Lee Lowenfish

Wherever you may be as you read this blog, I hope your spirits are good.  We'll

need every bit of inner resolve to meet the challenges ahead politically, socially, and as sports fans banned from attending any crowded events in near future.

Shortly before 1130AM Eastern Standard Time on Saturday November 8th, horn-honking jubilation broke out in NYC, Philadelphia, Chicago and other blue enclaves, mainly urban, around the country.   

I was seated at my desk where I am typing right now.  Don't have a window facing the street which accounts for the lovely quiet isolation of this apartment. 

I received a call from my significant other dear Maria with the good news.

 
I found out later that just a few blocks from me - above Lenny's Bagel shop

on the northwest corner of 98th Street and Broadway - musical comedy star Brian Stokes-Mitchell raised his window and started to serenade the crowd

with "America the Beautiful" and maybe two other numbers. 

Of course, we must endure Trump's Presidency until January 20th.  His better-than-expected electoral showing has emboldened his refusal to concede.  So as broadcaster Bob Murphy advised in late innings of a tight Mets game, "Fasten your seat belts."  

Speaking of the Mets, new owner Steve Cohen "won" his press conference on Tuesday the 11th with a pledge to make the team he always has rooted for, "iconic". That means constant contention and a World Series title within 3 to 5 years or else he'll be very "disappointed."   

To his credit Cohen has already pledged to hire back at full salary Mets employees who were furloughed or cut back during the early stages of the pandemic. 

 
New president Sandy Anderson, back for a second tour as a top executive in Queens, added to the good will by saying it was "highly likely" that rookie manager Luis Rojas will return as skipper in 2021. 

I think it was Alderson who promised a new "collaborative culture" for the Mets.

With no game results until next April - at the earliest given the accelerating pandemic - I call this the silly season of words and promises that always sound nice but can they be believed?

 

I cross fingers that Cohen will not be like most owners who enter baseball with humility saying they will leave it to experts who know the business.  Six months later though they know everything.  See under Steinbrenner, George.  

 

I just hope there is a semblance of a regular season on all levels.  Too

early to tell with the second wave of the virus sweeping into NYC and almost every state of the union.  

 
I continue to find solace in the old black and white movies on TCM - Turner Classic Movies.  Saw one I never heard of last week - "The Sport Parade" (1932)

embarrassingly once known as "Free, White, and Twenty-One."

 

Rising star producer David Selznick received a major credit for this film. It is a

curiosity not a great work but has some merit. 

 
Underrated Joel McCrea plays a star Dartmouth football end who instead of going into journalism with his quarterback (William Gargan) turns to pro football.  He 

flops at it and does turn to journalism for a while. 

 
Then he is coaxed by his blustery agent (Walter Catlett) into becoming a pro wrestler.  Of course since this is Hollywood, there is a love triangle involved, Marian Marsh being the wooed young woman. 

 
An amusing feature of the film are three short sports announcing segments delivered by the always wry and hilarious Robert Benchley. 

 
I couldn't find many upcoming sports-themed films on TCM except that "Woman of the Year" (1942) returns on Sun afternoon Nov 22 at 1:45p EST. 

 

An opening scene with sportswriter Spencer Tracy in the press box sets the stage nicely for the conflict between Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, playing an internationally-famous journalist, a role patterned after Dorothy Thompson.

 

"Woman of the Year" was the first Tracy-Hepburn film.  It also features in a small role Minor Watson as Hepburn's father.  Eight years later Watson did a creditable job as Branch Rickey in "The Jackie Robinson Story".

 
Other films of great value include (all times EST):

Sat Nov 14 2p "In A Lonely Place" (1950) perhaps best film about a writer if a very flawed one starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame, Nicholas Ray dir.   

 

Later on Nov 14 at 8p  "Ball of Fire" (1942) Gary Cooper as staid linguist falls for

Barbara Stanwyck with Dana Andrews as her other guy. 

 
Midnight - repeated Sun at 10A - Noir Alley presents "Fear" (1946) a 54-minute take on "Crime and Punishment" - 1946 considered by many best year ever for movies in USA. 

 
M Nov 16 8p "Diary of Anne Frank" (1959) - part of Shelley Winters Mondays in Nov.

11:15p "Odds Against Tomorrow" (1959) best jazz-themed film, set in NYC.

 
Tu Nov 17 back-to-back-to-back in afternoon three 40s classics

1p "Maltese Falcon" 1941,  3p "The Big Sleep", 5p "Treasure of Sierra Madre"

Home runs and championships are not the only things that can be back-to-back!

Wed Nov 18 8p "Body and Soul" 1947 - one of the great boxing movies with

John Garfield and the gorgeous talented Lilli Palmer

Th Nov 19 two American films about racial issues from the late 1940s that I've never seen:

8p "Lost Boundaries"

10p "Home of the Brave"  

F Nov 20 8p Elia Kazan's circus movie "Man On A Tightrope" (1953) with Gloria Grahame and Terry Moore (the actress not the Cardinals outfielder)

 
Sa Nov 21 8p "2001" this week's Essential 

Midnight/repeated at 10A Sun - "Kiss Me Deadly" 1955 - Robert Aldrich directs this Mickey Spillane story with Albert Dekker/Juano Hernandez (so unforgivably forgotten)/Paul Stewart

 

Later on Nov 22p

1:45p "Woman of the Year"

8p Woody Allen's "Bananas"  followed by 945p Marx Brothers' "Duck Soup" 1933 

 

More than ever, Take it easy but take it!"

The end of a baseball season, even one as short as this one, always brings melancholy. With Daylight Saving Time ending at Sun at 2AM, the days will grow short, too. For a half-filled-glass kinda guy, it will be suck-it-up, hope-for-better-days time.  

 

There is no doubt that the LA Dodgers deserved to win the Series. Smooth shortstop Corey Seager was a worthy MVP for his offensive production and fine defense.  

 

LA hit and pitched more consistently than the Rays whose lack of offense except for the rookie Randy Azorarena was disappointing if not appalling. Randy was also handled fairly easily with men on base.

 

For a season to end with shortstop Willy Adames taking the last two strikes in a three-pitch punchout from the nearly-flawless Julio Urias was tough to handle.  Highly touted prospect Wander Franco may be replacing Adames in 2021. I would have liked Willy to have gone down swinging. 

 

Or manager Kevin Cash use a pinch-hitter for him.  It was Cash's first World Series as a skipper and he didn't seem to manage with urgency. He could have pinch-hit more often for great defender/weak-hitting catcher Mike Zunino. 

 

I was glad Zunino got his first World Series hit in his last AB in the Series.  And gotta love a guy whose parents were both catchers - they met when father Greg, now a Cincinnati scout, was playing in Italy and his mother Paola was playing for the Italian national softball team.

 

Props to Mike for thanking his wife when interviewed after a big game earlier in the playoffs. But backup Michael Perez might have been used more.  I know during the regular season every time he came up against the Orioles he seemed to deliver a big hit.

 

The classic game was the fourth one, a back and forth affair that ended on a game-tying single by reserve Brett Phillips and two rare errors by Chris Taylor bobbling a single in center field and Will Smith muffing a relay throw not realizing that Arozarena had fallen down between third and home.

 

The real turning point int he Series came in game 5 when the Dodgers immediately scored two runs in the top of the first to wrest whatever momentum the Rays might have had from the previous night's victory.  

 

The old cliche came true again:  "Momentum in baseball is the next game's starting pitcher."

Tyler Glasnost simply did not rise to the occasion in game 5.  After Manuel Margot was caught stealing home to end the bottom of the 4th after the Rays scored two runs, it was up to Glasnow to pitch a shutdown top of 5th.

 

He couldn't do it. He gave up a solo home run to Max Muncy to give LA breathing room.

Props to the Dodgers for scoring so many runs with two outs. More than I've ever seen. 

 

Where Kevin Cash is really being roasted is for yanking Blake Snell in the final game after the 2018 Cy Young-winner had thrown only 73 pitches with nine strikeouts in 5 1/3 superb innings.

 

Snell deserved to face Mookie Betts for a third time despite the infuriating "advanced metric" that said it is a no-no. Even Betts said after the game he was glad Snell was gone.

 

Somewhere in this land and in baseball-loving nations around the world, here's a hope that young pitchers are growing up dreaming of pitching in big games and embracing the challenge of going through an order three times or even more.  It is called pitching.

 

Lord knows what kind of season and what kind of country we face in the weeks and months ahead.  As a Wisconsin Badger fan, I first suffered the loss of a basketball season where Greg Gard's unheralded squad won the last eight games of the season and a share of Big Ten title when the pandemic hit.

 

Football got off to a flying start last Friday with Grahem Mertz's nearly-perfect five touchdown game against Illinois.  And then he tested positive for covid-19 as did his backup QB and coach Paul Chryst and several other players and staff.  The game against Nebraska has been canceled with no makeup planned and Mertz will be out for at least two more games.

 

I haven't even mentioned that the Dodgers' leader and big run-producer Justin Turner tested positive, a result known in the 2nd inning of the last game.  But he wasn't removed until the 8th inning. He was then allowed, unmasked, to join the post-game celebration.

 

In a country where our POTUS is behaving similarly, I worry about the validity of polls showing his likely defeat.  We've been through that before. "We're all in this together" doesn't apply for at least 40% of the country and probably a majority of athletes. 

 

So let me return to my half-filled-glass state and hope for the best in our country and also for some kind of satisfying regular season in 2021.  With also fewer minor league teams axed. Alas, there is no indication that any reasonable solution is at hand.

 

Nevertheless, always remember:  Take it easy but take it!