Lee Lowenfish

I am posting tonight just after the Yankees roared back from a 6-1 deficit to tie the first of possibly three elimination games on an Aaron Judge 3-run HR on an 0-2 pitch from the former Minnesota Twin Louis Varland.  Uncharacteristic errors by the Blue Jay infield has led to mostly unearned runs.  I finally had to turn down the sound on the Fox announcers, unctuous Joe Davis and monotonous John Smoltz.  The last straw was Smoltz saying that the pop fly that third baseman Addison Barger dropped prior to Judge's blasst was a play "he'd make 99 times out of a 100."  Gimme a break!  It came after a very long run and left fielder Davis Schneider should have but didn't call him off.  

Will have to listen to Dave Sims and Suzyn Waldman on the radio for the rest of the game (as long as it remains close - Jazz Chisholm just homered to give Yanks its first lead tonight 7-6. ) I'll give Dave and Suzyn their due for being enthusiastic and more knowledgeable than the national announcers who are hired by the networks and know very

few local details. Unless the Phillies can win three in a row - the first two in LA on Wed and Thurs - the red-hot Dodgers will get into the NL Championship Series.  I hope Davis doesn't announce the NLCS but I know that Davis and Smoltz will work the World Series.  Radio, get ready!  

The likely opponent for LAD in the NLCS will be Milwaukee, the team with home field advantage throughout the playoffs.  They have done it all so far in the NLDS, thoroughly beating the Cubs in the first two games. With the lowest payroll left in the post-season, the Brewers are the favorite team of perpetual underdog rooters. But first things first - they must neutralzie the Wrigley Field crowd on Wed and Thu that could give the local heroes a boost of energy. Like the Yankees, the Cubs will have to win 3 in a row. One at a time, of course.

The disturbing thing about the state of starting pitching is that few teams have a full rotation any more.  The Yankees thought they did with highly paid Max Fried and Carlos Rodon  

but Toronto treated them both rudely. 

The Yankees have taken control of Game 3, leading 9-6 in top of 9th. A while ago, Dave Sims had a Phil Rizzuto moment.  Austin Wells singled in an 8th run for the Yanks and tried for two.  "He slides into second and he's safe," cried Sims. Pause. "They called him out!"  I fearlessly and accurately predicted when Toronto led 6-3, "That won't be the final score!"  Winner of this series will meet most likely Seattle which can eliminate the Tigers in Detroit tomorrow Wed. Seattle has never been in a World Series and it would be kinda nice that expansion teams dating back to 1977, Mariners and Jays, could meet in the ALCS.  But to coin a phrase LOL, "Anything can happen in a short series."   

Before I leave you, I want to list some TCM tips because tomorrow night Wed Oct 8, quite a tripleheader of Otto Preminger is showing on Turner Classic Movies cable channel:. 

8P "Laura" (1944)l that you must watch from the beginning.  As detective Dana Andrews is questioning possible murder suspect Clifton Webb, Dana is toying with a little hand game of ball bearings simply called Baseball.  I'm not a collector of autographs or memorabilia but boy, I'd love to know if that ball-bearing game still exists.

"Laura" has a great cast including Gene (Eugenia) Tierney in the title role, Vincent Price, Judith Anderson, as an odd couple and many others.

945P "Daisy Kenyon" (1947) with Joan Crawford at high point of her career fresh off "Mildred Pierce" and "Humoresque". This one with Henry Fonda and Dana Andrews.

1130P And if this is not enough, Preminger's "Anatomy Of A Murder" (1959) with Duke Ellington's score and an appearance by the master. Defense attorney Jimmy Stewart defends soldier Ben Gazzara from a murder charge. George C. Scott is a very antagonistic prosecutor and Joseph Welch - of Army-McCarthy Hearings fame - plays the presiding judge. Lee Remick plays Gazzara's somewhat supportive wife but her cooing to Stewart, "Call me Laura," is a slice of dialogue etched indelibly in my memory. Let's not forget Eve Arden as Stewart's secretary - she adds her always special touch. 

Sat Oct 11 has quite a triple-header, too, on TCM:  :

8P "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962, the original, accept no substitute). Thursdays in October feature Angela Lansbury as TCM's Star of the Month but she plays a key role in this one, too, as a mother from hell and a right-winger to boot.  With Frank Sinatra and Janet Leigh and many more and the great musical score of David Amram, still performing BTW in this 90s.  Don't miss near the end the rare footage of the Madison Square Garden of my youth - the 8th Ave and 50th Street version.

945P "The Sweet Smell of Success" (1957) Burt Lancaster at his snarly best and Tony Curtis not far behind. Virtually whole movie was shot indoors recreating the suffocating world of press agentry and gossip.  Only in the last scene do we witness daytime to suggest there may be a shred of hope for the life of Lancaster's over-protected sister.

12M (repeated Su at 10A) - Noir Alley presents "New York Confidential" (1955) drawn from the headlines of Washington's hearings investigating a New York crime family. With Richard Conte, Broderick Crawford, and Marilyn Maxwell.

I was neglectful not mentioning last week's "Noir Alley," the Damon Runyon-produced "The Big Street" based on his short story "Little Pink".  (It could be On Demand but I kinda doubt it.). Henry Fonda plays a milquetoast-ish busboy smitten with Lucille Ball who is a lounge singer with big dreams and even a bigger and meaner personality.  She's worth the whole film for those who remember her only as Lucy.  There is a pre-"Guys and Dolls" flavor to this one with Sam Levene playing a character actually called Nicely-Nicely Johnson.  Some of the uncredited guys are Millard Mitchell (who alas died not long after the embattledyet optimistic producer in "Singin' In The Rain") and Hans Conried. Barton MacLane is definitely credited playing a real bad guy(who would have been at home in Trump's America). 

That's all for now.  Stay positive, test negative, take it easy but take it.  Enjoy the remaining playoffs and as a Wisconsin alum, I even dream of their possibly beating Iowa on

Saturday night.  Check your listings.

You learn something new from a classic noir film every time you see it - it's like finding a new harmony in a great piece of music. During Game Two of the long-awaited Houston Astros-New York Yankees American League championship series, I switched during the interminable commercial breaks to TCM's (Turner Classic Movies) showing of Otto Preminger's classic 1944 film noir "Laura". 

 
I had seen the film at least a few times, but the dialogue never seemed fresher. I had long remembered early on when detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) is fiddling with a hand-held ball-bearing puzzle game called "Baseball".

 
This time I picked up something else. When supercilious Hollywood gossip columnist Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb) gets annoyed at detective Andrews for doodling with that game, Webb snaps: "Where do you get that? Something you confiscated in a raid on a kindergarten?"

"It calms me down," Andrews coolly replies.

 
I must admit, unlike Dana Andrews' detective Mark McPherson, baseball rarely calms me down. It stimulates me greatly, especially when the Orioles are playing. But in a post-season where I only really care that the Yankees' 10-year World Series-drought continues, I have enjoyed a lot of the games.

 
I am drawn in by the evident tension on the faces of the players.  This is not a time of year when "tomorrow is your best friend," a phrase I first heard from Bobby Valentine.  Every pitch is important in the post-season, and the best managers plan every game as if it is the seventh game of the World Series.

 
Obviously Dodgers skipper Dave Roberts hasn't learned that lesson.  He will return in 2020 and probably beyond because his LAD have won the NLWest division seven years in a row. But the Nats knocked out his Dodgers in the first round in a memorable climactic game in Los Angeles. 

 
Back-to-back homers by free agent-to-be Anthony Rendon and 20-year-old sensation Juan Soto tied it in the top of 8th off Clayton Kershaw, a great pitcher who is not used to being a reliever and is becoming a poster boy for October failure. 

 
Then in the top of the 10th veteran Howie Kendrick sent fair weather Dodger fans scurrying for the exits with a grand slam home run to dead center to cement a 7-3 victory.  I know it was a long game and LA fans always scurry to their cars at the first opportunity. It still struck me that the mass exit was extremely bush and insulting to the home team. 

Perhaps because I'm not emotionally involved with the Mets, I am happy for the Nats.  They exorcised their playoff ghosts by winning their first post-season series ever by beating LA.

 As I file this post, the Nats are one game away from their first World Series ever. 

By leading the Cardinals 3-0 in games, they are avenging their crushing loss to St. Louis seven years ago - when they couldn't hold a four-run lead in the 9th inning of the deciding game.

 
I'm someone who likes good starting pitching and Washington is loaded with great arms:  Former Cy Young award winner Max Scherzer, former number one overall draft pick Stephen Strasburg, the newly-signed free agent southpaw Patrick Corbin (who grew up a Yankee fan but wasn't offered enough $$$$ by Yankees), and the crafty veteran Anibal Sanchez.

 
If the Houston Astros can beat the Yankees in the ALCS - currently tied at one game apiece -  they also have big ticket starters in Cy Young award winner Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole (another onetime Yankee fan who chose to play at UCLA and later sign as free agent with Houston), and Zack Greinke. (Greinke suffers from a social anxiety disorder and it is painful to watch him do the required TV interviews with the press - I wish there were a way that he could respond in writing to questions from the probing scribes.) 

I'd rather take my chances with strong starting pitching and a couple of good relievers than using several pitchers just waiting for someone to not to have their best stuff that day. I am not a fan of "The Opener," a reliever who pitches an inning or two at the beginning and the rest of the bullpen completes the rest of the game.

The Yankees may do that in at least one of the upcoming games. They have not recently invested mega-bucks in starting pitchers.  It will certainly be interesting to see which philosophy wins out - the aces prepared for the long haul versus the ever-revolving door for relievers. 

It could be that the veteran Masahiro Tanaka and the young Luis Severino provide the innings that the Yanks will need to make their first World Series since 2009. Whatever, the old canard will still apply:  "Anything can happen in a short series."

 
Before I close, here's a tip of the cap to the Israeli Olympic baseball team that made the Tokyo 2020 competition by winning the European-African elimination tournament last month.  They beat out such amateur powers as Italy and the Netherlands.  

Danny Valencia, the former infielder with Twins-A's-Orioles, was perhaps the most recognizable member on the scrappy Israeli team.  I am proud to add that outfielder/DH Robb Paller, a mainstay on my alma mater Columbia Lions three-peat Ivy League champions of 2013-15, was also a key contributor to the victory. 

 
That's all for now but remember as always:  Take it easy but take it.