been canceled for at least 2022. So maybe the Orioles won't be tempted to trade these good contributors and good citizens.

 

I've heard only good things about our rookie switch-hitting catcher Adley Rutschman so I certainly wish him well. But we still have no reliable infield defense (or offense) up the middle, a giant hole at third base, and no reliable starting pitching.

 

Just heard the news that Cincinnati traded two of its best offensive players, outfielder Jesse Winker and third baseman Eugenio Suarez, to Seattle for mediocre major leaguers and

the ever-popular "prospects".  

 

Very sad to see that before the pitch is thrown in the delayed but full 2022 season, Baltimore, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh have no chnce of competing. Oakland is starting a fire sale by trading Matt Olson to Atlanta for "prospects", although the players Billy Beane got seem to have more upside than those the Reds received.  

 

I've always said that every season produces a surprise team and it may happen in 2022 with the rebuilding Royals and Tigers and perhaps the Mariners.  But it is not a good situation for MLB when there is a permanent underclass. The addition of 12 teams to the playoffs will likely mean very little to baseball's have-nots.

 

I remind folks again - there is plenty of affordable minor league, high school, and college baseball to see in the coming months.  In the NYC metro area, Columbia, Rutgers, St. John's, and Seton Hall always have competitive programs.

 

The new Staten Island Ferry Hawks open their home schedule on Tu May 3, and the Yankees' Double A farm club Somerset Patriots and the Mets' High-Single A Brooklyn Cyclones farm club both open on Tu Apr 12 for a slate of six games through Easter Sunday Apr 17. 

 

Turning to basketball and the upcoming "March Madness",  Columbia's women basketball will start its first-ever post-season play with a home matchup in the WNIT (Women's NIT) against Holy Cross at 7p on Wed Mar 16.

 

The Lions routed Yale last weekend in the semi-final of the Ivy League tournament, but after battling Princeton to a tie in the first quarter of the final, they fell behind by 12 at the half.  They briefly cut the lead to 8 points with about 7 minutes to go, but a Princeton timeout stopped the surge.

 

Wisconsin's Cinderella men's team is in danger of turning into a pumpkin.  They have lost two in a row for the first time all season.  They enter the first round of March Madness on Fri March 18 at 950p EDT on TBS against Colgate in Milwaukee. 

 

It's virtually a home game for Wisconsin, but if newly named Big Ten Player of the Year Johnny Davis has another mediocre game as he did in the Big Ten tournament against Michigan State, this dream season will end abruptly.  

 

Davis is dealing with a chronic ankle injury that may be affecting his play.  It says here that the biggest factor is the pressure of being voted Big Ten Player of the Year and an expected NBA lottery pick is getting to him mentally.  

 

The Badgers were picked for 10th in pre-season polls. They don't have a deep roster so everyone in addition to Davis must step up.

 

The Film Forum on Houston Street in lower Manhattan is one of my favorite movie theaters.

Now open again for customers (fully-masked!), I saw yesterday the documentary about the late radio personality Steve Post.  

 

"Playing In The FM Band" is a definite must-see. The film, produced and directed by former WBAI station manager Rosemarie Reed, will go down as a memorable and indispensable tribute to one of the founders of free form radio in the 1960s. 

 

 

I came to WBAI to host and produce a sports show in November 1982 just after Post left to become a morning host and classical music jockey at the more sedate WNYC.  

 

We learn in the film that Post dealt with colon cancer from the age of 38,  the same age his mother got the disease.  He survived more than 30 years but his mother left this vale of tears when he was only 10.  

 

This calamity - and his father's unusual cooking habits that I'll only tease you with - undoubtedly contributed to Post's acerbic cynicism. The strength of the movie is its focus on his achievement as a pioneer in radio in NYC in the tumultuous age of the 1960s and beyond.

 

I was really impressed with the pacing of the film, which is the challenge in films that rely

on talking heads. I only wish that the credits at the end of the film moved more slowly - they rarely do, one of my pet peeves.  

 

Andy Lanset, director of WNYC archives, has dug up remarkable material, especially Bayard Rustin, the underappreciated civil rights leader, singing movement songs in a haunting high tenor voice.

 

Kudos to the original music of David Amram that augment some great irreverent songs from the 1960s and beyond. And the artists whose animations keep the story flowing with humor.  

 

What else can I say about the film except see it while it lasts at Film Forum through at least

Thursday March 24.  Any film that makes Post's first mentor at station, Larry Josephson, come across as avuncular and benign is a true work of art. 

 

That's all for now. Here's to the extra hour of sunlight that Daylight Saving Time has brought us, and let it brighten our spirits as spring happily looms on the horizon.  May it shine on the beleaguered people of Ukraine facing the awful scourge of Putin's unprovoked invasion. 

 

Always remember:  Take it easy but take it!

 

 

 

 

 

I knew as an Orioles fan that this first year of full-scale rebuilding was going to be difficult.  Leave it to my Birds, though, and especially rookie utility man Stevie Wilkerson, to end the season in Boston with a vivid example of how baseball can turn ecstasy into agony with shocking suddenness.

 

Their 162nd and last game of the season against the Red Sox in Fenway was tied 4-4 with two out in the bottom of the eighth.  Stevie Wilkerson, playing right field for only the tenth time, made a sensational leaping twisting catch, robbing Jackie Bradley Jr. of a two-run home run though barely missing landing in the right field stands.  (Turnabout was fair play because Bradley had robbed Orioles MVP Trey Mancini earlier in season at Camden Yards of a game-winning HR.)

 

Yet one inning later, Wilkerson was slow returning to the infield a single by Xander Bogaerts.  Running on the pitch from first base, Mookie Betts circled the bases to end the Red Sox's disappointing season on a high note.

 

(It won't appear in any of the often indecipherable analytic charts, but it seems to me that the Red Sox season was doomed early when the team split between black and Hispanic players and manager Alex Cora who didn't go to the White House to celebrate their 2018 championship with Donald Trump, and the white players who did go.)   

 
I have a lot of respect for teams long out of the race that play hard in late September. The Bosox and Birds have a history of that kind of intense play that make "the integrity of the game" not just an empty phrase. 

 
I recall back in 1976 when both teams had been eliminated by the resurgent Yankees.  Yet on the last day in the proverbial "meaningless game," they played 15 innings at Fenway before the Bosox won 4-3.     

 
To those teams who last week played genuine spoiler in the pennant races, I tip my cap. 

**The White Sox who started the Indians on their slide out of the playoffs by two victories in Chicago.  It was a sad ending for Cleveland who had played very well until the last week despite injuries to both the pitching staff and key regulars. The Tribe continues to own the longest World Series-victory drought of any historic team - no title since 1948.

 

**The Colorado Rockies salvaged some respect in the last two games of a very disappointing season.  They beat the Milwaukee Brewers in two dramatic extra-inning victories.  They prevented the Brew Crew from forcing a tie or even winning the NL Central over the Cardinals who had swept the Cubs in Chicago knocking them out of contention (and manager Joe Maddon into the unemployment line though not likely for long.) 

 

**The Diamondbacks get an honorable mention for playing hard in beating the Cardinals two in a row in Phoenix. It started St. Louis on a four-game losing streak. The Brewers' losses and Cardinals' young ace Jack Flaherty shutout effort during the 162nd game finally clinched the NL Central for the Redbirds. 

  

Now the Brewers must face the Washington Nationals on the road in the NL Wild Card

game on Tuesday October 1.  The Brew Crew deserves great credit for playing so well in much of September without Christian Yelich, the reigning NL MVP whose kneecap was broken by a foul ball off his bat. (The injury reminded me of the broken leg suffered by Oakland A's outfielder Jermaine Dye in the 2001 playoff against the Yankees that sadly shortened his career.)

 
I don't bet and I rarely make predictions.  But I have a feeling that the clock has struck midnight for the Brewers and the Nats will finally come up with a victory in a big post-season game, even if it is just a Wild Card game.  How they will fare as underdog against the defending league champion LA Dodgers is another question to be dealt with later this month.

 
As to the American League Wild Card game on Wednesday October 2, the Tampa Bay Rays will visit the antiquated and sanitarily challenged Oakland Coliseum to take on the A's.  Both teams are resourceful and talented with limited payrolls. They rarely play before big crowds.

 

I sure hope Oakland has reason to open their upper deck for what could be an exciting game.  The A's have a youthful group of largely farm-grown players, many of them from California including three star infielders, Matt Chapman and Matt Olson at the corners and emerging Marcus Simien at shortstop.

 

Whether with the Rays or A's can deal with the Astros and their home field advantage in the best-of-five Division Series is doubtful. Though the A's played the Astros very tough in regular season. 

 

The Yankees will be favored in their ALDS against their perennial patsy the Minnesota Twins. The matchup between the Atlanta Braves and Cardinals looks like a tossup with Braves having home field advantage.  No one really knows. Sl as the late great broadcaster Red Barber used to say, "That's why they play the games." To find out who is best.

 
It's tough for me to deal with the absence of daily regular season baseball now until late March 2020. But I am fortunate to live in NYC.  Vernon Duke asked in his great song, "Autumn In New York/ Why is it so inviting? Autumn in New York, it brings the thrill of first nighting."

 
Well, I didn't attend the first performance of the new production of "Porgy and Bess" at the Met Opera, but I do go on the last night of September.  It was a thrilling evening of opera with kudos deserved for everyone.

 

From the new production by James Robinson with its revolving stage that recreates the fictional fishing community Catfish Row; to choreographer Camille A. Brown in her Met debut; to the powerful all-black "Porgy and Bess" chorus; to the fabulous orchestra conducted by David Robertson (not the oft-injured relief pitcher); to all the singers led by Eric Owens and Angel Blue in the title roles. With special mention of Leah Hawkins' brief turn as the Strawberry Woman.

 
I had not realized until this production how organically the famous songs in the opera are connected to the story and plot development.  Beginning with Clara's opening rendition of "Summertime" to Serena's mournful "My Man Gone Now" to Porgy's "I Got Plenty of Nuttin'" to Sportin' Life's "It Ain't Necessarily So" to the repetitions of "Bess You Is My Woman Now" to the achingly beautiful trio of Porgy, Serena, and Maria near the end of the opera that rivals anything that Verdi or Mozart ever wrote in that form. 

 

I couldn't help thinking how much more Gershwin could have contributed to opera if he hadn't been taken from us at the age of 38.  "Porgy and Bess" runs a few more times through Oct 13.  Check out metopera.org

 
At a time when there are more and more disturbing discoveries of blackface and brown face incidents in both the US and Canada, "Porgy and Bess" deserves our attention because it was a genuine effort by George Gershwin and the librettists DuBose and Dorothy Heyward to delve into the lives of this unique Gullah black community outside of Charleston, South Carolina.    

 
One final music note:  In mid-September I was blessed to hear Kelli O'Hara sing Samuel Barber's beautifully succinct 16-minute tone poem, "Knoxville: Summer of 1915" with the New York Philharmonic under Jaap Van Zweden.  

 

The lyrical piece, based on the prologue to James Agee's "A Death in the Family," is ideal for O'Hara's lilting and compelling mezzo-soprano. She is branching out successfully from her heralded work in musical theatre.  I heard her as Despina in Mozart's "Cosi Fan Tutte" last season and she owned that saucy crucial role of the maid who is a co-conspirator in the plot to prove that men are not loyal to their women and women are not loyal to their men.

 
That's all for now about my ardent loves of baseball and music. Until later this month as the playoffs take shape, always remember:  Take it easy but take it!