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!    

Blame me, Oriole fans. The Prince of Paranoia went out of character and conceived a new alter ego, Agent 161 031 221, in the wake of the Orioles' 17-5 rout of the Yankees on Thursday afternoon June 20.  That was the line score on a day the Birds scored in every inning but the 4th. 

It was my first jaunt to Yankee Stadium this season and I never expected a laugher, but once Juan Soto didn't react to Gunnar Henderson's first-pitch liner to right and it became a double, the die seemingly was cast on this very steamy afternoon.

It was a rare off-day for the Yankees' surprise ace so far, Luis Gil, who came in with a 9-1 record and a low ERA.  He was knocked out during a six-run Oriole second inning and Yankee relievers didn't fare much better.

I didn't really expect future games would be so easy.  I knew that the Astros are improving and are loaded with talent with championship pedigree and a good farm system. But I didn't expect a sweep this past weekend at Minute Maid Park, especially with our two best starters working the first two games, Grayson Rodriguez and Corbin Burnes. 

A sweep is what happened because the baseball gods are very capricious and are wary of overconfidence. Rodriguez seemed in control on Friday night with a 3-2 lead in the bottom of the 5th, but with two out and two on - both well-stroked singles on fastballs - he hung an off-speed pitch to center fielder Jake Meyers and in a twinkling it was 5-3 Astros.

This is Grayson's first full year in the majors so he remains a young pitcher, but with three Baltimore starters out for the year and longer - Kyle Bradish, John Means and Tyler Wells - Rodriguez needs to step up.  He didn't get an out in the bottom of the 6th and the rout was on. 

The Orioles did make Friday's game interesting with a barrage of 7th and 8th inning homers but that only cut the deficit to 14-11. To coin a phrase (LOL), "Close only counts in horseshoes and grenades." 

In the Sa/Su day games, Houston starters Ronel Franco, who pitched a no-hitter earlier in season, and veteran southpaw Framber Valdez simply outpitched Baltimore's ace Corbin Burnes and reclamation project Albert Suarez. 

The Astros are now only two games under .500 and just five games in lost column behind the first-place AL West Mariners. Houston has lost their share of pitchers for the season, too, notably Jose Urquiddy and Cristian Javier and are also temporarily missing powerful right fielder Kyle Tucker, but they still have a potent lineup from top to bottom. 

Next up for the Orioles at home are the Cleveland Guardians who have lost two less games than the Orioles at 49-26 and are leading the AL Central 

by 7 games in the loss column over Minnesota.  The Texas Rangers come into Baltimore the last weekend of June and they are now only 3 games

below .500 and Max Scherzer was excellent in his first start of the season on Sun Jun 23. 

There is no word but EPIDEMIC to describe what is happening to pitchers this season.  There is no easy explanation except that the reward system for amateur signings and big contracts is heavily weighted towards Velocity and Spin Rate.  Until organizations stress Pitchability and Durability, the casualty rate will go on and on.  

AND NOW THE TRIBUTES TO MAYS AND SUTHERLAND:

The timing of the passing of Willie Mays was eerily appropriate.  Mays died on Tues June 19 at the age of 93 as MLB was preparing to celebrate the Negro leagues at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama. MLBTV was covering a minor league game at Rickwood when the TV coverage was interrupted with the news of Mays' death.  Rickwood later hosted an exciting MLB game between the surging Cardinals and the sagging Giants. 

A tip of the cap to Richard Goldstein whose NY Times obituary of Mays contained a fact I didn't know.  Condoleeza Rice's mother taught Willie at Fairfield Ala. Industrial HS.  She was tolerant of some of his absences because of his baseball responsibilities.  (I knew that Condi's father was one of the recipients of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from A Birmingham Jail" - the senior Rice did not believe that educated Blacks should take part in demonstrations.) 

Another kudo to Anthony Castrovince of mlb.com for his June 12 piece, "How Hollywood Saved Rickwood Field." In a twist of remarkable irony, it turns out that when Ron Shelton was looking for a site to film his bio-pic "Cobb" in the early 1990s, he chose Rickwood Field because it dates back to 1910 during the heyday of Cobb's career. 

"Cobb" is not a great movie, marred by Shelton's reliance on sportswriter Al Stump's questionable recounting of interviews in the last year of Cobb's life.  Yet this connection made me think of something Branch Rickey said in his only book, THE AMERICAN DIAMOND:  The only player he ever saw that had a greater will to win than Jackie Robinson was Ty Cobb. 

Rickey also once uttered a potent description of Willie Mays:  "The secret to his success is the frivolity in his bloodstream."  I don't have many memories of games that Mays played as a New York Giant, but I do remember going with my father to the Polo Grounds to see pre-game fielding and batting practice at the Polo Grounds.  During every pre-game fielding drill, Mays showed off his cannon of an arm in throws to home, third, and second.

Here's one other Mays story to share.  Sometime before the pandemic, I won a raffle at a NYC Baseball Writers Association dinner.  The prize was a painting of me and my favorite NY ballplayer. I sent a photo of yours truly to artist John Pennisi and I have the result framed in my living room with a caption added by the artist.

Lee:  "Say Hey Willie, Leo says if Thomson gets on, I'm pinch-hittin' for you."

Willie: "Lee, how did you get on the field?" 

Here's also a fond farewell to actor Donald Sutherland, 88, who passed away two days after Mays on Jun 20.  He too deservedly received of a front page obit in NY Times (though understandably not nearly as large). 

I never met Sutherland but I loved his work on film including "M*A*S*H,"  "Klute," and the remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". How could a sports fan like me ever forget Sutherland's character who gets so infested with the alien pods that he loses interest in the NBA finals.  (That was in early 1980s when the entertainment aspect of NBA hadn't take over, but that's another story.) 

Sutherland was a genuine baseball fan and as a native of Canada, he especially adored the Expos who entered MLB in 1969. I love the story of Sutherland on a film assignment in Europe in October 1981, spending a few hundred dollars on a phone call to North America so he could follow a radio broadcast of the Expos-Dodgers NLCS playoff.  He was a true fan and never used his celebrity to draw attention. 

That's all for now.  Next time I post i'll be an 83-year-old.  Just remembered that 1983 was the last world championship year of the Orioles.  The Prince of Paranoia doesn't really believe in omens or jinxes but I just may retire Agent 161 031 221. 

Stay positive test negative, and take it easy but take it over.