Lee Lowenfish

Just as I was beginning to give up on any improvement in the post-season fortunes of my Orioles - and consigned myself again to calling them the Woerioles - the Birds surprised me  on Wed aft Dec 10 by signing former Mets first baseman Pete Alonso to a five-year contract for a reported $155 million. It was not so surprisng that Mets owner Steve A. Cohen - like Orioles owner David Rubenstein someone who made his fortune in private equity funding - was willing to let Alonso walk. Cohen only reluctantly signed him last year at this time to a two-year contract with an opt-out clause after one year. Virtually seconds after the end of the Mets' disappointing 2025 season, Alonso activated the clause that made him a free agent. .

 

That the Orioles won the auction engineered by super-agent Scott Boras was more surprising.  Evidently Rubenstein and his President of Baseball Operations Mike Elias realized that they must act proactively after their own very disappointing 2025 season that saw them fall into the AL East basement 12 games under .500.  Count me in as someone who always thought that Alonso's bigtime power to all fields would be a perfect fit for Baltimore's Camden Yards with its cozy dimensions in right field and now left field where the fences are a little closer once Elias realized his moving them farther out had been a mistake.

 

Of course, as someone who was dubbed the Prince of Paranoia by the late great Batlimore sportswriter Jim Henneman, I did immediately think of other first base signings in Oriole history that proved disastrous:  Chris Davis who they are still paying through 2037 and earlier Glenn Davis (no relation) who cost them in a trade three good players, pitchers Pete Harnisch, Curt Schilling, and outfielder Steve Finley. 

 

I hope though that unlike Glenn Davis who may have arrived from the cavernous Houston Astrodome with injury issues, Alonso has been durable and has played almost every game in each season since he arrived in New York via the University of Florida and time in the Mets' minor league system.  There is no doubt that Alonso believed that the Mets kept him down on the farm for an extra year so his clock towards salary arbitration and the super-big bucks of free agency could be delayed. 

 

Time will tell if Alonso will begin to fade near the end of his contract.  For now the Orioles have filled one big need in their lineup - a power righthanded bat that drives in runs.  What to do with the incumbent first basemen -  injury-prone Ryan Mountcastle (whose power has mysteriously declined though he is still under 30) and younger Coby Mayo who has enormous power but is still unproven - will have to be determined.  There is also the highly touted young catcher Samuel Basallo, 21, who was slated to be an occasional first baseman. And let us not forget the holes that remain in the starting pitching rotation for the Orioles. 

 

Yet this early visit from Santa Claus is to be celebrated.  So the Prince of Paranoia will try to focus on the gift-giving and card-receiving of the holiday season. And pledges a hiatus to Woeriole grousing . . .at least until I get agitated next season about an Alonso 0-20 slump or perhaps a wild throw on a possible double play grounder. 

 

Here's more happy recent news on my favorite basketball team, the Columbia women's basketball team that produced a stirring victory at Seton Hall this past Tuesday Dec 9, the day before the Alonso trade.  Trailing for virtually the entire game with star junior guard Riley Weiss having an off night, the Lions used tough defense to stay in the battle though falling behind by 10 points a couple of times in second half.  Holding the Seton Hall Pirates to 2-15 shooting in the late going, the Lions won it, 54-53, on a layup by senior co-captain Perri Page.  Somehow with less than 9 seconds remaining in the game, she broke free from a triple-team to hit the big shot with 0.5 registering on clock. Kudos to junior Fliss Henderson for delivering the ball accurately to Page and her defense and rebounding.  And a shout-out to sophomore Mia Bloom who filled the scoresheet with 3 steals, 1 block, i assist, and only 1 turnover.

 

After a break for fall semester final exams, Columbia has one more home game in 2025, a Sat Dec 19 encounter at 1P with U of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA).  On the same Tues night where the Lions prevailed at Seton Hall, the Columbia men lost in OT at Stony Brook but they enter exam period at a surprising and encouraging 9-2 while the women are 7-4. The men have one more December home game at 2P Dec 31 against Penn State at Abington and start the Ivy League season on M Jan 5 at 5P at Cornell. Men's home opener is Sa Jan 10 at 2P against Harvard..  The women open their defense of the Ivy League title on Sat Jan 3 at 2P home against Cornell.   

 

And now for some TCM tips: Very few upcoming films with sports themes but a boxing classic is on: 

Sa Dec 13 930P "The Harder They Fall" (1956) One of Humphrey Bogart's last films - he plays a press agent who becomes a crusader against  boxing corruption in a story written by Budd Schulberg based in part on the selling of the overmatched heavyweight Primo Carnera. With Rod Steiger.

Noir Alley follows at 12M (also Dec 14 10A). "Cash on Demand" (1961) a British Noir with Peter Cushing, Andre Morell, John Vernon. 

 

Later on Su Dec 14 Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" (1940) with his then-amour Paulette Goddard/Jack Oakie as a Mussolini character opposite Chaplin playing 2 roles, a Hitler character and a Jewish barber with amnesia after a World War I injury who returns to find the Nazi takeover of his village. The movie was the first full talking picture Chaplin ever made.  If never seen, it should be on anyone's list if only as a slice of cultural history at a time when US had not entered World War II yet but the horrors of Nazism were beginning to be known. 

 

After reading Diane Kiesel's masterful recent book "WHEN CHARLIE MET JOAN: The Tragedy of the Chaplin Trials and the Failings of American Law" (U of Michigan Press, 2025), it is hard to view Chaplin the man with great sympathy. He had many love affairs from his earliest times in Hollywood and blithely broke them off with the aid of an admiring entourage. Without the purest of motives and egged on by her mother and later Hollywood gossip hounds not thrilled with Chaplin's pro-Soviet politics, starlet Joan Berry fought back. To Diane Kiesel's eternal credit, she makes all these characters come to life.  She is a retired judge but also a gifted writer.

 

While I'm on this topic of films in large historic contexts, if you never watched this classic:

W Dec 17 5A "Ninotchka" (1939) is a light and hilarious putdown of Soviet Russia's ideology as only Ernst Lubitsch could direct. Melvyn Douglas romances commissar Greta Garbo in a film where "Garbo Speaks," as the ads proclaimed.  She was good in this film, too, but it was her last one. 

And how could I not list:

F Dec 19 1130A Billy Wilder's "Stalag 17" (1953) with William Holden as a cynical leader in a German POW camp in World War II who is trying to ferret out an informer.  I wasn't ready for it as a 11-year old when my mother took me and my sister to a double bill on the long gone 68th Street Playnouse on Lexington Ave.  (Other film was "A Place in the Sun").

I'm ready for it now. 

 

That's all this time.  Always remember:  Take it easy but Take it, and Stay Positive Test Negative! 

 

 

 

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.