Lee Lowenfish

Are you ready dear readers?  The Prince of Paranoia boldly predicts that . . . The Days Will Continue To Get Longer Until The Summer Solstice! How about that for fearless prediction!  I guess I don't want to join the chorus of pundit naysayers who are sure that a year from now, the big MLB story will be: How long will the lockout last?  My guess is we'll know more about the lockout likelihood if the Tigers have traded ace Tarik Skubal to the Dodgers or perhaps another deep-pocketed owner before spring training. One of those owners could be Edward Rogers of the Blue Jays who I mistakenly IDed as James Rogers in a recent blog. My bad on that one.  Edward is one of the richest men in Canada as head of the big media combine Rogers Communications - he is the Rogers the Rogers Centre stadium is named after.   How far we have come from the days when Philadelphia A's owner/manager Connie Mack did not want Shibe Park named after him. 

 

I am crossing fingers that the recent acquisition by the Pirates of second baseman Brandon Lowe and outfielder Jake Mangum in a trade with Tampa Bay Rays and former Oriole All-Star first baseman/outfielder Ryan O'Hearn as a free agent increases the chances that Pittsburgh's great RHP ace Paul Skenes will stay on the beautiful hilly city on the three rivers (the Allegheny, the Monongahela, the Ohio) for at least another year.  Skenes won't be a free agent until after 2029 season but unless the Pirates improve on the field in 2026 - and even if they do - hard to see Skenes staying with Pittsburgh for another four seasons but the good baseball city of Pittsburgh deserves hope.

 

If I didn't know too well the bitter history of player-owner labor relations that traces back to the late 19th century, I'd like to think a possible compromise exists: A quicker route to free agency and a higher salary floor for the players in exchange for a limit on salary highs, the dreaded salary cap. Despite some disarray in the usually united Players Association, it is hard to see at this juncture any leaders on either side stepping forward with compromise on their mind.  It seems that the richest owner the Mets Steve A. Cohen has now seemingly joined the hard-line owner group.  He has replaced Phillies owner John Middleton on the 8-owner executive council that ostensibly advises commissioner Robert Manfred. Middleton was the owner who announced that he was going to do something stupid in free agency and in renewing his own players.  Now there is hardly a dove in that group that consists of John Fisher (Athletics), Ken Kendrick (Diamondbacks), John Stanton (Mariners), Greg Johnson (Giants), Paul Dolan (Guardians), Arte Moreno (Angels), and Bruce Sherman (Marlins). Keep this list handy because a miracle might happen and some owners not on the committee might step forward in the name of compromise. 

 

SAVE FRI NIGHT JAN 23!

The 59th Annual New York Pro Baseball Scouts Dinner will be held at Leonard's of Great Neck at 555 Northern Boulevard just off the Long Island Expressway.

Yankees radio announcer Dave Sims will be the guest speaker and several local scouts and coaches will receive honors including the Good Guy Award to Pirates associate scout Chris Clehane who is indeed a good guy and a highly regarded NYC area coach.  Tickets are $125 and checks should be sent to Billy Blitzer, 3759 Nautilus Ave, Brooklyn NY 11224.  No tickets will be sold at the door and checks must be received no later than Jan 16, a we before the dinner.  They should be made out to the NY Pro Scouts Association. Billy Blitzer can also be reached at bbscout1@aol.com 

 

LOCAL WOMEN'S BASKETBALL NOTES:

My favorite Columbia team entered Christmas break with a 8-4 record.  Their two most recent wins, against Seton Hall on the road and UTSA (University of Texas San Antonio) at home, weren't decided until the final seconds. Good experience for the players, a lesson in emotional control for the Prince of Paranoia.  Down in Greenwich Village, the defending Division III champion NYU Violets, unbeaten for well over 2 years, are rolling along with a 7-0 record, scoring over 100 points in 5 of the games and its closest competition came in a 90-48 win over Brooklyn College.  Here is their upcoming home schedule at their spiffy Paulson Center on Bleecker Street just west of Mercer Street.

M Dec 29 2P Hamilton College (from Clinton NY - not to be confused with Colgate University in Hamilton NY) [but game at tourney in Montreal].   

M Jan 5 2P Skidmore College (from Saratoga Springs, NY)

Home games against their league opponents in the UAA (University Athletic Association) start:

F Jan 16 730P U. of Rochester (NY)

Su Jan 18 Noon Emory U (from Atlanta)

 

TIME FOR TCM TIPS    

Christmas Night at 10P EST - Tune in for "Angels in the Outfield" the original 1951 film directed by Clarence Brown, the M-G-M director who made Greta Garbo a star among his many credits.  Even if you don't go for the fantasy of a little girl (Donna Corcoran in her debut) seeing angels in the outfield and hard-bitten manager Guffy McGovern (Paul Douglas) hearing them too, the photography of Forbes Field and its beautiful Pittsburgh neighborhood are worth seeing.  Morphing Phil Rizzuto, others in the cast are "not too shabby" either: Janet Leigh as the Household Hints writer for a Pittsburgh newspaper who tries to humanize Guffy/Keenan Wynn as a virulent sportswriter/Spring byington and Ellen Corby as nuns that bring little Donna to games/Bruce Bennett as veteran pitcher/and James Whitmore as the uncredited voice of the angel Gabriel. 

11:45P the 15-minute short "Donkey Baseball" (1935). Promoter Ray Doan's novelty sport. 

I don't see any other sports films of note in the days ahead but some major ones need mention: 

F Dec 26 8P "Kramer vs. Kramer" (1979) Robert Benton [NOT Sidney Pollack] directs Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep as they go through a nasty divorce

Sa Dec 27 8P Here Comes Mr. Jordan" (1941) some sports in here as Robert Montgomery is a onetime boxer who gets reincarnated with the help of Claude Rains

945P "Network" (1976) Paddy Chayevsky's diatribe against TV with stellar cast including William Holden/Faye Dunaway/Peter Finch who delivers the memorable line,

"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!"  Does that line still resonate as 2025 careens to its end. 

Followed at 1215A repeated at 10A Noir Alley brings you "Odd Man Out" (1947) Carol Reed directs James Mason/Robert Newton in story set in Ireland during IRA troubles

 

Two Woody Allen films of note:

Su Dec 28 1215P "The Purple Rose of Cairo" (1985) a big part of it set in movie theatres during Great Depression and filmed just north of NYC in Piermont, NY. With Mia Farrow.

M Dec 29 6P "The Front" (1976) Martin Ritt, who lived through the Hollywood blacklist, directs Woody who plays a front for a blacklisted writer.  Zero Mostel who also endured the blacklist is not to be missed.

[M DEC 31 Marx Brothers Marathon:  

530A "Room Service: (1938)

7A "At The Circus" (1939) with Eve Arden and memorable song "Lydia The Tattooed Lady"

830A "A Day At The Races" (1937) the passing of producer Irving Thalberg who did the earlier one is felt here 

1030A "A Night At The Opera" (1935) one of the immortal ones with the famous state room scene and Kitty Carlisle's most famous role

1230P "The Cocoanuts" (1929) the very first one filmed in Queens after its success on the stage

215P "Animal Crackers" (1930) Groucho as Captain Spaulding the African Explorer 

400P "Monkey Business" (1931) the next two have talented blonde beauty ill-fated Thelma Todd (instead of the more stately hilarious Margaret DuMont)

530P "Horse Feathers" (1932) college football was never the same after this one

645P "Duck Soup" (1933) the wonderful mirror scene and the most anti-war in politics - a 7-letter word causes war.  Can any reader ID it?  

 

That's all for now.  Happy and healthy New Year to all, Stay Positive and 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.