Lee Lowenfish

On Monday night September 9 in the bottom of the first inning with the Orioles trailing the Yankees 1-0 on an Alex Rodriguez home run off team ace Chris Tillman, Nick Markakis led off against CC Sabathia. It was a year and a day after Sabathia hit Markakis with a pitch in the first inning at Yankee Stadium, breaking his thumb and prematurely ending the Oriole right fielder’s season.

A lifelong Oriole Markakis had never come close to playing in a pennant race and Orioles manager Buck Showalter’s fierce consoling embrace of his veteran once the news was broken is etched in the memory of Oriole fans.

Redemption came to Markakis early on Monday night as he rocketed a ground-rule double to right center and ultimately scored the tying run on Adam Jones’ short sacrifice fly to center fielder Brett Gardner. In his second AB Markakis, no speedster, legged out an infield hit down the third base line, and in the fifth inning he stroked a single up the middle that gave the Orioles a 2-1 lead that they never lost in their 4-2 victory behind a great Tillman performance.

Markakis has had a perplexing season, recently going two months without an extra-base hit. One scout told me that he has power but doesn't like to use it. Yet he continues to play solid defense in right field on a team whose fielding prowess is virtually worth the price of admission. The less said about Oriole problems with RISP – Runners in Scoring Position – the better.

Today’s point, class, is the redemptive feature of baseball, one of its greatest attributes because it is built into the game. I believe it was Hall of Fame catcher Carlton Fisk who once said that he felt for the fans in pennant races because they can do absolutely nothing about the fate of their teams. They can root, they can agonize, they can change locations in front of the TV set (and also increasingly at the newer ballparks where wide concourses allow fans to roam almost at will). But only the players and sometimes the managers with their moves can shape the fate of a game.

So I suggest look for redemption in every game. It happened for Yankee left fielder Alfonso Soriano last weekend against the Bosox at Yankee Stadium. He was picked off second as the potential tying run in the bottom of the 9th inning one night as the Yanks lost in extra-innings to the powerful ever-resilient Red Sox. But then the following night on his very first AB Soriano hit a long two-run HR.

Redemption doesn’t always come immediately in baseball and sometimes it doesn’t come at all. But it is a feature that makes the game ever so interesting and compelling.

We are in double-digit September, less than three weeks to go in the season and every game and every AB is important. Enjoy the agony if you can. And always remember:
Take it easy but take it.  Read More 

It came as a shock to me last week when word came on Facebook that Marty Adler had died suddenly of a stroke at the age of 76. He was not a household name in the world of baseball fandom but he sure touched the lives of people who knew him.

A retired junior high school principal from Brooklyn, Marty Adler singlehandedly created a Brooklyn Dodger Hall of Fame to preserve the legacy of the team of his youth. His passion was the primary reason why IS 320 was named in 1977 after Jackie Robinson. The building bordered where the third base stands of Ebbets Field, destroyed by a wrecker’s ball in 1960, once stood.

I met Marty when I hosted “Seventh Inning Stretch” on WBAI- Pacifica Radio during the 1980s. He knew his Brooklyn Dodger history intimately as only a real fan could. He praised Bruce Edwards as an under-appreciated catcher on the 1947 Dodgers during Robinson’s rookie season. He was tireless in promoting Gil Hodges for Cooperstown, a cause still not completed. It was Marty who years later pointed out to me that the hustling Dodger in a photo in the Brooklyn Cyclones gallery was shortstop Charley Gelbert - (I had only known of Gelbert as a St. Louis Cardinal whose career was cut short by a hunting accident.)

For almost every year from the early 1980s through the mid-1990s Marty organized ceremonies at “Welcome Back to Brooklyn” Day in Prospect Park. Adler also planned many dinners to honor returning Dodger heroes and some of their rivals.

At one of these events Bobby Thomson even apologized for causing so much pain to Brooklynites. (I’m not one of those who believes in the overhyped story that Thomson knew what pitch was coming from Ralph Branca on 10/3/1951, but that is a discussion for another time.)

Marty was responsible for two of my favorite stories. The first must have happened in 1985 when my sciatica first flared up and I limped over to Brooklyn to interview the year’s honorees. Mickey Owen, the catcher known for missing third strike in the 1941 World Series, was one of the returning heroes. He was still quite an athlete, intent on becoming the oldest ever to run marathons. There I was decades his junior hobbling around with my tape recorder while he offered exercise advice on strengthening the muscles around my back.

The second story is about Marty pointing out to one of his young sons the housing project on the hallowed ground of Ebbets Field.
“The Dodgers once played there,” he said.
“Yeah, Dad?” came the reply. “What floor?”

There was a wonderful outpouring of emotion for Marty Adler at the packed funeral in Woodbury, Long Island on Tuesday August 13th. Never have I heard such laughter amidst the tears.

I hope the memory of a kind, honest, sports-loving, and sports-participating man is bringing consolation to his wife and childhood sweetheart Linda, their two sons and the grandchildren he doted on. The family suggests that donations in his name can be given to the Sloan-Kettering hospital in Manhattan.

THIS ‘N’ THAT ON THE BASEBALL SCENE
**How hot have the LA Dodgers been? Until they lost on Sunday Aug 18 and Monday Aug 19 they had not lost back-to-back games all summer. They seem to have a secure lead over the Arizona Diamondbacks.

**Superscout Don Welke, a special assistant these days for the Texas Rangers, observed recently that he used to think assessing prospects was a 75:25::talent:makeup proposition.
Now he feels it is more like 55:45. Not surprising given how publicized the world of baseball is these days. The need for having a stable makeup and a solid work ethic is greater than ever.

That’s all for now. As I feared the Orioles’ playoff chances are slipping away but there is still some faint hope among the true believers that they can start the kind of winning streak they really haven’t enjoyed all year. "Love is blind," I guess.

No words of wisdom on the A-Rod/A-Roid controversy. Except let the hearings play out and remember that the evidence against him was purchased from a source who will not come to arbitration or court with clean hands.

Remember even more that nothing can kill baseball – though many owners, players and pundits continually try to do it.

And most of all, always remember: Take it easy but take it!
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