To Absent Friends - Phil Garner

 

Sad news arrived this past weekend when we learned of the death of former Pirates second baseman Phil "Scrap Iron" Garner at the age of 76.

It was in March of 1977 that Pirates GM Harding Peterson swung a nine player deal with the Charley Finley of the Oakland A's.  The Pirates sent six players of Oakland, including pitchers Dave Guisti and Doc Medich, and received three in return, the most significant of whom was second baseman Garner, and yet another piece was put in place that would lead to a World Series Championship for the Pirates in 1979. Garner played five seasons for the Bucs, made the All-Star team twice, and during that 1979 postseason Garner hit .417 against the Reds in the NLCS and .500 (12 for 24) against the Orioles in the World Series.  In noting Garner's passing on PTI yesterday, Michael Wilson noted that while Willie Stargell and Dave Parker were the stars of that Championship team, perhaps no one epitomized the grit and intensity in which that team played the game than Phil Garner, and in that regard his "Scrap Iron" nickname, bestowed upon him by Stargell, said it all.

 

Garner had a 16 year career as a player, and then went on to manage three different teams, the Brewers, Tigers, and Astros, for a total 15 seasons.  In 2005, he managed the Astros, then the National League, to their first ever pennant.  The following season, the All-Star Game was played in Pittsburgh, and Garner, as Manager of the NL team, named his 1979 Pirates manager Chuck Tanner as his Special Assistant in managing that squad.  It was class move by Garner in tribute to his old manager and the home town fans in Pittsburgh.

"Scrap Iron"

He was a regular at Pirate Alumni events

Garner becomes the twelfth member, including skipper Chuck Tanner, of that World Series team to leave us.  Fourteen members are still alive.  You can see the list at the end of this post.

RIP Phil Garner.

	1979
Pitchers	Jim Bibby
	Bert Blyleven
	John Candelaria
	Grant Jackson
	Bruce Kison
	Dave Roberts
	Don Robinson
	Enrique Romo
	Jim Rooker
	Kent Tekulve
Catchers	Steve Nicosia
	Ed Ott
	Manny Sanguillen
Infielders	Tim Foli
	Phil Garner
	Bill Madlock
	Willie Stargell
	Rennie Stennett
Outfielders	Matt Alexander
	Omar Moreno
	Mike Easler
	Lee Lacy
	John Milner
	Dave Parker
	Bill Robinson
Manager	Chuck Tanner
	Deceased	12
	Still With Us	14

"Four Weddings and a Funeral" (1994)

 

So we decided to watch a movie last night, and we wanted something light and funny, and we selected "Four Weddings and a Funeral", a 1994 British made RomCom that I had recorded off of TCM a few weeks ago.  Linda had never seen it.  I was certain that I had seen it, but as I watched, I realized that this was indeed a first time viewing for me.

We loved it.

The story revolves around a group of friends in Britain who seem to do nothing but attend weddings, while all the time wondering if true love will ever happen for them.  It stars Hugh Grant, a big star now, of course, but relatively unknown then, especially in America.  At the first of these weddings he meets an American woman, played by Andie MacDowell.  Complications, as they say, ensue.

After the third wedding takes place, we do get to that funeral of the title, which causes two of the main characters, Grant's being one of them, to question if love, true love, will ever find them.  During this funeral, one of the characters recites the W.H.Auden poem "Funeral Blues".  I was unfamiliar with this work, but found it quite moving. I have since looked it up and reread it a number of times already.  HERE is a link to it.

I confess to being a big fan of Hugh Grant.  I have always said that no actor, before or since, has ever been the equal of Cary Grant in terms of star power and pure movie star panache, but Hugh Grant comes the closest. "Four Weddings and a Funeral" made Grant a star, with his shaggy hair, goofy glasses, and trademark stumbling, bumbling style of speaking.  The movie is worth seeing for his performance alone.

MacDowell and Grant

Grant with co-star Kirstin Scott Thomas

Loved the hats she wore in this movie!

"Four Weddings and a Funeral was nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award in 1994, along with "Quiz Show", "Pulp Fiction", and "The Shawshank Redemption".  All of them lost out to that year's winner, "Forrest Gump".  "Forrest Gump" was a good movie, but I could make a case that each of the other four would have been a more deserving winner.

Three and One-Half Stars from The Grandstander.

Ramblin' Thoughts On A Saturday Afternoon

 Some Idle thoughts from an idle mind.....

The Pirates have started the 2026 season on a fairly good note.  They are 8-5. The staring pitching of Skenes, Keller, Mlodzinski, Ashcroft, and Chandler had been quite good, if not very good.  New additions Brandon Lowe and Ryan O'Hearn have delivered as hoped; new addition Marcel Ozuna, not so much.  

And 19 year old rookie phee-nom, best prospect in baseball Konnor Griffin has arrived!

After getting an RBI double in his first AB, Griffin has collected only two hits since and is hitting .143, in 21 AB's in seven games.  Way too early to worry, and one thing that Griffin has shown is that he can flash the leather.  It appears that the Pirates have got their short stop for the next decade or so.

Did I say "decade"?  The other big news concerning Griffin is that he and the Pirates signed a nine year, $140 million contract  extension that will tie Griffin to the Bucs through the 2034 season.  This, of course, is completely out of character for Bob Nutting's Pirates, and it certainly is a positive development, but let's not give Nutting the Dapper Dan Award because of this.  As the owner of a professional sports team that purports to be all in on winning and winning championships, this is doing merely what you are supposed to do, something that Nutting has NOT done in his tenure as Pirates CEO.  As comedian Chris Rock says, you don't get special credit for doing WHAT YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO DO.  

As usual, The Grandstander will wait until the thirty game mark of the season before giving a more thorough evaluation of this season's Buccos.

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We are now halfway through (now speaking in hushed, reverential tones) The Masters, A Tradition Unlike Any Other. I confess to having been glued to the early round coverage of the event on Prime and ESPN for the last two days.  What can I say?

While I have no gripe against Rory McIlroy, he's a likable enough guy, I hate to see what he has done over these last two days.  Through two rounds, he is at twelve under par and has a six shot lead over his nearest competitor.  He has threatened to remove any semblance of drama from this year's tournament.  Like I said, I have no axe to grind with McIlroy, but I hope that he comes back to the field a bit, or that three or four guys surge forward to make it interesting come the fourth round on Sunday.

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In honor of The Masters I will close with this musical interlude from well known golfer and sometime crooner Bing Crosby.  May all your shots be "straight down the middle".

Catching Up on Oscars Movies

Linda and I are spending time this week catching on some of the Oscar winning and nominated movies that we have missed.

This, of course, was the big one.  The winner of Best Picture, Director (Paul Thomas Anderson), Supporting Actor (Sean Penn), Adapted Screenplay (Anderson), and two others.  This movie opens in the early part of the 21st century, and we see that a group of radical and quite violent "revolutionaries", among them Leonardo DiCaprio, are using any means possible to protest.....capitalism? government immigration policy? does it really matter?  

Anyway, Leo is in love with one of his fellow revolutionaries and they have a baby.  The woman get captured and turns states' evidence and goes into witness protection, leaving Leo and the baby behind.  We then flash forward to the present day.  The baby is now 16 years old, and Leo is doing his best to raise her while he drowns himself in booze and drugs.  His days as a revolutionary are far behind him.

Then, his daughter gets kidnapped and Leo has to revert to his old ways and his old network of radical friends to help him rescue her.  There is  humor in this as DiCaprio tries to get back in the game but keeps forgetting passwords and other such things from his old gang, but this is no comedy. It is a straight up thriller of a movie as he tries to save his daughter. Thrown into this mix is Sean Penn as fascist-like Army Colonel Steven Lockjaw, who has a personal interest in finding the missing girl.

Oh, and the movie culminates in a car chase involving DiCaprio, Penn, and the daughter, Willa, played by Chase Infiniti, but let me tell you, this is unlike any car chase scene that you have ever seen in a movie.  Director Anderson has filmed what has become a movie cliche in a way that is new and different, and just as exciting as Steve McQueen in "Bullitt", Gene Hackman in "The French Connection", or any chase in any James Bond movie.  Trust me on that.

If I had to vote, I still think that I would cast my ballot for "Sinners" as Best Picture of the Year, but I won't argue that Academy's Choice of "One Battle After Another" for the big prize.

In addition to Penn, who certainly deserved that Oscar, this movie scored three other acting nominations:  Teyana Taylor for Best Supporting Actress as Perfidia, Leo's lover and the mother of Willa, but I think that Miss Infiniti, as Willa, probably deserved that nomination every bit as much if not more that Miss Taylor.  Benicio Del Toro was nominated as Best Supporting Actor and he was terrific as the guy who helped DiCaprio in his quest without ever losing his calm demeanor as all Hell was breaking loose around him.

Finally, Leonardo DiCaprio was nominated for Best Actor.  Michael B. Jordan was most worthy of that Oscar this year, but DiCaprio was terrific in this one, and he, too, would have been a deserving winner.  In fact, after watching this I had the thought "Has DiCaprio ever been less that terrific in anything that he has ever done?"  I don't think so, and to that end, I commented that he has become this generation's version of William Holden, who was also terrific in everything that he ever did.

Four Stars from The Grandstander.

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"Blue Moon" tells the story of famed lyricist Lorenz Hart, who teamed with songwriter Richard Rodgers to write and produce some of the greatest songs of the first half of the twentieth century, songs that populate the Great American Songbook.  The movie takes  place on one night in 1943, the night that "Oklahoma!" debuted on Broadway.  That show went on to redefine musical theater in America, and it was also the first show that Rodgers wrote with Oscar Hammerstein II, after his falling out with Hart years earlier.  As Hart bemoaned, "the biggest hit of Rodgers career will be the first show that he wrote without me."

The movie is essentially a filmed play.  It takes place in one setting, Sardi's Bar and Restaurant, and Ethan Hawke as Lorenz Hart carries the show.  He has probably 75% of all of the dialog in the movie.  Hawke was deservedly nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his role in this one.  Andrew Scott, who I liked so much in the 2024 Netflix series "Ripley", played Richard Rodgers, and Margaret Qualley played Elizabeth, a 20 year old girl with whom the 47 year old Hart was smitten.  A scene of a conversation in the Saudi's coat check room between Hawke and Qualley towards the end of the movie was positively terrific.

Andrew Scott, Margaret Qualley, Ethan Hawke

I knew who Lorenz Hart was, but I certainly did not know his story, so this movie was an education as well as an entertaining movie experience.  The movie is worth seeing on many levels, not the least of which the terrific music on Rodgers, Hart, Hammerstein, and others of that era that plays throughout the entire movie.

Three Stars from The Grandstander.