Lee Lowenfish

Before I begin my remembrance of Jim Henneman, I want to open with an act of sportsmanship I saw after the Belmont Stakes, the third race in the Triple Crown of classic races, this past Saturday June 7. In a repeat of the Kentucky Derby outcome, Sovereignty outran Journalism.  Immediately after the race, winning jockey Junior Alvarado - who BTW grew up in Long Island - reached out and tapped with his whip losing jockey Umberto Rispoli and his horse. Rispoli quickly reciprocated the gestures.   

 

I'm not a big horse racing fan and maybe such courtesy is not unusual in the so-called Sport of Kings. I know boxers tap gloves after a particularly vigorous round. But in this age of boundless cruelty and braggadocio on steroids, any act of genuine sportsmanship needs to be noted and praised.   

 

And now in memory of Jim Henneman.    

The baseball world lost a special person on May 22 when Baltimore sportswriter Jim Henneman passed away at the age of 89. A lifelong Baltimorean, Jim's credits included: 

**Bat boy for the minor league Orioles before the Browns arrived from St. Louis in 1954

**Calvert Hall High School pitcher who competed against Al Kaline (they often playfully argued about how many times he walked the future Hall of Famer)

**Loyola College graduate who was already starting his sportswriting career while an undergraduate

**From mid-late 1960s press and public relations director for Baltimore Bullets NBA team (today known as Washington Wizards)

**Longtime sportswriter for Baltimore News American, Baltimore Sun papers, mlb.com, and in his last years PressBoxOnLine, paper edition and .com

**Author of the text for the handsome coffee table book "60 Years of Orioles Magic"

* President of Baseball Writers Assn on America, official scorer at Oriole home games

 

In late April 2024 he was honored by the dedication of the Jim Henneman Press Box at Oriole Park at Camden Yards.  I was glad to attend a ceremony that brought him to tears. He was wearing Oriole orange that day - being a pro's pro, Jim usually was a model of impartiality in attire and attitude.

 

Jim was also a cigar smoker and one of my fondest memories is running into him at a mall in Sarasota a few spring trainings ago. "What are you doing here?" he growled as his cigar smoke wafted towards me. We had both come to hear a jazz gig and he remembered I used to write a NYC jazz newsletter.      

 

The nickname I will always revere, The Prince of Paranoia, was Jim's gift to me, based on my frequent agonies about the Orioles.  He calmed me down many times from the ledge. He never got too high about the Birds' chances or too low although he noted that as last year's second half team lapsed into mediocrity that it was the less- ballyhooed veterans, Cedric Mullins and Ramon Urias, who were producing the most in the late going. Alas, neither of them nor any other Oriole could stop the plunge towards a second straight winless post-season.

 

I am already missing our e-mails where he offered sage advice on Orioles and other baseball matters. How he loved going to Cooperstown where he regularly served on Hall of Fame committees.  I remember his being indignant when I suggested that most of the voting was based on personality preferences. He emphatically denied that it was the case.  I'm not sure I completely agree but Jim had the kind of no-nonsense authority that made you listen and rethink your opinions.

 

RIP Henny - you will never be forgotten - indeed you are already immortal.

 

As for the current edition of the Orioles, I started drafting this post when the Birds were in the middle of a six-game winning streak, something they - and us the addicted fans who want so much to believe in better times - had not enjoyed in almost a calendar year.  As always starting pitching, relief pitching, solid defense, timely hitting were the reasons for several come-from-behind victories.  The danger sign was that we had scored scarcely 20 runs in the 6 victories. 

 

Now as I post before games on Mon Jun 9 (mercifully an off-day for my Birds), the glow from the streak has dissipated after a disappointing series loss to the Athletics in Sacramento.  We fell to 12 under .500 after a lifeless Sunday loss to the A's, 5-1.  The A's had lost 20 of their previous 22 games, but they can hit and have an All-World closer is Mason Miller.  Getting to him has been a big problem. 

 

I will say this about Orioles interim manager Tony Mansolino.  He delivers both real love for his players and tough love in his public commentaries. He has called out our inability to hit left-handed pitching as a major flaw.  The supposed beneficial additiions of righthanded power production in outfielder Tyler O'Neill and backup catcher Gary Sanchez, both injured now, have not panned out.  I doubted the moves when they happened off-season but surprise surprise wasn't consulted LOL.

 

I'll still keep watching until masochism reaches its breaking point (like most fans, that bar is very high). Meanwhile, as for the rest of MLB, some very interesting races are developing. There are new possible contenders in both Central divisions.  Minnesota and St. Louis enjoyed long double-digit winning streaks to get them into contention and so far there have been no relapses for either team.  Minnesota has to keep center fielder Byron Buxton healthy, something they and he have been unable to do for years. And if St. Louis displays some basic infield competence, they could hang around to make life for the first-place Cubs interesting. 

 

One final salute to my Columbia Lions who won the first game over host Southern Mississippi in the Hattiesburg, MS regional. But then the arms and bats of Miami and SM took over and the season ended with two losses.  Given that Columbia lost its two top pitchers and its starting third baseman in the first game of the season, the year turned out very successfully with another Ivy League regular season title and first tournament win since a double elimination format was introduced in 2023.       

 

 

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

I'm glad to report that all the news coming from my alma mater is not about the Pro-Palestine Anti-Israel demonstrations, police crackdowns, and inevitable recriminations that has created turmoil on the main college campus. Here's a shoutout instead for Columbia's baseball team, a perennial contender and six-time league champion since coach Brett Boretti arrived on Morningside Heights almost 20 years ago.

 

On the last weekend of April, the Lions clinched home field advantage in the upcoming 4-team post-season playoff by sweeping Cornell at Ithaca. There is still one regular season final home series left this coming weekend May 4-5 against second-place Princeton.  The Tigers lead the Big Red by a game with Penn's Quakers and Yale's Bulldogs another game back. 

 

One of those teams will not make the playoff that begins on Fri May 17 at picturesque Satow Stadium overlooking the Hudson a little northwest of Braodway and 218th Street.  Columbia will host the 3P game against the 4th place finisher with seeds 2 & 3 playing at 11A. We probably won't know the final four until after Harvard and Yale battle in New Haven the weekend of May 11-12.   

 

A big reason for Columbia's success has been that they always play a tough early season schedule. You learn very little from beating up on inferior competition. "To be the best you have to beat the best" is an adage that all contending teams must absorb.

 

(Megan Griffith, coach of Columbia's women's basketball regular season Ivy co-champions, has also scheduled tough early season foes. They performed so effectively this year in the early games and then soared to a 13-1 league record that the Lions earned the Ivy League's first-ever women's basketball at-large bid to March Madness.  There is also a lot of beaming at Columbia over the WNBA's Connecticut Sun drafting Abbey Hsu, Ivy League Player of the Year, and the New York LIberty's selecting former Lion Kaitlyn Davis.) 

 

After taking major lumps this season playing at the University of Florida Gators and at stops in southern California - where one of the losses was a 32-2 pasting by the UC-Irvine Anteaters - the baseball Lions enter the crucial month of May on a 9-game winning streak and a 15-3 Ivy League record. They also recently beat perennial Big East contender St. John's in a close game and routed another prominent local program, Seton Hall, 31-0. 

 

It is true that college baseball in the Northeast has never developed a huge fan base beyond parents, friends of the family, and confirmed baseball nuts like yours truly. The pinging sound of the metal bats turns off many purists and I myself do miss the resonant thwack of the wooden bat.

 

But once you make peace with this difference, I suggest you'll enjoy the quality of the game as played by these scrappy collegians. Columbia's pitching coach Tom Carty deserves kudos for turning his battered pre-season staff into an effective unit. 

 

Senior Derek Yoo from Los Angeles and junior co-captain southpaw Joe Sheets from Wilmington, Delaware, have become a reliable one-two punch as starters with sophomore Thomas Santana from Millburn, NJ locking in well recently into the third slot.  

 

The hitting has lately been overwhelming with an average of more than 8 runs a game.   A .300 hitter comes to the plate in virtually every spot in the batting order. Most have long ball power, led by senior first baseman Jack Cooper from Edwardsville, ILL, and sophomore shortstop Sam Miller from McMurray, PA (near Pittsburgh) who have each produced double-digit HR numbers. 

 

The lineup may have solidified when junior second baseman Griffin Palfrey from Vancouver, British Columbia, returned from injury.  Palfrey doubles as a relief pitcher, sometimes with closing responsibilities. 

 

There is another glow coming from the Baker Field complex with news that former Lion outfielder Hayden Schott is tearing it up in the middle of the order of the Texas A & M Aggies who have been ranked #1 in the country the last three weeks.  He is playing as a graduate student, something the Ivy League

still does not allow.  

 

It's a delight to tell these stories at a time when the university and our bedraggled body politic has been under fire.And let's be realistic, the crises will continue through USA Election Day Nov 5 and beyond.

 

I have no illusions that a winning sports team can make much societal difference.  Early in 1968 Columbia's great basketball team briefly united the campus but it blew apart by the spring at the height of the Vietnam war divisions. But I do know that winning as a team is as good a metaphor as any for what sports can teach us.

 

AND NOW TURNING TO MLB NEWS . . .

On Sat Apr 27 I was delighted to attend the press box naming ceremony for veteran Baltimore sportswriter Jim Henneman.  I've known Jim since

the mid-1970s when he was a speaker at Univ of Maryland Baltimore County in my class in Sports and American Culture, one of the first such ventures in academia. 

 

I was only one of a legion of sportswriters, friends and family who paid homage to a man whose wise counsel kept many of us from jumping off ledges when the Orioles seemed particularly hopeless.  Jim was brought to tears, reflecting on the honor bestowed upon a native son.

 

He was a batboy for the minor league Orioles and in high school pitched against another local boy Al Kaline.  The future Hall of Famer, who played his entire career with the Detroit Tigers, and the future sportswriter always engaged in friendly banter about how many times Henneman walked him. 

A longtime official scorer, Henneman gave up that duty last season. He quipped, "I can now wear Oriole orange," which indeed he did on this special day. 

 

To make the afternoon complete, the Orioles shut out the improved Oakland A's behind Cole Irvin's 7 shutout innings and back-to-back HRs by Gunnar Henderson and Adley Rutschman. The rest of the weekend wasn't so fortunate for the Birds as the A's rallied in the 9th inning on Fri night and Sun afternoon, treating roughly Oriole closer Craig Kimbrel who has upper back issues but may not need a trip to the injured list.   

 

Starter Grayson Rodriguez has not been so fortunate.  After pitching nearly 6 shutout innings against the Yankees this past Monday, he has been IL-ed for at least 15 days.  It looks like the Yankees and Orioles will battle for the AL East title all season with the Red Sox possibly getting into the mix with their improved pitching but they know they have to improve their defense.   

 

The problem with all these early commentaries is that there is SO MUCH of the season still to play.  And there are TOO MANY teams that qualify for the playoffs.  So it goes (sigh).  

 

I close with one special TCM movie tip.

Sa May 4 at 145P EDT the original "Angels in the Outfield" (1951) airs.  I find it a neglected gem in the baseball movie category. Starring Paul

Douglas as the crusty Pirates manager who gets humanized by Janet Leigh as a Household Tips writer for a Pittsburgh newspaper. 

 

The wonderful supporting cast includes Bruce Bennett as aging pitcher Saul Hellman, Keenan Wynn as the vitriolic broadcaster who engages in verbal and physical blows with Douglas (watch for uncredited Barbara Billingsley as a cigarette girl) and Spring Byington and Ellen Corby as the nuns who bring the orphaned girls to ballgames, most importantly, Donna Corcoran the 8-year-old who actually sees the angels in the outfield. The photography of Pittsburgh in the early 1950s is worth watching even if you are not entranced by the story.  

 

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