The Grandstander

Two Initial Very Quick March Madness Thoughts

2012-03-11T19:02:00.002-04:00

Amazing that CBS can spend 60 minutes (as opposed to "60 Minutes", which follows) to the NCAA Selection Sunday show. This is a task that could have easily been accomplished in about three minutes of air time. Such is the state of the power of gambling, i.e., the Bracket Pools that will tie up corporate America for much of the next business week.

Don't you really miss Billy Packer on this show? I can hear him now bitching about the fact that the Big East has 9 teams in the field while the ACC has a mere 5 teams.

Some Thoughts on Journalism

2012-03-09T15:01:00.005-05:00

A couple of random comments on journalism in the year 2012.

I have been reading Sports Illustrated for at least the last 40 years or so, and have been a subscriber, off and on, for that long as well. I am starting to wonder if the magazine is still relevant in this Internet age. Always a news magazine, SI has fallen into a situation where it needs to reinvent itself because, as anyone with a home computer and an Internet connection knows, the "news" arrives instantaneously these days. This week's cover story offers the perfect case in point. It is Peter King's story on the New Orleans Saints and their payment of bounties for hits that injured and took out opposing players. The story broke last Friday, March 2. King himself summarized his own story on SI.com in his Monday Morning Quarterback column. It had been discussed endlessly on all of the sports TV shows. By the time the magazine arrived in the mail on Thursday, March 8, it was old news. Why bother reading it?

I always said that it was worth subscribing to SI for the the half dozen times or so each year when the lengthy feature story that they always feature at the end of the magazine would just be so good, it would almost knock you out. The need for a "wow factor" I these stories becomes even more important to SI in an age when news reaches the audience so quickly.

On another journalistic front, I spent close to two hours watching Channel 2's coverage of the Western Psych shootings yesterday afternoon, and it was not something that would make Edward R. Murrow proud. The loathsome Marty Griffith was the worst offender. He seemed to be most upset that there were "only" two people killed and "only" five others injured in the shootings. It seemed liked Marty (whose career highlight was a story that was teased so sensationally by KDKA that it caused a local minister to commit suicide a few years back) was disappointed that the shooting spree at Western Psych didn't surpass the death toll of the Virginia Tech shootings a few years back. Then of course we had other KDKA reporters badgering people who might have been witnesses and trying to put words into their mouths when they were clearly upset and did not want to talk about what they had seen inside the building. Finally there was Susan Koeppen, recovering from open heart surgery three days before, calling in on her cell phone from her hospital room at Presby. "Always a reporter, that Susan," said Stacey Smith and Kim Gabriel at the anchor desk.

I don't expect any Pulitzers to be handed down to KDKA after this performance.

DVR Alert for Thursday: "The Big Sleep"

2012-03-06T13:18:00.003-05:00

Fire up your DVR's (or take a day off work) for this coming Thursday, March 8 at 11:00 AM (Eastern). Turner Classic Movies will be showing "The Big Sleep" (1946) directed by Howard Hawks and starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. This is based on the Raymond Chandler novel with Bogey playing private eye Phillip Marlowe.

Don't wrack your brain trying to figure out who did what to whom in this one. When Hawks and the screenwriters consulted with Chandler as they were making this movie, even he, Chandler, couldn't unravel all twists in the storyline. The real fun is in the journey here with the colorful characters and rich dialog as this one plays out.

A classic and a really fun movie to watch.

On the DH, Braun, Burnett, and a Legend's Birthday

2012-03-06T10:17:00.004-05:00

Some baseball thoughts, two weeks into Spring Training....

An article appeared in Sports Illustrated a few weeks back that I meant to comment upon, but didn't at the time. The gist of the article was that it was time - long past time, actually - for baseball on the Major League level to standardize its rules and put the Designated Hitter rule in place in the National League. Oh, I can hear all the purists wailing and gnashing their teeth out there, but consider the ludicrousness of having two sets of rules in place, that puts teams at serious disadvantages, not only during interleague play (which will be come more pervasive come 2013), but during the game's most important event, the World Series. It is beyond ridiculous.

Also, consider the the two prime free agents this past winter, Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder, were lost the the NL, and it was not insignificant that their new AL teams knew that they would be able to employ these players as DH's during the back end years of their contracts.

Not to mention that 2012 will be the FORTIETH season since the DH was adopted by the American League. Like it or not, this is no longer a fly-by-night experiment. It ain't going away, so standardize the rules for crying out loud.

Ryan Braun. The guy got off on a technicality (he himself never once said the the test that showed the amazingly high volume of testosterone in his sample was wrong), and that is far different from being "innocent" or even "not guilty", and he then proceeds to trash the reputation of the guy who conducted the test and handled his samples. Another reason to not like Ryan Braun.

As might be expected, Braun is starting to hear the taunts from the opposing fans. Ironically, they came in a game against the Giants from those same fans who cheered and supported Barry Bonds for all those years.

The A.J. Burnett Affair. One of the points that the Pirates trumpeted upon acquiring Burnett was that fact that he was durable, was never hurt, would take the ball every fifth day, and would give the team 200+ innings. Then the guy fractures his eye socket on the first day of training in a bunting drill. You said what I said, right? This stuff can ONLY happen to the Pirates.

To their credit, the Pirates themselves, whatever they might be thinking privately, are not taking the woe-is-us attitude over Burnett's injury, which is good. The line is that he will be back come late May/early June, and that they will go with the guys they have until then. The worst thing the Pirates could have done was say "we're really screwed" because of the Burnett injury. What kind of message would that have sent?

And to expand upon what I said at the beginning of this post, if the National League used a DH, like every other league in professional and amateur baseball, would Burnett have even been in the position to have received such an injury?

One close friend is predicting that Starling Marte will be the sleeper of this year's Pirate training camp. I see that he did go 3-for-3 in last night's Grapefruit game.

Nice to see MLB Network televising so many spring training games. Not that you want to glue yourself to the tube to watch the Mariners and Brewers B-squaders battle it out, but it is nice to catch a couple of innings of a ballgame while the temps are in the teens and there is snow on your front lawn here in Pittsburgh.

Finally, today we observe what would have been the 71st birthday of one of the Pirates All-Time Greats, Willie Stargell. Happy Birthday, Cap'n Willie!!

A Great Day for the Pirates...and Their Fans!

2012-03-05T10:09:00.005-05:00

Great news from Bradenton this morning with the news that the Pirates and Andrew McCutchen have agreed to a big money ($51.5 million), long term (through 2018) contract. After years of hearing the Nutting/Coonelly/Huntington Troika talk about building and waiting and committing, only to see good players get dealt while we wait for high draft picks to come through the system, today we see, finally, the team commit to one of those guys, McCutchen, who can be the centerpiece of a winning team. After seeing other teams sign deals with young guys like Justin Upton, Jay Bruce, and Ryan Zimmerman, it is a great feeling to see the Pirates sign a similar deal with one of THEIR young stars.

It has been said since he came to the team that Cutch could be the "Face of the Franchise" but who among the fan base, conditioned after so many years of losing and ineptitude, were willing to make the emotional commitment to McCutchen because the thought was always in your mind that the day would come when the Bucs dumped McCutchen some future July 31 for "prospects."

It has also been pointed out that one other thing that this signing will do is that it will send a message to other teams, players, and free agents that the Pirates are serious about winning.

Finally, a great bit of positive news from the Pirates.

OK, now let's see what they can get done with Neil Walker!

Movie Review: "My Week With Marilyn"

2012-03-02T10:51:00.005-05:00

If you are looking for a good movie to see, try "My Week With Marilyn" starring Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branaugh. Of course, you will have to look hard because this movie, for which Williams received an Academy Award Best Actress nomination, is playing on exactly ONE screen here in Pittsburgh, the Galleria in the Great State of Mt. Lebanon.

In looking for something to do on Leap Day, Marilyn and I made that long, long trek out to Mt. Lebo - had to cross two rivers to do it! - and went to see this flick with only mild expectations. We found it to be really good movie. My wife proclaimed that she "loved it." Terrific performances by Williams as Marilyn Monroe and Branaugh as Laurence Olivier, and a very fascinating true story of one brief interlude in the life of one of Hollywood's most famous movie stars.

There was a great line in there when one character was comparing Monroe to Olivier. "He's a great actor who wants to be a movie star, and you are a movie star who wants to be a great actress."

No great revelation to anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of Monroe's life, but hers is a very sad story.

Anyway, put this on on your "to watch" list.

Ben Howland in the News

2012-03-02T10:22:00.004-05:00

I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of this week's Sports Illustrated so I can read all about the mess that Ben Howland has found himself in out there in Westwood. Seems that Coach Ben has been turning a blind eye to bad behaviour amongst his Bruins hoopsters, and that a renegade program is now running amok at UCLA. Or, at least, that is what the news reports would have you believe. As I said, I will wait to read the SI story before forming a final opinion.

The news, however, prompted me to recall my final memory of Ben during his days at Pitt. During that final season, the rumors were circulating that UCLA was wooing Ben and that he would be leaving Pitt, despite having recently signed a long term extension with the Panthers. I recall that he was interviewed on Mike & Mike in the Morning and being asked about these reports. Ben then stated that he wasn't thinking about UCLA, that he had every intention of fulfilling his commitment with Pitt. I recall a friend at work commenting to me that, if he "ends up going to UCLA after what he said to Mike & Mike this morning, then he's nothing more than a lying s.o.b.", or words to that effect.

And we all know what happened. Soon thereafter, Ben was being introduced at Pauley Pavillion as the new UCLA coach, and the name of John Wooden was being tearfully invoked. This doesn't make him exactly the same as Todd Graham, but it doesn't make him all that much different, either.

It seems to me that Howland is remembered in the pantheon of Pittsburgh sports coaches with a higher degree of reverence than what his actual accomplishments merit. I know that others may disagree, but, as I said, just my opinion. Perhaps Ben's greatest accomplishment was bringing Jamie Dixon to Pitt.

Farewell Hines Ward, the Greatest Steeler WR of 'em All

2012-02-29T19:26:00.004-05:00

It comes as no surprise, but the Steelers made official what everyone has pretty much guessed would happen - Hines Ward will be released by the team.

It is a hard thing to watch when an elite professional athlete comes to the end of the line, as was certainly the case with Ward this past season. I will not be critical of Ward for wanting to keep trying to play, nor will I be critical if he signs with another team, even if it is with a traditional rival such as Baltimore, New England, Oakland, or Cleveland. If Hines wants to keep at it, who are we to say that he shouldn't be able to do so. Pro sports are a cruel industry: the game itself will let a player know when time is up. Maybe the Steelers are wrong and are giving up too early on Ward, but everyone will know very soon once training camps begin next summer.

I am old enough to have seen Lynn Swann and John Stallworth play their entire careers, and I will say this about Hines Ward - he is the greatest wide receiver in Steelers history.

Franco Harris ended his career with one shortened season as a Seattle Seahawk, but he is forever remembered as a Pittsburgh Steeler. The same will be the case with Hines Ward.

Good luck, Hines, and thanks for everything.

To Absent Friends - Davy Jones

2012-02-29T19:15:00.003-05:00

Very saddened to hear for the death today of Davy Jones at the age of 66. The Monkees were a purely made for TV group that NBC created in hopes of cashing in on the tails of the Beatles and other British pop groups of the mid-sixties. It was a hunch that paid off big time. The Monkees, both the TV show and the group itself hit it big, and the band, which started out as four actors playing the role of a rock band, became a huge act during my high school years. The band even cashed in on the nostalgia craze in the late 80's by touring once again.

Jones became the heart throb of the group, but he also brought some serious acting and musical talent to the part as well. While starring as the Artful Dodger in the Broadway musical "Oliver" in 1964, he appeared with the cast of the show and performed a number from it on the Ed Sullivan Show on the very night that The Beatles made their American TV debut in February, 1964.

RIP Davy Jones.

Some Random Thoughts on a Tuesday Morning...

2012-02-28T10:43:00.005-05:00

I am happy to say that I did not waste one single minute of my life by watching any of the NFL Scouting Combine.

This is the same combine that over the years led NFL teams to make Jeff George and JaMarcus Russell overall #1 draft picks, and made teams agonize over whether Ryan Leaf might be a better pick as overall #1 than Peyton Manning.

Unlike many, I have always been a fan of Bob Smizik, but his criticism of Frank Coonelly, even before the DUI citation, goes way beyond normal criticism and seems to border on the personal. It's one thing to stick a knife in a guy's back, but it's quite another to to twist the knife while throwing salt on the wound.

I know that Angelina Jolie is considered by many to be the most beautiful and sexiest woman in the movies today, but she does nothing for me.

The newest Jonathan Kellerman novel, "Victims", featuring Alex Delaware, was released today. Guess what I'm going to be doing when I sign off of here this morning?

I watched a movie last night called "A Face in the Crowd" from 1957, directed by Elia Kazan, and starring Andy Griffith and Patricia Neal. Good movie. All about the power of the media and it's cultural and political influence. Still very timely, and, from the viewpoint of 2012, this was one way ahead of its time. Griffith was really good in this dramatic role, but don't expect the folksy, friendly Andy of Mayberry if you watch this. Andy, playing a guy named Lonesome Rhodes, was not a very likable guy in this one. As Robert Osbourne observed on TCM, he never played another character like this again.

Speaking of movies, it is "Godfather 40th Anniversary Week" on American Movie Classics. As one always does, I got hooked watching for about a half hour last night (saw Jack Woltz wake up with the horse, saw Luca get sent to sleep with the fishes, and heard "leave the gun, take the canollis"), but then shut it off. Since AMC edits for language and throws in lots of commercial breaks, you are better off going to your DVD collection to watch these classics.

I am late to the party, I know, but I spent a good part of last week watching Season One of the HBO series Boardwalk Empire on DVD. Great series. I'm not yet ready to put it up with The Sopranos, but still a very good show. Can't wait for the DVD release of Season Two. At the risk of sounding like a real geek, I absolutely love the costumes and the period recreation of 1920 Atlantic City. Really good stuff.

Did you catch any of the Accenture Match Play over the past weekend? I was happy to see American Hunter Mahan win this one. Mahan now moves into the top echelon, if he wasn't already there, of young American pro golfers, and here's one thing to really like about him - he plays fast. When it's his turn to hit, he already has the club in his hand, he walks up to the ball, and he hits it! Very refreshing.

The 87th Precinct

2012-02-28T10:31:00.002-05:00

Looking for something to read the other day, I went to the bookshelf and pulled out a copy of "Cop Hater" by Ed McBain. This book was written in 1956 by novelist Evan Hunter using the McBain nom de plume. This book would be the first in a series of over 50 87th Precinct novels that McBain wrote until his death in 2005. McBain and his 87th Precinct has been given credit as the genesis of what we now call the "police proceedural" genre of mystery fiction, and while Steven Bocchco will never admit it, the TV series "Hill Street Blues" owes an enormous debt to the characters, tone, and plotting of the 87th Precinct stories.

I believe that I have read all of these books over the years. They are terrific reading, and can be enjoyed in re-readings, as I proved this past weekend, again and again. Pick up a copy of any 87th Precinct novel. You will quickly get to know the Detectives Steve Carella, Bert Kling, Meyer Meyer and the others, and you will be hooked. Guaranteed!

The Oscars for 2011

2012-02-27T10:07:00.003-05:00

Some thoughts on last night's Oscar Awards and the telecast....

I have written of my thoughts on "The Artist" many times, so I won't rehash them again. I can't say that it is an undeserving winner, but I do not think that, ten years from now, we will be looking back on it and saying "Man, that really is a GREAT movie."

As for Best Actor Jean Dujardin, while my preference was George Clooney of "The Descendants", I can't argue that Dujardin didn't deserve the Oscar.

On the other hand, I am betting that American movie audiences will see a passel of great performances by Clooney in the future before we ever see another one from Dujardin.

I have yet to see "The Iron Lady", but I am delighted that Meryl Streep finally picked up her third Oscar.

Speaking of three Acting Oscars, Katherine Hepburn holds the record with four, and Streep now joins three other actors with three. They are Jack Nicholson, Ingrid Bergman, and Walter Brennan. Walter Brennan????? As they said on Sesame Street, which one doesn't belong?

Leading up to the Academy Awards, Octavia Spencer won every award for her role in "The Help." Nobody, and I mean nobody, predicted anyone else as winner of the Best Supporting Actress honor. Yet, when her name is called, she is tearful and shocked to the point of being almost unable to speak. THAT, my friends, is acting.

Then there was Christopher Plummer's speech. Very classy.

I also liked that Director Michel Hazanavicius paid tribute to Billy Wilder in his acceptance speech.

Regular readers will also not be surprised to know that I am very happy that Woody Allen won for Best Original Screenplay for the wonderful "Midnight in Paris." True to form, The Woodman was not in attendance to accept his Oscar.

As for the telecast itself, I thought it was great. I thought that Billy Crystal was terrific as the host, and I thought the whole thing moved very quickly even though it lasted a shade over three hours, or about an hour shorter than you average Yankees-Red Sox game.

I would go so far to say that Crystal should host every year, but having a year with some stiff like James Franco hosting serves the purpose of making you appreciate Crystal as Host all the more.

Loved the film of the "Test Audience" for "The Wizard of Oz" as performed by the Christopher Guest repertory company. How can you not love Fred Willard? Makes me want to go rent "Best In Show" immediately.

Did you read Rob Owen's rather dyspeptic review of the telecast in this morning's Post-Gazette? Sounded like he is trying to edge out Ron Cook as the Grouchiest Guy at the PG. Maybe a career as a TV critic will do that to a person.

Best Gown of the Night? Jennifer Lopez, hands down!

I also loved the Cirque d'Soliel performance.

In terms of sheer numbers, the big winner was "Hugo" with five Oscars, all in technical categories. I have no problem with that, and to hear the winners in their acceptances, it is obvious that Martin Scorsese must be a true genius and a great guy for whom to work.

Speaking of technical achievement, why no nominations for "A Very Harold and Kumar 3-D Christmas"?

I most definitely did NOT miss the performances of all the nominated Original Songs.

Come to think of it, since there were only two such songs nominated, should this even be a relevant award anymore?

I thought that the commercials on the telecast were great, better, as a whole, than the Super Bowl. Ellen DeGeneris in those commercials for JC Penney was terrific.

The Grandstander went 7-for-8 in his Oscar predictions, missing only on Streep's Best Actress win. Not as good as BigPoppy at the Tonys, but not bad.

Of the nominated and winning movies, I still need to see "Iron Lady" and "War Horse", although I am thinking that the latter viewing will probably come when it is released on DVD.

And if you still haven't seen them, do make it a point to see "The Artist" and "The Descendants." Both really good, if not great, movies. And "The Ides of March." As stated in previous posts, that may have been a better movie that any of them, in my humble opinion.

And the Oscar Goes to....

2012-02-25T19:59:00.004-05:00

The Grandstander's Broadway Correspondent asked recently if I was planning on posting my own Oscar predictions. Well, such predictions would be, at best, uninformed since I have not seen all of the nominated movies. However, after seeing a few of them, and reading informed opinions of knowledgeable critics, and seeing the tea leaves that have settled after the Golden Globes and SAG awards, I will offer the following:

Best Picture - "The Artist." My personal vote would go to "The Descendants" of those pictures that have been nominated, but I would also add another editorial comment that "Ides of March" was a better movie than either of them.

Best Actor - Jean Desjardin, The Artist. Again, I'd vote for George Clooney, but I'm guessing that the Academy will go for the foreign actor over a popular and commercial American actor. It will make them feel like they are putting "art" over mere commercial success (remember Roberto Begnini a few years ago?).

Best Actress - Viola Davis, The Help. Meryl Streep, and also ran, again.

Best Supporting Actor - Christopher Plummer

Best Supporting Actress - Octavia Spencer, The Help

Best Director - Michael Hazenavicous, The Artist

Best Original Screenplay - Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris. I'm really pulling for this one!

Best Adapted Screenplay - The guys who wrote The Descendants.

There you go. Eight predictions. No chance that I will be as perspicacious as our Man who predicts the Tonys for us each year, but what the hell.

Enjoy the show on Sunday night!

"Oh, Baby, I Love It"

2012-02-25T19:02:00.003-05:00

If you have attended meetings of the Pittsburgh SABR Chapter, you may be aware that it has become kind of a standing joke that a book that ALWAYS seems to be on the book exchange table is "Oh, Baby, I Love It" by that renowned lightning rod for criticism, Tim McCarver. Greg Crouse of the Cleveland Chapter and I have exchanged this book at least three different times over the years.

Well, after picking this book up, again, at the Cleveland meeting last month, I decided that I would actually read the thing. The book was written in 1987 while McCarver was a broadcaster with the Mets (and the Mets were coming off a World Series win), so it is now, 25 years later, an historical period piece, but it isn't all that bad. If nothing else, you can read great stories about Bob Gibson, one of my own all-time favorites, and Steve Carlton. He also raves about Dwight Gooden, at that point a three year major leaguer, and mentions how it appeared that Doc was headed towards being one of the all-time greats. Tim obviously had no crystal ball regarding the road that Gooden was destined to head down.

The last 55 pages of the book are devoted to the Mets championship season of 1986, and I admit that I pretty much skimmed over that section, but I found it interesting that he devoted slightly less than one full page to the well remembered Game Six, and the famous Mookie Wilson to Bill Buckner ground ball gets two sentences. Now, of course, the legions of McCarver Haters out there will no doubt rake him over the coals for not giving this play pages and pages of flowery George Will-type prose, but keep in mind that this was written in the months just after that game was played. I find it interesting how the prism of history may have elevated the memory of this game to a level that a contemporary account did not foresee.

I also found it interesting, as I always do in such books, when McCarver talks about how a player reacts and feels when his career is over. Tim had prepared himself for a post-playing career, but so many players do not. Kind of sad, really.

As baseball books go, this one will never make you forget "Eight Men Out", "The Glory of Their Times", or "Ball Four", but you could do worse in the baseball literary field. "Oh, Baby, I Love It" will be on the Book Exchange Table at our SABR meeting on April 28. Drop by and it's yours for the taking!

Frank Coonelly

2012-02-24T15:19:00.003-05:00

By now, I am all sure that you are aware of the news of Frank Coonelly and his DUI citation from December that broke yesterday.

I come at this from an admittedly biased viewpoint, because I consider Frank a personal friend. that said, I make no excuses, none, for what he did. Driving while impaired is absolutely one of the worst things that a person can do, and it is most fortunate that no one was injured or worse when this event occurred. Frank certainly owned up to what he did, apologized, and I am sure that he will bear whatever punishment the justice system metes out to him.

I just want to say that I consider myself fortunate to know Frank, and I know that he is a good and decent person. One bad decision and a single aberration doesn't change who a person is, not in my mind, anyway.

I find it interesting that the news broke on the same day that, buried deep on page 5 or 6 of the sports pages, was the news of Hines Ward's plea deal on his DUI, which Pittsburgh seemed to conveniently "forget" all football season, of last summer. I am bothered by the fact that in the last 24 hours I have read and heard more righteous indignation from people over Coonelly's transgression that was heard for the last six months over Ward's.

Not that there is a double standard where the Steelers are concerned, of course.

Luck Be A Lady Tonight (or This Afternoon, Anyway)

2012-02-21T16:15:00.005-05:00

After a nine month absence, Marilyn and I enjoyed a moderately successful day at the Rivers Casino this afternoon.

I sat at a $10 black jack table and purchased $60 worth of chips. Within 15 minutes, I had $200 in chips, which I then cashed out. I put the two $100 chips in my pocket and bought $40 more of chips (a hundred bucks being my usual stake when we go to a casino). It only took about a half dozen deals or so before all of those chips were gone, so I walked away. I then preceded to lose about $15 playing slot machines. Have I ever mentioned how I really dislike slot machines?

Another way of looking at my day is that I more than made up for the three bucks I lost at my home poker game last week!

Marilyn came close to breaking even while playing slots, which means she probably lost less than ten bucks overall.

Pretty good way to celebrate Mardi Gras, we figured.

"Singin' in the Rain" vs. "The Artist"

2012-02-20T14:56:00.007-05:00

This coming Sunday, the Motion Picture Academy Awards for 2011 will be presented, and among the nominated films expected to make a big haul, if not THE big haul (Picture, Actor, Director) is "The Artist." Now, regular readers know that I saw "The Artist" a few weeks back, and that I liked it. I do not think it is the Best Picture of the year. I do think that while it is a good movie, it is being overpraised due to the fact that it is so different (silent, black & white, and foreign). In many ways it is someone saying "Look, how clever we are. We made a silent movie in 2011", and Hollywood, in a bit of self-indulgence, is breaking its arm patting itself on the back over the whole thing.

By a curious bit of coincidence, on Sunday afternoon, viewers of Turner Classic Movies will have the chance to watch an undisputed classic, Stanley Donen's and Gene Kelly's 1952 "Singin' in the Rain." This is a movie that always ranks in the Top Ten or Top Twenty of all-time great movies whenever such lists are complied. If you don't know the movie, it stars Gene Kelly, Donald O'Conner, a 20 year old Debbie Reynolds, and, in an hilarious supporting role, Jean Hagen, and the story is very much the same story as "The Artist" tells.

Kelly and Hagen are two silent movie stars of the highest rank, famous for their starring opposite each other as movie lovers in countless films. Trouble is, talking pictures are about to make their debut, and while Kelly should do OK in talkies, Hagen has a voice that makes fingernails on a blackboard seem soothing. How do they get around this? Where and how does Reynolds fit in? Will Kelly get the girl in the end? (Silly question.) And some all-time classic musical numbers: Kelly, O'Conner, and Reynolds singing "Good Morning", O'Conner singing "Make 'em Laugh", and, of course, Kelly's absolute classic version of "Singin' in the Rain", which Pirates fans get to see and hear on the scoreboard at PNC Park whenever there is a rain delay.

By all means, go and see "The Artist." It's a good movie, but also take time on Sunday afternoon (or program the DVR) and watch "Singin' in the Rain", where a very similar story was told, and told much better sixty years ago. No matter what happens come Sunday night at the Oscars, I believe that "The Artist" will in a very few years time be viewed as a novelty item that struck a lot of peoples' fancy in 2011, and will be relatively forgotten, while people will still be watching and enjoying "Singin' in the Rain" for at least another sixty years.

Haas Wins in LA

2012-02-19T20:08:00.004-05:00

Well, did you watch the LA Open today?

The Mickelson-Bradley back and forth written about this morning did take place, along with Bill Haas jumping in and out of the lead, and a lot of other guys, most notably Dustin Johnson, squandering shots and opportunities to get into the mix and take control of the tournament. After an afternoon of watching these guys ham-and-egg it all over Riviera, it appeared that Haas was the winner until both Mickelson and Bradley made two incredible birdies on 18 to force a playoff. Haas won on the second sudden death hole, a short - 314 yard - par 4 in an amazing display of golfing strategy. If you play golf, watching them play that 10th hole was completely fascinating. If you don't play golf, you probably have a quit reading before you got this far in the post anyway, so I won't go into it here. You can read about it in the paper tomorrow.

As I said, three and a half hours of ham and egging was all made worthwhile watching Mickelson and Bradley on 18 and watching them and Haas in the two sudden death holes. Great stuff.

And a couple of final comments on Keegan Bradley, who at age 25 certainly seems to have the chops to be a big factor on the PGA Tour for years to come.

I wish he didn't use a belly putter (Haas does, too, by the way). Just doesn't seem right.

He takes FOREVER to hit his shots. Recreational golf will take even longer to play if the weekend hackers start to imitate him.

He spits a lot. A LOT. It has become fashionable to beat up on Tiger Woods for his habit of constant spitting on the course. I hope those same critics will come down on Bradley for this dubious habit. Unless, of course, there is a double standard among the golfing elite where someone who looks like Woods is concerned. Not that that could be possible in this day and age, of course. (It can be noted that Gary McCord did say that he would have to talk with young Keegan about the spitting.)

For Our Sunday Afternoon Viewing Pleasure...

2012-02-19T10:40:00.009-05:00

Earlier this week I wrote about Phil Mickelson's victory at Pebble Beach last week and made the following observation: "At age 41, who knows how many victories like this Mickelson has left in him..."

Shows how much I know. This afternoon, Lefty will tee off in the final group of the LA Open (or whatever corporate name it goes by these days) at Riveria CC in Los Angeles tied for the lead with his playing partner, reigning PGA Champ Keegan Bradley. In many ways this pairing may be even more interesting that Phil's pairing last week with Tiger Woods. Bradley, a major champion at the age of 25, represents one of the new wave of Young Guns on the PGA Tour, and Mickelson is, well, Phil Mickelson. Aging Great vs. Young Lion. Crafty Vet vs. Promising Youngster. Old Guard vs. New Wave. Pick whatever cliche you like, but this has the makings of a very fun afternoon in front of the flatscreen.

If only Bradley didn't use one of those belly putters. I every golfer using one of those should have two strokes, minimum, added to his score over 72 holes.

Enjoy!

Welcome, A.J. Burnett

2012-02-18T10:34:00.003-05:00

Pending a physical and Bud Selig's approval, the Pirates and Yankees have finalized the deal that will bring pitcher A.J. Burnett to the Buccos. Now we all now that Burnett has been generally pretty bad in his years with the Yanks, but I like the deal.

It has been cynically pointed out that facing the NL Central on a daily basis as opposed to the AL East will probably serve to improve Burnett's performance. Well, so be it. Burnett will also most likely immediately jump to at least the role of #2 man in the Pirates pitching staff. He strikes out a lot of batters, and pitches a lot of innings, something lacking in the Pirates starters last year. Also, as Bob Smizik pointed out earlier in the week, acquiring Burnett, and the pursuit of Edwin Jackson and Roy Oswalt that preceded this trade, if nothing else, shows to the Pirates players that the team really is interested in improving and winning, and not just an inflated bottom line, and that is not an unimportant thing.

What will be interesting to see is what kind of attitude Burnett lugs with him into Bradenton and PNC Park. He has been known to have been a sometime knucklehead while in the Bronx, so let's hope he doesn't become another in the long line of ageing ballplayers with bad attidudes brought in by the team in the last several years.

And while on the subject of Pirates pitching, Frank Coonelly spoke to the Highmark Retiree Club a few weeks back, and one very interesting tidbit that he dropped that day was the it was "quite possible" that Gerritt Cole would be pitching in Pittsburgh in 2012. As I said, interesting.

Birthday Girls

2012-02-18T10:03:00.008-05:00

A couple of nifty birthdays to celebrate today.

First, we say happy 44th birthday to ex-BratPacker Molly Ringwald. I believe that Ms. Ringwald has been doing the theater tour circuit in recent years, but if she never does another thing in show biz, she will be forever known for her role as Samantha Baker in the Classic-with-a-capital-C 1980's teen angst comedy, "Sixteen Candles", a movie which is still funny after all these years.

Next, Happy Birthday to one of my own teen heart throbs, Cybill Shepherd. Today, the stunning Ms. Shepherd is still gettin' it done even thought she is now, at age 62, eligible to begin collecting Social Security.

Happy Birthday, ladies!

To Absent Friends - Gary Carter

2012-02-17T10:16:00.003-05:00

It is always sad to mark the passing of a Hall of Fame ballplayer. Sadder still when that player was contemporary, a guy that you had actually seen play, and saddest of all when that player is younger than you are. So, a Melancholy Happy Trails to Gary Carter, gone far too young at age 57.

I noted that the wire story in today's paper highlighted the one scene from Carter's career that I remember most - the two out single that started the Mets' improbable 10th inning rally that ended with the Mookie Wilson to Bill Buckner ground ball in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series.

RIP Gary Carter.

And on the subject of Absent Friends, the spouses of public figures deserve their privacy, so I made no mention of the recent death of Sharon Ilkin, wife of former Steelers player and current broadcaster, Tunch Ilkin. That said, I highly recommend the column of Ron Cook in today's Post-Gazette (linked below). Wonderful story.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12048/1210827-87.stm

Good Vibrations?

2012-02-15T13:38:00.004-05:00

I see on Facebook this afternoon that the Post-Gazette has announced that The Beach Boys, including Brian Wilson, will be touring this year and will be playing at the Benedum in Pittsburgh in May. It will be the first time that Wilson has toured with the group in over twenty years.

I say to myself, The Beach Boys are one of the seminal groups in American rock & roll history, Brian Wilson is one of the all-time great singer-songwriter-musician in rock & roll history, and I have never seen them live. This could be my last chance to make that happen.

Then I recall seeing them perform at the Grammy Awards on TV just this past Sunday night.

Then I think of watching Willie Mays play centerfield for the Mets.

Maybe I'll skip the appearance at the Benedum and just crank up "Pet Sounds" on the iPod.

Wouldn't THAT be nice?

Hines, Hailey, Phil, A.J., Jack Butler, and Other Topics

2012-02-14T10:50:00.006-05:00

Having been hit with some kind of bug over the past few days, The Grandstander decides to clean out the Mental In-Box prior to leaving for a doctor's appointment....

The Hines Ward Drama is playing out on the sports pages and talk shows - and on Facebook - in the last few days. I agree with Ron Cook to a point. True, Ward has been paid handsomely by the Steelers over the last 14 years, and football is first an foremost a business, so in that respect, the Steelers owe Ward nothing if they feel it is time to cut the cord and move on. However, having someone in the Steelers hierarchy leak the word to Jason LaCanfora of NFL Network (and how else would LaCanfora get such info?) was NOT something that the Steelers should have done to a player of Ward's stature in team history. That was a move that Steelers Nation Loyalists would scorn if Jerry Jones or Dan Snyder did it to a similar player.

I have a feeling the dance that is now taking place involving Art Rooney II, Mike Tomlin, Todd Hailey, and Ben Roethlisberger is not going to end well, and it could get a lot uglier than, say, the possibility of Hines Ward wearing some other team's uniform in 2012. Hope I'm wrong.

No one remembers Franco Harris as a Seattle Seahawk. He will always be a Steeler. Same thing will apply to Hines Ward, no matter where he might play in 2012.

If Roethlisberger had been a boy scout during his past off seasons, would the Steelers - and their fans - be so fired up about Ben needing a hard ass coach like Hailey to reign him in and "tweak" his game? Understand that I am not defending Roethlisberger's past antics. Merely posing a hypothetical question.

Did anyone watch the final round of the AT&T National at Pebble Beach on Sunday? Playing in the next to last group on Sunday with Tiger Woods, and two shots behind Woods and five shots out of the lead, Phil Mickelson put a beat down on the field and on Woods, in particular, to win the tournament by three shots. Golfers can talk all they want about how they play the course and not against each other, but there is no way that Phil wasn't relishing that 11 shot pasting he dealt Tiger.

To his credit Mickelson downplayed the whole thing, pointing out the greater body of work over time, while allowing others to site the stats (Woods -71 PGA Tour victories to Phil's 40; 14 Woods' majors to Phil's 4). Still, when paired head to head, Mickelson has beaten Woods the last five times this has occurred.

At the age of 41, you have to wonder how many more of these victories Mickelson might have left in him. As for Woods, who ever could have envisioned the kind of meltdown that we saw on Sunday?

The Pirates are in the news with their pursuit of pitcher A.J. Burnett from the Yankees, who are willing to do almost anything to get rid of him. Hey, the addition of Burnett certainly can't hurt the Pirates, but it doesn't envision a free ride into the post-season, either. Bob Smizik points out that if nothing else, the pursuit of Burnett (and Edwin Jackson and Roy Oswalt before that) will prove to the players on the team that management is trying to do more than just turn a profit.

Bob Smizik also linked to a blog by some guy named Jim Krug. I don't know Krug's background, but he offers a look at the Pirates management's performance that is hard to refute. Check it out here http://isportsweb.com/2012/02/12/pittsburgh-pirates-a-j-burnett-situation-showcases-lack-of-direction/

On a much more positive Steelers note, belated CONGRATULATIONS go out to formers players Dermonti Dawson and Jack Butler for their recent election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I am happy for Dawson, and I am sure that he is deserving, but, be honest now, who among us is equipped to judge the merits of an offensive lineman for HOF worthiness? If the selectors deem it to be, then I'm sure OK with it. As for Butler, his election at the age of 82 is long overdue if only to prove to too many of generations of Steelers fandom, that the Steelers did indeed exist before Franco's Immaculate Reception. Butler's stats and accomplishments were well documented in the media at the time of his selection, so I will not restate them here. I will, however, recommend that you go to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website and search out Bob Dvorchak's "Sports 'n'at" video about Jack Butler. It pays tribute to Butler far better than any words that I can write here.

To Absent Friends - Whitney Houston

2012-02-12T11:33:00.004-05:00

As you all no doubt know by now, Whitney Houston died yesterday at the age of 48, far too young. A huge pop star in the late 80's and into the 90's, Houston's is an all-too-familiar show biz tale - a victim of success, excess, and too many bad life decisions. Very sad.

RIP Whitney Houston.

Todd Hailey, the New OC

2012-02-07T12:19:00.004-05:00

It looks like the Steelers are about to make official and name Todd Hailey (does he kind of look like Jerry Seinfeld, or is that just my imagination?) as their new offensive coordinator. Let me be the first to say that he's a bum, has no imagination, calls too many pass plays, and should be fired!

Just kidding, of course. I don't expect that there will be any such talk about the new OC until at least after the Steelers lose for the first time in 2012 (even if it is an exhibition game). Actually, when you read some of the stories about Hailey's supposed paranoia during his final days in Kansas City, it is kind of surprising that the Steelers would make this hire. Not the "Steelers Way", and all that. As recently as yesterday in his MMQB column, Peter King was speculating that Hailey would never get this job. Hailey did mastermind that Cardinals offense that almost beat the Steelers in the Super Bowl a few years back, so he does bring some credentials with him. The fact that he washed out as a head coach in KC only means that maybe he shouldn't be a head coach. Others say that his tough guy approach with players is just what Ben Roethlisberger needs, although, personally, I think that Ben needs offensive linemen who can contain a pass rush a whole lot more than he needs a hard ass coach, but that's just me.

Far more interesting to me is how this whole firing/hiring of the OC has seemed to smack of Art Rooney circumventing his head coach, and that could have some long term effects that may not end up being to everyone's liking. And does that fact that Hailey is the son of old-time Steeler and, presumably, a Rooney family favorite, Dick Hailey play into this at all?

One thing I do know is that Hailey, a professional football coach, is a whole lot more smarter than me when it comes to football, so who am I to judge, and I hope he's a huge success with Rooney U next season. Would you take it if he masterminded an offense that produced, say, 12 wins in 2012? I sure would, and I'm betting that you would, too. Twelve wins, by the way, being the same number of wins that the Steelers produced this past season with Bruce Arians as OC.

Big Win for Big Blue

2012-02-06T09:12:00.005-05:00

The Giants win Super Bowl XLVI by a score of 21-17 with - deja vu all over again - Eli Manning leading a last minute touchdown drive to beat the Patriots.

Going into the game, I had no great emotional investment. I neither liked nor disliked either team enough to have a strong rooting interest. I just wanted a good, if not great, ballgame. On the surface, this game had all the elements of such a game. Two masterful Tom Brady-led drives at the end of the first half and beginning of the second half that gave the Pats a 17-9 lead, a terrific end of game 88 yard Manning-led drive that led to the winning TD with :57 left to play, and even a Brady hail mary heave that had you on the edge as the game ended.

Despite all of that, when it was all over, and perhaps it was that lack of emotional investment alluded to earlier, I was left with a sort of well-it's-over-now-bring-on-Spring-Training-baseball kind of feeling.

Also, when the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl is one that the defense let happen and the offense did not want to score, well it lends a kind of surreal feeling to the whole thing. The strategy on both sides for this bizarre happenstance can be defended - Bill Bellichick is a genius, after all - but something about it just doesn't sit right.

As for the other Super Bowl sideshows...

Madonna at halftime. Another aging rocker struts her stuff at the Super Bowl. Haven't we seen this before? Did you notice how she almost fell trying to mount one of those steps? Do we really need all this ridiculous spectacle and fireworks? If we really need a singer, how about bringing him/her/them out with a back-up band and a microphone and have him/her/them sing a few songs? Or, how about a dog and a frisbee?

Commercials. Twelve hours after the fact, I can remember the following: the cat killing dog for Doritos, the baby in the slingshot for Doritos again, the eTrade baby, "Wego" the dog for Bud Light, the Budweiser prohibition-is-over spots, the bulldog outracing the greyhounds for some kind of sneaker, the lady head-butting her husband over some kind of yogurt, the dog that worked out to lose weight for some kind of car, chimps in suits for CareerBuilder, and the Fiat commercial with some incredibly hot woman drinking some kind of foamy coffee drink. That's it. That's the list.

Oh, and one more note on commercials. Danica Patrick wants it both ways. She wants to be taken seriously as a major competitive athlete/driver and not be put down because she is a woman in a man's world, yet she continues to do commercials that tease us with the idea that if you go to the website, you just might get to see her naked. Which is it going to be, Danica?

Oh, and The Grandstander got his prediction wrong (see post of last Friday) and closes the NFL post-season with a 7-4 record. Not bad. However, in my pre-season write-up, where I listed about a dozen or so teams, one of whom would win the Super Bowl, the New York Giants were not included on that list. Not good.

Twelve days until pitchers & catchers report in Bradenton.

The Cleveland SABR Meeting

2012-02-05T10:48:00.003-05:00

Marilyn and I had a most enjoyable day attending the Cleveland/Jack Graney SABR Chapter meeting yesterday that was held in the Media Center at Progressive Field. Got to park in the Player's parking lot to boot! I'm betting that you don't see a lot of Jeep Compasses parked there during the season, but I digress.

Chapter President Stephanie Liscio out together a very interesting and entertaining program. Special guests included Plain Dealer sportswriter Terry Pluto and Indians' Senior VP of Public Affairs Bob DiBiasio. Naturally, much of the talk centered around the Indians, what happened in 2011 and what to expect/hope for in 2012.

One item that got a lot of discussion concerned the recent news about Indians' pitcher Fausto Carmona, who has recently been discovered to actually be someone named Roberto Hernandez Heredia and to be three years older than he has represented himself to be over the years. The story was kind of buried on the sports pages here in Pittsburgh and may even be being played for laughs in many places, but it is a very big concern and issue in Cleveland, and is kind of a sad one. Carmona/Heredia is currently under a sort of house arrest in the Dominican Republic, and no one, not even the powers that be at the Indians are quite sure how this will play out in the months ahead. One note that Pluto added to this whole affair is that there are probably dozens of similar cases of these false identities on rosters throughout the major and minor leagues.

We also heard much of what we hear in Pittsburgh - about why the Indians can't pursue and sign people like Prince Fielder, how they have to use resources to develop their own players internally, how they have to rely on the draft, and so on and so on. Change the word "Indians" to "Pirates" and it could have been Frank or Neal up there talking. Of course, the Indians DO have a couple of pennants and additional playoffs appearances over the last 19 season, so success CAN be found under that model of operation.

Other interesting presentations were given on the 1962 National League expansion draft and one the construction of the first concrete and steel ballparks in the early part of the 20th Century. I won't go into great detail here because it is my hope to have these gentlemen give their presentations at our SABR meeting in Pittsburgh on April 28. So, no spoilers for you today!
I was also privileged to give my own World Series-themed presentation at the meeting, and I thank Stephanie and the Chapter for giving me that opportunity. I will be giving that presentation at our April 28 meeting as well.

As a side note, and without giving anything away, the 1960 World Series did not qualify for consideration given the topic and parameters of my presentation. When I finished, a gent in the audience said he was "shocked" that I did not include the '60 Series, especially since I was from Pittsburgh. He went on to say that his wife was from Mt. Lebanon and that she would be "appalled" that the 1960 Series was not in my presentation. When I explained why it was not (and, again, no spoilers here; you'll have to come to the April 28 meeting in Pittsburgh to know why), he still didn't get it.

Moral of the Story: If you are a SABR member from Pittsburgh, you can never, ever escape the 1960 World Series, not even in Cleveland!

On a more serious note, it was a real hoot to meet and talk with SABR folks from another Chapter. I did talk up the Forbes Field Chapter and got the word out about our April 28 meeting, so I am hoping that many of those folks will make the trip east at that time.

Super Bowl Prediction

2012-02-03T10:02:00.004-05:00

So, I have been pondering the question as to who will win the Super Bowl for almost two weeks, and, more than any Super Bowl in recent memory, a case can be made for either team as the eventual winner.

Giants - Pros:

A strong defense that got hot at the perfect time in the season

Eli Manning has looked terrific in the playoffs, and proved in 49'er game that he can withstand even the fiercest of NFL defenses

They have demonstrated a knack to beat the Patriots in recent years, most notably in the Super Bowl four years ago

Giants - Cons

They seem a bit mouthy and over-confident

They were only a 9-7 team during the year

They lost twice, convincingly, to the God-awful Washington Redskins

Patriots - Pros

They have Tom Brady

They have, like it or not, Bill Belichick as head coach, and he's pretty good

They have Rob Gronkowski

Brady looked like he was from another world in the playoff game against the Broncos

Patriots - Cons

They have, at best, a very ordinary defense

Until they beat the Ravens two weeks ago, they had not beaten a team with a winning record all season

Rob Gronkowski is injured and his effectiveness for Sunday is unknown at this time

Brady looked very ordinary in the game against the Ravens

So, considering all of these factors, I had been leaning towards picking the Giants to win. However, something last night just clicked in my head and has told me that Brady is going tom take charge and that the Patriots are going to avenge the loss of four years ago and take care of business in Indy on Sunday. There you have it...the PATRIOTS to win on Sunday.

Should this happen, there will, of course, be some major angst among the Yinzers of Steelers Nation as this will mean that Belichick will now join Chuck Noll as the only head coach to have won four Super Bowls, and Brady will join Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana (who played in the WPIAL, which is almost as good as being a Steeler) as the only QB to have played on four Super Bowl winning teams. Should the Patriots win, I predict that the first call to The Fan stating that Belichick's four wins "shouldn't count" because he "cheated by video tapin' n'at" will come in before midnight on Sunday.

Let's hope it's a great game, with lots of great commercials, and an entertaining performance by Madonna at halftime.

Enjoy!!

Movie Review: "The Artist"

2012-01-31T15:33:00.004-05:00

We got out to see the much touted and highly acclaimed movie, "The Artist", this afternoon. As you may know, this is a movie made by a French director, Michael Havanavicius and the lead actors are also French, Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo, it is filmed in black & white, and is a silent movie. At first blush, this seems like it could be a bit of Hollywood pretension, but after reading so many stories and reviews about it, I was predisposed to like the movie, and I was hoping not to be disappointed. I was not.

The movie deals with the era of Hollywood history (yes, it is a movie about movies, and there is nothing more that Hollywood likes) when silent movies were giving way to talking pictures. Some great movie stars of that era couldn't make the transition, and that is what "The Artist" is all about. By the way, an argument could be made that "Singing in the Rain" did the same thing sixty years ago, and did it better. Will people be watching "The Artist" years and years and years from now like people still watch "Singing in the Rain" today? It's an interesting question and would make for an interesting debate.

There is no question that "The Artist" is a very interesting piece of movie making, and the performances of Dujardin and Bejo are both really good. I liked the movie and can see it being a strong contender when the Oscars are doled out next month. I am still holding onto my vote for "The Descendants" and George Clooney, but "The Artist" is certainly a very good movie.

And speaking of the Academy Awards, we rented "The Help" this weekend, and we didn't much care for it. In fact, we got about a half hour into it and shut it down. Something about watching the deplorable treatment of "the help" by the belles of the 1960's South that was not something to which we wanted to subject ourselves. I know that ultimately, it is an uplifting story, and we could see that the acting was quite good. Maybe we just weren't in the right frame of mind at the time. Maybe we try it at a later date.

Art II Takes Charge

2012-01-31T15:10:00.003-05:00

It is old news now, but I do want to add my two cents worth to the news that had Steelers fans all abuzz last week - the "retirement" of much maligned offensive coordinator Bruce Arians at the strong suggestion of team Prez Art Rooney II, and, apparently, over the objections of head coach Mike Tomlin, and to the surprise of Arians himself.

It is true that Rooney signs the checks, and we all know that the #1 rule in all businesses is that "the boss is always the boss", so no one is questioning Rooney's right to push Arians into retirement. What is surprising is that Rooney's move seems to temporarily, at least, emasculate his Head Coach, smacks of JerryJones-ism, and it flies in the face of the almost sacrosanct "Steelers Way" of doing business that everyone goes on and on about all the time. What next? Art II standing on the sidelines in the final minutes of games and dancing like Tom "Boogie" Benson in New Orleans?

As for Art II's insistence that the Steelers go back to an old school run-first offense, what has he been watching in the NFL the last few seasons? You have an elite quarterback, to whom you have committed over $100 million, a crew of young, fast, and potentially elite receivers, and he wants to bring back Fran Rogel and John Henry Johnson? I am missing something here.

It was interesting to hear Tony Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon really rip into Rooney over this move in a way that no Pittsburgh based commentator would ever treat a Rooney. I mean, really, just imagine Bob Pompeani saying anything critical of Art Rooney II.

And as for Arians' retirement, it lasted less than a week and how interesting it was to see who hired him to be his Offensive Coordinator - Indy Colts new Head Coach Chuck Pagano. Until recently, Pagano was defensive coordinator of the Ravens, and as such he was charged with having to devise the defenses that could beat Arians' offense twice, and sometimes three times, a year. The 2011 season aside, Pagano's defense usually lost to Arians' offense. Obviously, Pagano sees something in Bruce Arians that all the Arians Bashers in Steelerland has failed to see over the years.

A Day at "The Pete"

2012-01-29T11:48:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was not my first visit to Pitt's Petersen Events Center, but it was the first time I had been there for a Big East Conference game, and what a fun and terrific experience it was.

The place was sold out, and the atmosphere was nothing short of electric. The Oakland Zoo student section was amazing. They never sat down, never stopped cheering, and, in a real departure from current day crowd behaviour, they kept it clean and tasteful. Not sure if that is the case at every game, but it was refreshing yesterday. They were almost as much fun to watch as the game itself - a great 72-60 wire-to-wire Pitt win over ninth ranked Georgetown.

While I do not want to diminish the Big East, I can only imagine what that place will be like in a few years when schools like North Carolina, Duke, Wake Forest, and Maryland start paying regular visits.

One more comment on the crowd. I was surprised at how much of the crowd joined the Pitt band in singing the National Anthem, and I was most pleasantly surprised to see that the crowd waited until the Anthem was actually completed before that began to clap and cheer, rather than about 2/3 of the way through it, as seems to have become the custom at sporting events in recent years.

The Oscar Nominations - and "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"

2012-01-27T11:52:00.005-05:00

The Academy Award nominations were announced this week, and I know that you are all dying to hear my thoughts on them.

Oh, you're not.

Well, here they are anyway.

Of the nine Best Picture nominees, I have seen "The Descendants", "Moneyball", "Hugo", and "Midnight in Paris." Marilyn has seen "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close." I plan on seeing "The Artist", "The Help", and "War Horse." Have absolutely no interest in seeing "Tree of Life." Of the four that I have seen, regular readers will know that I favor "The Descendants" to win the big one. I also am hoping that George Clooney will win for Best Actor in this movie. If I had to choose a runner up, it would probably be "Midnight in Paris" just edging out "Moneyball."

I am anxious to see "The Artist", and while I reserve judgement, this seems like the kind of movie that the Academy loves to reward: it's different (black & white and silent), it is made by non-Americans, and it is about movies, so rewarding it would be somewhat self-indulgent for the Hollywood crowd. Despite that, I am prepared to like this movie when I do see it, which I hope will be early next week. Likewise, "Hugo", which is in large part about the early days of movies, received much love from the Academy with 11 nominations, and I am guessing that Martin Scorsese is probably in the lead for Best Director for this one.

Earlier this week, I did re-watch "Midnight in Paris" and enjoyed it every bit as much, if not more so, that when I saw it earlier in the year. I do not expect it to win for Best Picture, nor do I expect Woody Allen to win for Best Director, but I am hoping that Allen will get the nod for Best Original Screenplay. It has now been 35 years since "Annie Hall", and I think it is time that Woody gets another Oscar.

From what you read, the Best Actress award seems to be a two horse race between Viola Davis and Meryl Streep. I haven't seen either performance so I can't offer an opinion, but I am kind of pulling for Meryl Streep who has now been nominated for either Best Actress or best Supporting Actress and amazing 18 times. She never wins because, I think people seem to think that "she always wins, so let's give it someone else." Fact is, she has won twice, but her last win was in 1982 - thirty years ago. I love Streep, so I hope she snags this one this year.

One Best Actress performance that I did see just this week was Rooney Mara in "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." Great performance, but she's not going to win an Oscar for it. I will also say that this was a very good movie. Even if you've seen the original Swedish language movie version of this book, it is worth seeing this one as well. Very well done. A few scenes that are hard to watch, but still a very good movie. On the same track, I also finally got around the seeing the Swedish "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" this week, so I have now closed out that particular trilogy. All of those movies were quite good, even with sub-titles.

Finally, I can say, with tongue in cheek, of course, that I am amazed that the Academy did not see fit to give a single nomination to "Hall Pass." If nothing else, there should be some kind of special effects award for that scene with the chick sitting on the edge of the bathtub. If you've seen the movie, you know the one I mean.

To Absent Friends - Robert Heyges

2012-01-27T09:35:00.005-05:00

The news reported yesterday on the death of Robert Heyges at the age of 60. Heyges, as you can see from the picture above, was one of the "sweathogs" on the 1970's hit sitcom, "Welcome Back, Kotter." He played Juan Epstein, and his comic bit was to write outlandish excuse/absence notes to Mr. Kotter, and sign them "Epstein's mother." Funny stuff at the time.

Reading an online obit last night, I saw that Heyges had some parts on other TV series over the years, and continued to do stage work in New York, but, of course, he'll be forever remembered as a Sweathog. While he never became the superstar that fellow Sweathog John "Vinnie Barbarino" Travolta became. at least he never stooped to the D-list reality tripe of Ron "Horshack" Palillo.

RIP Robert Heyges

The Prince of Detroit

2012-01-25T17:01:00.004-05:00

Last week I was kicking around in my mind, but never got around to doing it, the idea of a post on Prince Fielder. About he was still out there as a baseball free agent; about how no one seemed to be offering him the big money, long term deal he wanted; about how with the big spenders (Yanks, Red Sox, Angels) not in the market for a first baseman, he might not actually get a big money, long term deal; about how perhaps fear for his expansive physique might work against him in getting a big money, long term deal.

Well, as Emily Litella used to say on Saturday Night Live, "never mind."

Nine years, $214 million from the Tigers. Wow. The Tigers now become a big time player in the American League, and the overwhelming favorite in the AL Central.

And in Miguel Cabrera and Fielder, they could also have two guys who could team up with Ndamukong Suh to anchor the Detroit Lions defensive line. And don't forget Victor Martinez, probably out for the season due to injury, also makes up the Beef Trust Review that is now the Tigers.

Does Cabrera now shift back to third place, which he last played about 50 pounds ago? And if Fielder becomes a full time DH, does he hit 350 pounds by the All-Star break? And what is Fielder going to look like by the end of that 9 year contract?

However, on a serious note, the Tigers win the division last year, attendance increases, and the team goes out and gets Prince Fielder. The Pirates flirt with contention for 2/3 of the season last year, attendance increases by 20%, and the team goes out and gets Clint Barmes. How sad.

A Super Bowl Rematch

2012-01-23T10:39:00.002-05:00

One of my favorite days of the sports year is NFL Championship Sunday, and the two games played yesterday did not let anybody down. I felt going in, and as the games played out, I am even more convinced, that of the four teams that played yesterday, the best possible outcome for the Super Bowl would be Patriots-Giants match-up.

Some quick thoughts....

That was not a vintage Tom Brady performance yesterday and much of that, no doubt, was a function of the Ravens defense. Joe Flacco, for God's sake, actually had better numbers! Two interceptions, and two others that were nullified by Baltimore penalties.

Man, I would hate to be a placekicker, and have to live with what Billy Cundiff will be living with over the next few months.

Patriots defensive back Sterling Moore broke up two passes on the Ravens' final drive, including the Vince Evans "drop" in the end zone. I hope he got a game ball.

Why is Evans being blamed more for dropping that pass that Moore is being credited for breaking it up?

For the lovers of great defense, that Giants-49'ers game was right up your alley.

Great play by Vernon Davis on that 73 yard TD, but a really, dumbass unsportsmanlike penalty for his celebration. Lucky for him it didn't end up hurting the 49'ers.

Just as you hate to see a game come down to a missed field goal, you also hate to see great game like New York and San Francisco played decided on a muffed punt (two of them, actually).

Outstanding Player of the Day: Eli Manning. A real warrior.

In explaining how Overtime would work in the playoff game, Ed Hochuli talked longer at the coin toss that Abe Lincoln did at Gettysburg.

I don't have the intense dislike that so many seem to have for the Harbaugh Brothers, but I am glad that we will be spared all of the media nonsense that would have resulted had they been matched up in the Super Bowl.

With two correct call yesterday, The Grandstander now stands at 7-3 for this Playoff season and is assured of a better record than last year's 6-5. Not ready to call the Super Bowl yet, but I am thinking that this could be as good a game as it was when these two teams matched up a few years back. Plenty of time left to make that prediction.

To Absent Friends - Joe Paterno

2012-01-23T10:20:00.003-05:00

All the sporting world, and even those beyond the sports world, such was the measure of the man, mourn the death yesterday of Joe Paterno. His record as a football coach is well known, so there is no need to restate it here. Also well known are the sad circumstances of his departure from his post as Head Coach at Penn State, and this is not the time to go over that story either.

Much of the talk yesterday was of the "legacy" that Paterno will leave behind. Again, his role as coach and benefactor to his University is indisputable. A question that does come to mind is, does one error of omission, albeit a serious one, negate a life of 1,000 (10,000? 100,000?..you decide how many zeros to add) wonderful acts? Everyone can answer this question in their own hearts and minds. I tend to believe that Joe Paterno will be remembered for the great coach and benefactor and molder of young people that he was at Penn State for over 60 years.

I will close with my own Joe Paterno story, one that I had almost forgotten. Back in the early 1970's, I know I was still a student at Robert Morris at the time, Penn State played Pitt in Pittsburgh on Thanksgiving Day. On the following day, I was walking through downtown by the William Penn Hotel (although why I was in town on the day after Thanksgiving, I have no idea), and I see Joe Paterno walking along William Penn Place, all by himself, no bodyguard, no entourage. He was wearing khakis, perhaps even the same pair he wore during the game the day before. I can't even recall if I said "Hi" to him or not. In retrospect, I hope that I did.

RIP Joe Paterno.

May 24, 1928

2012-01-21T11:05:00.002-05:00

The current issue of the Baseball Hall of Fame Magazine, Memories and Dreams, told the story of a lunch time discussion that led HOF staffers to the date at the top of this post.

The question posed at that staff lunch was "What regular season major league game featured the most number of future Hall of Famers?" Well, the HOF enlisted the services of the folks at the terrific Retrosheet website (www.retrosheet.org) and in less than a day, the Retrosheet folks came up with the parameters, programs, and algorithms to uncover the game. It took place on May 24, 1928 in the first game of a doubleheader between the New York Yankees (one might have predicted that the Yanks would be involved) and the Philadelphis Athletics.

Seventeen future Hall of Famers were active in that game. For the Yankees, the cast was Earle Combs, Leo Durocher, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri, Waite Hoyt, and manager Miller Huggins. For the A's, Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Mickey Cochrane, Al Simmons, Eddie Collins, Lefty Grove, Jimmie Foxx, and manager Connie Mack. Finally, two of the umpires, Tommy Connolly and Bill McGowan also became HOF enshrinees. Also, on that Yankees team that day were three other future HOF'ers, Stan Coveleski, Herb Pennock, and Bill Dickey, who did not actually play in the game.

Does any name on these lists jump out at you as being out of place? The one that does for me is Leo Durocher.

In doing the research for this project, over 120,000 major league games were played where it was possible that 10 or more HOF'ers could have participated. There were four games, all played between 1925 and 1928, where there were 16 HOF'ers involved. And if you really want your mind blown, consider the second All-Star game, played in 1934. In that game, 28 players, plus two managers and one coach, 31 in all, were destined to enter the Hall of Fame. The last regular season major league game to feature as many as 10 HOF'ers was played on July 24, 1979 between the San Diego Padres and Montreal Expos - how many of you would have guessed those teams? - that featured 7 players, one manager, one coach, and one umpire.

Thought that this would be of interest to you.

Who Is/Was the Best PNC Park Pirate?

2012-01-21T10:42:00.007-05:00

Yesterday was the 41st birthday of former Pirate Brian Giles. I posted this comment on my Facebook page yesterday and asked the following question: Was/is Brian Giles the greatest Pirate of the PNC Park Era?

First off, in searching Google for a picture of Giles to post, I discovered that Giles has led a bit of an unsavory life in recent years. I have also been told over the years, that when Giles was with the Pirates, he and Jason "Welcome to Hell" Kendall led a clique in the clubhouse that can be described as despicable, disgusting, unsavory, a bunch of jackasses...take your pick. So, we will stipulate that Giles was NOT a nice guy, and that he hasn't seemed to clean up his act since he departed Pittsburgh. We will instead concentrate on the question at hand - is he the best Pirate player of the PNC Park Era?

Whelming (as opposed to "overwhelming") responses on Facebook agreed that he was a very good player, that he was probably a PED juicer in those pre-testing days, and that he was a jaggoff. Other names mentioned as the best PNC Park Pirate included Aramis Rameriz, Kevin Young, and Jason Bay, and the opinion that Andrew McCutchen is on his way to becoming the best PNC Park Pirate. Another poster opined that while he may not have been the best player of the era, Jack Wilson was the "face of the Pirates" during this era. That is an interesting opinion, and could lead to a whole other discussion thread.

My own vote on this Player would go to Jason Bay with Giles a close second. I also feel that McCutchen, if he is allowed to play here long enough, will eventually wear the mantle of "Best PNC Park Pirate."

Also, who do feel has been the "Face of the Franchise" during the PNC Park Era? One vote is already in for Wilson. My own thought is that, for better or worse, Jason Kendall was the Face of the Team during PNC's earlier years. Then Wilson, and now McCutchen. If I had to pick one, after 11 seasons have been played out, I would choose Kendall. Again, for better or for worse.

Any one care to comment further?

Calling the Championship Games

2012-01-20T09:54:00.004-05:00

Well, when the playoffs began, I said that the Super Bowl would be contested between New England and New Orleans. I have a chance to be half right. Carrying my 5-3 playoff record with me into Championship Sunday, I make the following predictions:

AFC, Ravens at Patriots. I know that the Ravens play good defense, and defense wins championships, blah blah blah. I also know that New England has yet to beat a team this season that finished with an above-.500 record. And I know that Baltimore beat the Patriots in the playoffs at Foxboro last season. I also know what I saw last week when the Patriots completely dismantled Denver, another team that plays pretty good defense. I just think that New England is peaking at the perfect time and that even if the Ravens can somehow exploit a suspect New England defense, there is no way that Tom Brady loses in a shootout with Joe Flacco. PATRIOTS to win.

NFC, Giants at 49'ers. Talking about a team that is peaking at the exact right time, the New York Giants fit that description to a tee. Two very good defensive teams going against each other in this one, so I think the quarterbacks will decide this one. While Alex Smith surprised most everyone with that outstanding game against the Saints last week, I think that Eli Manning is playing at an elite level this season. In what will probably be the better game of the two, the GIANTS win at Candlestick.

This avoids the Harbaugh vs. Harbaugh Super Bowl for which the media hype machine is no doubt praying, but a rematch of the Pats-Giants Super Bowl of four years ago should be able to feed the Media Beast well enough.

Book Review: "On Hallowed Ground, The Story of Arlington National Cemetery"

2012-01-20T09:25:00.003-05:00

The book you see at the left was written in 2009 and is a very interesting story about one of America's most honored places, Arlington National Cemetery. One online review that I read of this book said that author Robert Poole does not write a comprehensive history of the place, so much as he tells stories about it, and from those stories, you do get a good understanding of how what was the ancestral home of Martha Washington and Robert E. Lee developed into the "hallowed ground" that it is today.

About the first one-third of the books tells of how the Custis-Lee mansion and estate (Robert E. Lee was married to the step-granddaughter of Martha Custis Washington) was usurped by the Federal government during the Civil War. The government, under the direction of US Army Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs pretty much stole the property from the Lee family under the exigencies of war. I think that many people with even a rudimentary knowledge of the history of the Civil War Era are aware of the Lee connection to Arlington. What you may not know is that many years after the War, in the early 1880's, the Lee Family sued for the recovery of the property and won their case. At that point, the Cemetery was well established, so the government was then in the position where they had to buy the property back from the Lees for fair market value, which they did for $150,000.

Great stories included in the book were the process for selecting an Unknown Soldier following World War I, and the weekend surrounding the assassination and interment of President Kennedy. Did you know that when Mrs. Kennedy asked that an eternal flame be installed by the President's grave, personnel at Arlington and the Army had no idea how to construct one, but they somehow found a way to make it work in less than 24 hours.

Another fascinating story involves the Unknown from Viet Nam. In the early 1980's, there was great pressure from the Reagan Administration to find, designate, and inter an Unknown from that war. However, the advances in both military operations regarding war dead and in forensic science, made it easier to identify all war dead, and, thus, their weren't that many unknowns. Nevertheless, and Unknown was buried in a solemn ceremony that included President Reagan, even though there were those who were pretty sure that the body buried was not Unknown. In 1998, the body was exhumed and identified. I am painting this story with a very broad brush, and the details of the Viet Nam Unknown's story make for great reading.

It's a pretty good book, and if you have an Amazon Kindle, you can purchase it for a mere $3.99!

Cary Grant

2012-01-18T12:09:00.006-05:00

Today we observe what would have been the 108th birthday of Cary Grant.

Tell me, has there ever been a movie star, before or since, like Cary Grant? Just last week I watched Hitchcock's "To Catch A Thief" with Grant and Grace Kelly. What a screen pair that was. And for my money, one of the hottest and sexiest love scenes you will ever see in a movie was between Grant and Eva Marie Saint in "North by Northwest." No one took their clothes off, in fact, I don't even think that Grant and Saint were seen below their shoulders, but, man, you had no doubt what was going on between them.

(Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sKTO32r5Zs)

Comedy, drama, romance, and even self-deprecating humor....Grant could do it all. Here's a story I once read from director Peter Bogdanovich. Late in life, Grant was attending some sort of charity function somewhere and when he gave his name upon checking in, the lady at the registration said, "You don't look like Cary Grant." To which Grant said (and please imagine this in a Cary Grant accent), "Well, yes, but then nobody does."

Nobody like him, before or since.

Hawaii Five-0 Thoughts

2012-01-18T11:50:00.004-05:00

We are now halfway through the second season of the new incarnation of "Hawaii Five-O" and it is still must-see-TV in our house. The DVR is set to record all new episodes, so we never miss it. We like Alex O'Laughlin and Scott Caan in the lead roles, and even if the complete and total "bad-assness" of O'Laughlin's Steve McGarrett sometimes defies rational belief, so what. It's all part of what makes for a fun show.

All that said, however, the "who-killed-Steve's-father-and-why" back story that haunts every episode needs to be drawn to a conclusion. This has become so drawn out and convoluted, that I can no longer keep track of who's who, who did what, who's a good guy, who's a bad guy. At this point, I wonder if the writers of the show even know where they are going with this. As for Joe, the bald guy who was Steve's ex-SEALS commander, he has got to go. I'm tired of him.

As I said, let's find out who killed Steve's dad, let Steve kick the shit out of him, let his Dad now rest in peace, and let the Five-O crew solve the crime of the week. That's the way Jack Lord's Five-O did it, and they lasted for thirteen seasons on TV.

Book 'em, Danno!

Aloha.

And Then There Were Four....

2012-01-15T20:27:00.003-05:00

Some thoughts and questions on the recently concluded NFL Playoff weekend. If you are my Facebook Friend, some of this may seem familiar to you. It should be noted that my pre-game drill today prior to the Ravens-Texans kick-off was painting an accent wall in our dining room. It looks terrific, by the way.

So how many of you thought that BOTH Green Bay and New Orleans would lose? If you did, I hope you had a nice parlay bet at a sports book in Vegas.

If going into the weekend, you were asked to rank the eight quarterbacks who would be playing, where would you have ranked Alex Smith? Sixth or seventh, right? Maybe last?

When watching the Saints and 49'ers score three touchdowns and a field goal and exchange the lead four times in the last three and a half minutes of the game, did anyone flash back on a similar game between Michigan and Notre Dame last September?

It might be hard to root for the Ray Lewis, and, to a lesser degree, Ed Reed, but those guys are awfully good football players.

How about that Pitt Panther connection on the Ravens first touchdown today, Joe Flacco to Kris Wilson? Somewhere, Walt Harris was smiling.

Caught the CBS studio jokesters briefly on the post-game show. If you had tuned in at that moment, you would have thought that Baltimore lost the game.

How bad does last week's Steelers loss to Denver look now in light of the complete beatdown by Tom Brady and the Patriots over Tim Tebow and the Broncos? Answer: Pretty damn bad; even worse than it looked last week.

(That said, the guy who wrote a letter to the sports editor of the Post-Gazette suggesting that it was now time to fire Mike Tomlin is certifiably insane, and whoever at the PG thought this was worth printing today isn't far behind.)

Did anyone see Leslie Visser on CBS today? I hadn't seen her for awhile, and I was shocked when I did, as she appears to have been the victim of some very bad plastic surgery. How sad that she felt the need to have such work done.

All week long leading up to these games, I kept hearing about how bad the Patriots defense was. Sure didn't seem that way to me, or maybe Tim Tebow really is that bad, notwithstanding his game against the Steelers.

Defense does seem to be the strong suit of both the 49'ers and the Giants, however. That should be a very interesting game next week.

Tom Brady was absolutely unbelievably good on Saturday night. It is hard to imagine that the Ravens will be able to withstand what he can do.

Phil Simms had a great line last night about NE offensive coordinator and Penn State head coach Bill O'Brien. He asked of all the ex-Penn State players, boosters, and alums who have been bitching about the O'Brien hire, "do you like what you are seeing tonight?"

And, yes, I know, as it has been pointed out to me already, that O'Brien will not have Brady, Gronkowski, Welker et al in Happy Valley, but I think that Simms point to the PSU bitchers-and-moaners was well taken.

Speaking of Penn State, did you catch the lengthy interview and story by Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post on Joe Paterno? The one quote that jumped off the page was when Paterno said that "people must think I run things up here." Oh, you mean he didn't? I hate to kick a legend when he is down - and very ill to boot - but he really came across as a clueless old guy in that story.

Is there any football announcer more old school that CBS' Dan Dierdorf? When you listen to him talk, you just know that he thinks that, with very few exceptions, all of the players today are a bunch of namby-pamby jackwagons, and that if he, Dierdorf, was down there on the field, he would by God show them all how the game should be played. He used to bother me, but now I kind of love listening to the guy.

He was pretty calm on the sidelines today, but I know that there will come a day when Tom Coughlin's head will literally explode during a game. Maybe next week.

Why does the thought of a Harbaugh vs. Harbaugh Super Bowl showdown not get me in the lather that it seems to be inspiring in others? Of course, if that does come to pass, the media circus that will be made of it WILL be overblown to a degree that not even Chris Berman could imagine.

BEST GAME OF THE WEEKEND - 49'ers win over the Saints. No other game even close.

BEST PLAYER OF THE WEEKEND - Tom Brady

GOAT OF THE WEEKEND - Jacoby Jones

SURPRISE OF THE WEEKEND - The relative ease in which the Giants beat the Packers, who sure didn't look like a team that went 15-1.

PLAY OF THE WEEKEND - Three way tie: Alex Smith bootleg TD run to win game over the Saints; Alex Smith to Vernon Davis TD pass to win game over the Saints (again) after the Saints appeared to have won (again), and Eli Manning's Hail Mary TD pass at the end of the first half against Green Bay. There was still a half left to play, but I think that that TD was the dagger that killed the Packers today.

HONOR IN DEFEAT AWARD - Aaron Rogers who, despite his interceptions, kept the Packers in the game until late in the fourth quarter without a lot of help from the rest of his offensive teammates.

So, next Sunday is one of my favorite football days of the year - Conference Championship Sunday. Am looking forward to the big double header, and while I wish the Steelers were still alive, I have to admit that you can watch these games and enjoy them more when you don't have the emotional investment in them that the Steelers participation brings.

Catching Up with.....

2012-01-13T11:37:00.004-05:00

...the Movies.

Finally got to see "Moneyball" this week. Very good movie, and not just for the baseball. The Oscar buzz for Brad Pitt is well deserved (although I still would put him behind George Clooney, but ahead of Leonardo DiCaprio, if I were handicapping the race), and Jonah Hill was quite good, too. Funny seeing Hill in a role like this when you usually see him the R-rated comedies.

Also, rented "Rise of the Planet of the Apes." I am not a sci-fi guy, but I do kind of like these movies. This one was pretty good, even if it did take a long time to get to the good part - that is, when the apes go ape and over run San Francisco. Entertaining escapism, and they left it wide open for a sequel.

....the Pirates.

Paul Maholm made his departure from the Pirates official this week by signing with the Cubs. It's easy to say "so what" about losing a guy with a 53-73, 4.36 career record, and a career that, save for a six game 3-1 rookie season, never included a winning record, but I still hate to see him go. He was a former #1 draft pick and he never complained about the lack of support behind him (and he sure had every right to do so), never missed his turn, and was a good and decent guy who did a lot of charitable work in the area. I hope that he can have a successful career going forward, although the Cubs may not be all that much better than the Pirates team he is leaving.

Maholm, by the way, was the longest tenured Pirate, a title that now falls to Evan Meek, and I sure would not have guessed that had I not read it in Dejan's blog earlier in the week.

.....the Pirates, again.

You can go to the Pirates website and vote on the "Most Memorable Moment" of the 2011 season. They give you five choices, including the infamous 19 inning loss in the "Jerry Meals Game" in Atlanta. My vote went to the "Mike McKenry Home Run" game against the Cubs. As of last night, anyway, that game was leading in the early voting.

.....the Steelers.

Coming off a season in 2010 where they went to the Super Bowl, the Steelers opted to keep the team together for 2011, including some ageing players, in an effort to take one more shot at getting to the Super Bowl. It made sense, and they can be applauded for loyalty, but, as we all know, that effort fell short in Denver last week. There will need to be some very hard, or maybe not so hard, decisions made in light of that loss. The team needs to get younger, and look for a lot of familiar faces to be gone when the team convenes at St. Vincent's in July.

NFL Predictions - Round Two...and Tim Tebow

2012-01-13T10:55:00.005-05:00

Before attempting to build on my 3-1 record of last week, allow me a word or two on Tim Tebow.

I am much amused by the conversational train heard last evening on The Fan as to whether Steelers Loyalists should root for or against Tim Tebow this weekend against New England. The gist of all Yinzer thought was that (a) we don't like Tebow, because (b) he's a phony and (c) he's getting too much media attention and (d) he's a lousy quarterback who can't throw a perfect spiral and has a lousy completion percentage. To those objections, I offer the following:

(a) Not sure what there is not to like about Tebow. So he's a devout Christian. Good for him and he is no more in-your-face with his beliefs than is, say, Troy Polamalu. If we started making numerous and endless signs-of-the-cross and called it "Polamalu-ing", would that be okay?

(b) So far, Tebow has shown us nothing in his life to make us think that he is anything but the sincere guy he appears to be.

(c) We can agree that he is getting more than his share of media coverage, but it that his fault? Blame the networks for the Tebow saturation, including the gasbags at ESPN who yesterday were promoting a special "Tebow Roundtable" on Sports Center.

(d) Tebow may not be pretty throwing his passes, and if he is not a good quarterback, the NFL will catch up to him. That said, the so-called "lousy quarterback" ripped the Steelers to shreds last week, knocked them out of the playoffs, and left them for dead. Until the Steelers beat Tim Tebow, the Yinzers should just shut up.

Now, the games:

Saints at 49'ers. As you recall, I picked New Orleans to play in the Super Bowl, and nothing I saw last week would cause me to change my mind. I expect that the 49'ers defense will give the Saints a much tougher game than did the Lions last week, but in the end, Drew Brees will be too much. SAINTS to win.

Broncos at Patriots. Ahhhh, yes, the aforementioned Tebow against the Golden Boy, Tom Brady. As I said, the NFL may indeed catch up with Tim Tebow one of these weeks, and the Patriots bring, statistically speaking, one of the poorest defenses in the NFL to the table in this one, so I am not willing to concede that this will be the week that Tebow falters. He may well have yet another good game, like the one he had last week, but I think that Tom Brady will have a better one. PATRIOTS to win this one, but if the Broncos pull this one off, maybe there is something else at work going on here.

Texans at Ravens. The Ravens have shown an ability to lose games against teams that they should beat (Seattle, San Diego), however, they were 8-0 at home this season, and I think that the veteran defense of the Ravens will prevail over rookie T.J. Yates. The Texans were no doubt the winning team from last weekend that was least talked about in all of the post-game analysis, and I think that if there is to be a road team upset this week, it will be Houston that pulls it off. Still, I'm calling a RAVENS win in this one.

Giants at Packers. The Giants could be a classic case of a team that gets hot at the right time and makes a deep run in the playoffs, and Eli Manning is having a great season, but Aaron Rogers has had an other-worldly season. The PACKERS win and avenge that NFC Championship loss to the Giants of three seasons ago.

There you go. As always, watch, but don't bet.

A Day at the Carnegie

2012-01-10T18:28:00.007-05:00

Today we opted to pay a visit to a couple of Pittsburgh's cultural touchstones, the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History to take in two very fascinating exhibits now being featured at these venues.

At the Museum of Art over 1,000 photographs of famous Pittsburgh based photographer Charles "Teenie" Harris are displayed in an exhibit that will visit three other American cities over the next two years. The photos are works of art in their own right, but they can be viewed as historical documents as well. Harris worked mainly for the Pittsburgh Courier as well as a free lance photographer from the early 1940's and into the 1980's. The pictures show the vibrant community that the Hill District was and also shows the decline of that community as well for various and sundry reasons over the course of time. You see famous people like Lena Horne, Joe Louis, and Josh Gibson and ordinary, everyday people as well.

The Museum of Natural History has a large display of the pins and brooches that were worn by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright over the course of her long diplomatic career, with emphasis on her tenure as the Secretary of State. She would always wear such pins to set the tone of her meetings with various world leaders from Kim Jong Il to Yassir Arafat to the Queen of England to Saddam Husein. A beautiful, fascinating, and most interesting exhibit.

It had been a number of years since we had visited the Carnegie out in Oakland. It's a great place, and one admission gets you into both museums. Think about taking in one or both of these exhibits while they are still in town.

Alabama Beats LSU (Yawn)

2012-01-10T09:26:00.002-05:00

When two teams bring a combined record of 24-1 into a game, as Alabama and LSU did last night, it is obvious that these are two teams that definitely do not stink. That said, they produced a game last night that most certainly did stink. Hey, I'm all for great defense, but surely a team that asp[ires to be National Champion would be able to produce a touchdown, or even be able to cross the 50 yard line. Yeah, I know that the Tide did score a touchdown and LSU did finally cross the 50, but both events happened late in the fourth quarter, after I had given up on this snoozer and gone to bed.

Couple of comments:

Maybe this is what you get when you wait seven weeks to play your championship game.

Kudos to Brent Musberger who somehow managed to stay excited during this yawnfest, although I could have used a few less references to the Honey Badger.

Kudos also to Facebook, SABR buddy, and SEC Loyalist Madison McEntire for accusing Nick Saben of running up the score when he kicked a fourth field goal to go up 12-0. Great line.

"I Am Not a Crook."

2012-01-09T11:25:00.002-05:00

Happy 99th Birthday today to our 37th President.

Tebowed!

2012-01-09T11:04:00.002-05:00

Just when it appeared that that the NFL had caught up with Tim Tebow - Denver lost their last three regular season games with Tebow pretty much stinking up the joint - the Steelers and their #1 ranked defense coached by the sainted Dick LeBeau showed up at Mile High and pretty much laid down and died against Tebow and the Broncos yesterday afternoon.

Blame can be spread all around for yesterday's loss to Denver, but the brunt of it falls on the statistically best defense in the league that allowed the statistically worst quarterback in the league to shred it for 316 passing yards on only 10 completions. (Lies, damned lies, and statistics.) And while his teammates said all the usual we-lose-as-a-team cliches afterward, the goat horns for this game fit clearly on the head of Ike Taylor. Ike may have had a great season, but everything was negated in one thoroughly awful performance yesterday.

Here is a phenomenon that I don't understand. Offensive coordinator Bruce Arians will continue to be roasted by critics, and while the offense has much to answer for yesterday, they DID overcome 14 and 10 point deficits in the fourth quarter to force the game into overtime. Defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau will continue to be lionized by the yinzers. Why is that? It was LeBeau's defense that never even gave Ariens' offense a chance to get on the field in the revamped Playoffs OT rules. It was LeBeau's defense that didn't get one sack of Tebow yesterday. Yeah, I know about the injuries, but isn't the standard still the standard?

And speaking of the defense, where was James Harrison yesterday? The only time I heard his name yesterday was when he was called for - surprise! - a personal foul.

So ends a weird season for the Steelers. They sported a 12-4 record that never really felt like it was that good. Perhaps the loss to Denver was merciful, because I don't think a game in New England next week would have been pretty at all.

So, what is it now? 37 days until pitchers and catchers report to Bradenton? Let's go Bucs!

Happy Birthday, Elvis

2012-01-08T11:25:00.004-05:00

Elvis Presley would have been 77 years old today. If you forget what a great performer that he was, click below....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Mh39QclKY0&feature=related

Saints March, Pitt Goes Quietly, New Era in Happy Valley, and Other Thoughts

2012-01-08T10:19:00.005-05:00

Some Football Thoughts halfway through Wildcard Weekend:

Unlike many football fans, I seldom watch any non-Steelers NFL game from start to finish until the playoffs begin. As a result, the only time that I saw the Detroit Lions all season was when they got thumped by Green Bay on Thanksgiving Day. Despite their 45-21 loss to New Orleans last night, I was really impressed by them. I came to three conclusions: (1) Matthew Stafford is really good, (2) Calvin Johnson is really, REALLY good, and (3) unless he is the coach of the team that you root for, Jim Schwartz can be really, really, really irritating.

I thought going into the weekend, that the Lions-Saints game could be the best one of the weekend, and both games today will have a long way to go to top it. With a 24-21 score after three quarters, you might have said the Saints were in control, but you wouldn't have bet the mortgage payment on that, would you? Early in the fourth Stafford made his first big mistake with an interception, and, to use a tasteless metaphor for a New Orleans game, the levees burst wide open from that point forward.

No special insight on my part here, but the Saints look awfully good.

If you are a San Diego Chargers fan, how did you feel watching Drew Brees and Darin Sproles playing for the Saints last night?

Texans beat the Bengals. I missed most of this one, but was anyone really surprised?

While out and about in the car yesterday I listened to Pitt fall behind 21-0 in the first quarter of the Compass Bowl. Thus, a nightmare of a season comes to an end for the football Panthers. In all honesty, I don't know how any of those Pitt players could have had any heart or enthusiasm in playing this game.

Saw Paul Chryst interviewed in the booth on TV during the second half of this game. Good luck to him in building this team up. I hope that everyone will give him the "honeymoon" that Todd Graham said he didn't need.

Attendance at the Compass Bowl was 29,000 and change. Should have felt like a home game for the Panthers.

Staying on the college front, Penn State finally hires its new head coach, Bill O'Brien, currently the offensive coordinator for the New England Patriots. PSU boosters and former players have angrily denounced this hiring. "He has no roots at Penn State," they cry. They want him out before he even coaches a game. (Seriously. Bob Smizik posted a link to some Penn State booster blog that stated this very sentiment.) Seems that the Lions boosters, who haven't had to see their school hire a football coach for the last 45 years now get to do what boosters at every other school get to do every five years or so: act like that hundred dollar check they write to the booster club each year gives them the right to set University athletic policy.

Bill O'Brien may be great head coach. Or he may be a lousy one. There is no way to predict how any new coaching hire will turn out anywhere in Big Time sports, but he certainly brings strong credentials to the position at Happy Valley and seems to deserve the opportunity that he is getting. Lions fans who have watched Rob Bolden and Matt McGloin battle it out for the QB job the last few years should realize that O'Brien has most recently coached a guy named Tom Brady.

I admit that I am an outsider here, but my own thought is that Penn State was probably wise to go with someone who has NOT been associated with the program of recent years.

That said, I do feel bad for Tom Bradley. None of the Sandusky Stink has seemed to brush off on to him, he has served the University loyally for decades, he stepped in as interim coach under the absolute worst possible circumstance and held the team together, and for all that he is now looking for a job. I hope that he lands on his feet somewhere, but his association with the Penn State will probably now end up hurting him in his career. Another victim of the collateral damage done at Penn State over this whole mess.

While I can be supportive and optimistic about the O'Brien hiring at Happy Valley, I have to wonder why it took over two months to fill that position. Somebody is probably going to write a very good book on that subject one of these days.

And on the topic of Tom Brady (I did mention him a few bullets ago), there is a very good article in the current Sports Illustrated about him while he was at the University of Michigan, how he struggled there, and how he battled with super recruit and two-sport star Drew Henson for the QB position while at Ann Arbor. If you now see Brady as the Golden Boy prima donna of the NFL, this story will give you different insight. It also tells an interesting cautionary tale where Drew Henson is concerned. Recommended reading.

To recap, The Grandstander went 2-0 with his Wildcard predictions yesterday. I'm calling for Giants and Steelers wins today.

With each Steelers playoff game, we face the possibility of seeing Hines Ward's final game as a Steeler. Call me a sentimentalist, but I sure would love to see one final big game for Number 86 somewhere during this post-season.

Wild Card Weekend Predictions

2012-01-06T11:33:00.004-05:00

At the Stonebrook Village Men's Brunch yesterday I threw out the following question: what two teams will meet in the Super Bowl? Don't have to pick a winner, but commit to which two teams will be playing. My own choice was an "All-New" Super Bowl - New England vs. New Orleans. The other teams mentioned at the table were various combinations of Baltimore, New England, New Orleans, and Green Bay. When I posed the same question on Facebook last night, I received the same combination of teams (although the Facebookers haven't been exactly flooding the comment box with their predictions). Still plenty of time to respond.

So, it is time for The Grandstander's predictions for Wild Card weekend.

Bengals vs. Texans. Two rookie QB 's face each other in what will no doubt be the least anticipated game of the weekend, which doesn't necessarily mean it won't be a good game. A commitment at church tomorrow night means that I will miss most of this game, and, if you have to miss one, I'll take this one. The Texans beat the Steelers this year (albeit with Matt Schaub at QB) and the Bengals lost twice to the Steelers. And they are, after all, the Cincinnati Bengals, so I call for a Texans win.

Lions vs. New Orleans. The Lions have been the up and coming team this year, and have some good players to watch, so I am looking forward to this game. New Orleans has been a juggernaut, and, as you read above, I think they are going to the Super Bowl. Saints to win tomorrow night.

Falcons vs. Giants. Neither team excites me a lot, and the Giants had to go down to the wire to win a weak division and make the playoffs. When in doubt, take the team with the best QB, and in this game, that is Eli Manning, who has had a great year. Giants win.

Steelers vs. Broncos. Ah, yes, we have to wait until the last game if the weekend for the Big Game. On the face of it, this seems an easy pick, Steelers over Denver. BUT....we all know about the injuries that the Steelers have....Roethlisberger, Pouncy, Mendenhall, Clark....the list goes on. It was obvious watching the Browns game this past week that Ben is most certainly not 100%. Will that be good enough against a good Denver defense? Will Isaac Redman be the running back that all the talk show callers have been calling for all year? How will the injuries beyond Clark in the defensive backfield affect the performance of the team? Lots of questions, but I am thinking that a hobbled defense will still be able to stop Tim Tebow, and that a less than 100% Ben will be good enough to win this one. So, Steelers to win on Sunday.

As a historical point of reference, I went 6-5 in my post season NFL picks last year, which would allow you to barely stay above water, so, as always, watch, but don't bet!

Book Review: "Destiny of the Republic"

2012-01-06T09:20:00.004-05:00

One of my Christmas gifts this year (thank you, Sandy and Gary) was the book pictured at the right, "Destiny of the Republic" by Candice Millard. Sounds kind of dry, doesn't it, but check out the subtitle: "A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President." The book is the story of the assassination of President James Garfield in 1881 by a complete and total loon by the name of Charles Guiteau.

James Garfield is one of those American Presidents who has been pretty much forgotten by history, and part of the story that Millard tells is of Garfield himself. Born in abject poverty, Garfield was a brilliant man whose mother insisted he get an education. That he did, and he did it so well that he became a University president by the age of 26. He reluctantly entered into politics by serving in the Ohio state senate. He was soon after elected to the United States Congress, served as a commander for the Union army in the Civil War, returned to the U.S. Senate where he became a respected member of Congress, a key figure in battling for the rights of freed slaves, and a quasi-important figure in a Republican Party that was deeply split between two warring factions. This factionalism liked to a stalled Republican convention in 1880 that chose Garfield as a compromise candidate on its 36th ballot. Later that year, Garfield was elected as the 20th President of the United States, a job he never sought and didn't particularly want.

Charles Guiteau was a completely delusional person who felt that Garfield should appoint him ambassador to France. The fact that Guiteau was justifiably ignored by everyone in the government led him to the idea that God had intended him to kill the President, and on July 2, 1881, four months into Garfield's Presidency, Guiteau shot Garfield twice, once in the arm, once in the back in a District of Columbia train station.

So, there is the "madness" and the "murder" part of the subtitle, and for the "medicine" part, well, Garfield didn't die that day from his wounds. He survived for two months being treated by doctors who continually probed the President's wounds with their unsterilized fingers and instruments. Garfield didn't actually die from the bullet wounds, but rather from septic poisoning throughout his body, brought on by the doctors who treated him. During this period in medical history, English surgeon Joseph Lister was introducing the concept of sterilization of patients, doctors, and instruments when performing surgery and treating patients. American doctors, including those who treated Garfield, pretty much dismissed these techniques, and those practices might very well have saved Garfield's life.

As for Guiteau, he was tried, convicted, and hanged for the murder of the President.

You meet some pretty interesting people in the course of reading this book. Inventor Alexander Graham Bell, Republican power broker Senator Roscoe Conkling (the John Boehner of his day), Doctor Willard Bliss (docs with god-like complexes are not unique to this century), and Chester Arthur, the Vice-President who succeeded Garfield.

And, of course, there is James Garfield himself. Author Millard will by necessity paint a very glowing and favorable picture of Garfield for the purposes of telling this story. Still, you do wonder when reading about him as to what "might have been" had he survived. His presidency lasted a mere six months so he leaves no great legacy, but for this: his death lead to sweeping reforms in the Civil Service laws of the nation. The spoils system that produced a Charles Guiteau was eliminated by these reforms, so perhaps that is a pretty good legacy to leave behind.

A very good book for Presidential history buffs and assassination buffs as well.

Happy Birthday, Diane Keaton

2012-01-05T10:01:00.006-05:00

Whether as Kay Corleone, Annie Hall, a hot-model-of-a-certain-age for Chicos, or the star of countless other movies, Happy 66th Birthday today to one of my favorite actresses, Diane Keaton!

The NFL - Looking Back and Looking Ahead

2012-01-03T11:05:00.003-05:00

In my preview of the NFL in this space last September 9, I wrote the following:

In the AFC, the Steelers, Patriots, Jets, Ravens, and maybe the Chargers are all going to be pretty good. Also, with Peyton Manning out for up to three months, the Texans might finally sneak into the playoffs.

In the NFC, the Packers, Falcons, Eagles, and Saints are all going to be good.From those ten teams listed above, the two Super Bowl participants will emerge. There you have it, and that's as far out on a limb as I am gong to go. If you want more than that, read Peter King!

Here are a few more predictions: The Lions are a dark horse in the NFC, and could sneak in as a wild card.

The Bengals, Browns, Bears and Redskins will all stink.

Phillip Rivers will receive accolades galore but the Chargers will still not make it past the first round of the playoffs.

So, okay, I was right on the Ravens, Steelers, Patriots, Saints, Falcons, and Packers, and I still think that the two Super Bowl participants will come from among those teams.

I also had both the Lions and Texans as playoff teams.

I was wrong on the Eagles and Jets, both of whom failed to make the playoffs. So much for the Philly "Dream Team", and don't we all just feel so bad about Rex Ryan not being on stage for the playoffs. Won't be surprised if some network hires him on as a guest expert commentator for the playoffs, though.

I was wrong on the Bengals, who made the playoffs, and right about the Bears and Redskins, who did, indeed, stink.

I was right and wrong about the Chargers. Philip Rivers continues to get love from everyone, but the Chargers weren't very good and failed to make the playoffs.

And I never saw the 49'ers coming!

Later this week, I will make my calls on this weekend's playoff games.

Football Bowl Thoughts

2012-01-02T22:15:00.003-05:00

As halftime of the Fiesta Bowl approaches with the score now tied at 21, a few thoughts on what has transpired today.

Full disclosure: I watched most of the Penn State game, the fourth quarter of the Rose Bowl (The Grandaddy of Them All), and have been watching the Fiesta Bowl while reading a book.

Didn't watch any of the other games.

So, here are my thoughts.

**How did Penn State manage to win nine games this year? They looked slow, plodding and unimaginative against Houston today.

**I can't imagine any team to be as glad that a season is over as Penn State must be tonight.

**I found myself feeling bad for Tom Bradley today. The guy's life dream has no doubt been to be the head coach at Penn State. He gets the job this year under the most unimaginable of circumstances and because of those circumstances, he will no doubt soon be dismissed by PSU, and find himself almost unhireable by any other school.

**Apparently, I should have watched all of the Rose Bowl (The Grandaddy of Them All) because that was quite an offensive show the Badgers and Ducks put on. However, did anybody else have trouble actually SEEING the Oregon players in the green uniforms against the green grass?

**Stanford and Oklahoma State are putting on quite a show. Am enjoying watching the presumptive #1 draft pick Andrew Luck playing. He looks pretty good. Now, we will spend the next three months hearing the draft geeks saying what is wrong with him. Poor arm angle, slow feet, bad vertical leap...all the crap that you always hear from the people who said that Jeff George was going to be a Hall of Famer and that Ryan Leaf was a better pick than Peyton Manning.

**As for that beard that Luck wears, it's pretty scraggly. If you can't grow a good beard, the don't grow one at all, Andy.

Not sure if I'll be up until the end of this one or not, but I'll give it a shot and see where it leads.

"We Bought A Zoo" and Other Topics

2012-01-01T10:56:00.004-05:00

Happy New Year, everyone!

I shall kick off 2012 with a very brief review of our New Year's Eve Date Movie: "We Bought A Zoo", directed by Cameron Crowe and starring Matt Damon and Scarlet Johanssen, both of whom were delightful. Very engaging family movie about a young widower with two kids who, in attempt to start over, quits his job and buys a zoo. Yeah, it's fluffy, you can see what's coming, and it will never win any awards, but you can't not like this movie. We thought it would be a light, enjoyable movie, but we both liked it much more than we expected.

A word about two of the supporting actors. Seven year old Maggie Elizabeth Jones, who plays Damon's daughter, just might be the cutest little girl you've ever seen on a movie screen. Thomas Haden Church plays Damon's brother, and he is very much like the character he played in "Sideways", which means he's quite funny.

Good movie.

*****
We came home and proceeded to watch five episodes from Season Four of "Mad Men." Great show. In fact, soon after I finish this blog entry, we will watch two more episodes, and that will wrap up Season Four for us.

*****
Much is at stake for the Pittsburgh Steelers as they take on the Browns on the lakefront this afternoon while the Bengals take on the Ravens in Cincy. The guess here is that the Steelers will hold serve and beat the Browns while the Bengals will be, well, the Bengals and lose to the Ravens, which means a wild card spot, no bye week, and a road playoff game next week for the Black & Gold. Well, the Steelers made this particular bed in losing both games, particularly the second one, against Baltimore. We shall see what happens.

*****
Two huge events await us in 2012.

It's an Olympic Year. No doubt the Games of London will be marvelous spectacle and great fun to watch. Someone who we currently do not even know exists will no doubt become a breakout star during these games. Whom will it be? Man? Woman? American? Asian? European? Someone from some small third world country? The fun will be in watching it unfold.

It's a Presidential Election Year. As has been my policy from the beginning, The Grandstander shall eschew politics in this space, as I prefer to concentrate on fun stuff and not the bitterness and anger that is so prevalent these days. All I will say now is that I hope that this can proceed as an exercise in an almost sacred right of democratic process as envisioned by the Constitution of the United States. Sadly, I fear that it will be a months long exhibition of ugliness among the various participants, and, in one of the lesser developments of the 21st Century, and avalanche of chain emails that purport to be funny, but are really their own exercise of hatefulness. I don't think this is what Washington, Jefferson, Adams and the rest of the founding Fathers had in mind.

*****
Have you noticed that The Grandstander now has a logo? What took me so long?

*****
All that aside, nothing but cheer, prosperity, good health, and happiness to all Loyal Readers in 2012!

TO ALL LOYAL READERS.......

2011-12-31T09:38:00.003-05:00

Happy New Year, one an all...and please celebrate responsibly!

By the way, this happens to be The Grandstander's 600th posting. How appropriate! Thank you all for being here these past two years.

Happy Birthday, Sandy Koufax

2011-12-30T20:39:00.003-05:00

76 years young today....

Movie Review: "The Great Escape"

2011-12-30T19:23:00.003-05:00

My Christmas present this year came from our good friends Dave and Judy Jones was a DVD of the 1963 movie, "The Great Escape" that starred Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, and the proverbial cast of thousands, and directed by John Sturges. This movie has become a bit of a standing joke between the Joneses and us because they always quote their son Mike who once said of this movie: "The Great Escape. What was so great about it? Only three guys actually escaped."

So, we all got a laugh out of it when we exchanged gifts, but I was more than happy to receive it. I can recall seeing this movie in the theater when it came out in 1963. I would have been in seventh grade, and I no doubt probably didn't get much of the movie at the time. I do not believe that I had ever seen the movie again from start to finish in the 48 years that have passed, and I was anxious to watch it once more.

Well, I did watch this movie yesterday, and I enjoyed it very much. It has held up remarkably well over the past 48 years. So much so, that I have no doubt that an average teenager in what will soon be 2012 would enjoy it every bit as much as audiences did back in 1963.

The movie is based upon actual events that took place at a German POW camp in Poland during World War II. British and American POW's undertake an immense escape attempt that would involve over 250 prisoners escaping in one night. Well, as you can gather from Mike Jones' comment above, not all of them make it, but they do succeed in one very important goal - to disrupt and distract the German forces enough so that they have to track down these escapees, thus preventing the Nazis from actually concentrating on fighting the war. In that goal, they were most successful. (The accompanying documentary on the DVD talks about this aspect of the escape.)

Good performances by James Garner, Richard Attenborough, James Coburn, Charles Bronson and many others. As the years have gone by, this movie is probably most remembered for Steve McQueen bouncing a baseball against the wall of the "cooler" and escaping from half the German army on a motorcycle. McQueen is OK in the movie, I suppose, but I have come to the conclusion after seeing this movie and a couple of others over the past year or so, that McQueen, a huge star in the 60's and 70's and the absolute epitome of "cool" during that time, is way overrated in the memories of moviegoers. I watch him in some of these supposedly great roles of his, and all I can think of are about half a dozen actors, both contemporaries of his and current day actors, who were and are much, much better. In this very movie, James Garner is a perfect example of this hypothesis.

Be that as it may, if you've never seen "The Great Escape", or if it has been many years since you have seen it, give it a shot. I do not think that you will be disappointed.

And the New Year's Eve Movie Will Be......

2011-12-30T13:26:00.002-05:00

Thanks to those Facebook Friends who gave suggestions for what movie we will see for our traditional New Year's Eve movie date. All were considered and we decided against these suggestions:

The Sherlock Holmes movie. While I am a fan of both Holmes and Robert Downey Jr., the movie that came out two years ago was so over the top, that I couldn't get through it, so I am not so keen on seeing this one. Perhaps when it hits the Redbox.

Mission Impossible. Liked the first Tom Cruise MI movie, but the sequel was so convoluted that I have no desire to see this one. No disrespect to the Otts and the Materas intended.

War Horse. This is one that we do want to see, but we were forewarned to bring tissues. Big Poppy advises that Mrs. Big Poppy was a "blubbery mess" watching this one. Mrs. Grandstander wants no parts of crying on New Year's Eve.

While we usually enjoy a nice romantic comedy on the night (although not always; one year we saw "Titanic", and watching 1,500 people die in a shipwreck is no RomCom!), the one that is out there now, "New Year's Eve", has been universally panned by everyone, so forget that. Likewise, I am thinking that "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" might be more intense than what we want to take in tomorrow.

So, we have decided that this year's New Year's Eve Date Movie will be.......

"We Bought a Zoo" starring Matt Damon and Scarlett Johansson (what's not to like with those two, right?). Friends of ours gave this a thumbs up and while it looks like it will probably not be heard from come Academy Award night, it looks to be the light touch that we look for each New Year's Eve.

Of course, you will hear all about it come the Sunday.

To Absent Friends - Cheetah?

2011-12-29T10:35:00.003-05:00

So I see an item on Facebook yesterday giving the news of the death of Cheetah, the chimpanzee who was in the Tarzan movies with Johnny Wiesmuller back in the 1930's. Cheetah died while a resident at a primate rescue center in Florida. Cheetah was thought to be 80 years old. Who had any idea that chimps lived that long? I sure didn't. Bummer, I thought, that this news arrived two days after I did my Absent Friends recap for 2011.

Today's paper brings word that there is some question as the whether or not the chimp who died was actually the Cheetah of the silver screen. What a shame that this star's death has to be shrouded in confusion and controversy. Must there always be a murky end when a great star passes?

Anyway, we all wish Cheetah a happy afterlife in that great jungle in the sky.

The Absent Friends of 2011

2011-12-27T10:04:00.004-05:00

Often throughout the past year I have noted the passing of notable people. So often, in fact, that one Loyal Reader began calling this "The Obituary Blog." Be that as it may, I began calling these features "To Absent Friends", and I admit to shamelessly stealing this phrase from the late, great sportswriter, Red Smith.

As 2011 draws to a close, one final salute to all the Absent Friends noted during these last 12 months:

Anne Francis
Cookie Gilchrist
Doug Hoerth
Woodie Fryman
Chuck Tanner
Gino Cimoli
Len "Uncle Leo" Lesser
Duke Snider
Suze Rotolo
Elizabeth Taylor
Larry Shepard
Lynn Chadnois
Madame Nhu
Kenny, The Lemonade Guy
Harmon Killebrew
John Henry Johnson
Clarence Clemons
Peter Falk
Sherwood Schwartz
Alvin Rue
Jerry Leiber
Steve Jobs
Matty Alou
Andy Rooney
Joe Frazier
Harry Morgan

RIP, All.

Garbage Disposal Update - Good News

2011-12-26T16:43:00.002-05:00

Some good news to report to you. After receiving a note on Facebook this morning about the plight of our busted garbage disposal, I decided to take one more shot at doing what the instruction manual advises. This involves using an Allen Wrench type gadget and hitting a reset button that is on the bottom of the unit. Trust me, this procedure was tried on two occasions last night to no avail. However, after giving it one more try this morning, lo and behold, the disposal began to grind away as normal. Hooray!!

There is an expression in baseball that sometimes the best trades are the ones you do not make. Similarly, sometimes the best money you receive is the money that you do not spend. So, the money that we did not spend at Lowe's this morning or on a plumber later in the week now remains in our coffers.

Nice.

(With thanks to Bob Mill for providing the impetus to give it just one more try!)

Some Things That Didn't Go Right This Christmas

2011-12-26T10:27:00.002-05:00

OK, I don't want anyone to deduce from the title of this post that Christmas 2011 was a bummer for us. It most definitely was not. As always, good times were had with family and friends, and I sincerely hope that all of you can say the same.

However, even the most idyllic of Norman Rockwell moments can have several Clark Griswold moments mixed among them, and here are four such moments of ours in order of occurrence.

Christmas Eve morning. Went to take a photo of the Stonebrook folks setting up the luminaries only to discover that our camera had ceased to function. After determining that it was not the battery, I departed for a trip into the belly of the beast: Target at 12:30 in the afternoon on Christmas Eve. Purchased a new camera for a most reasonable price and felt lucky to get one since Target's camera stock had been seriously depleted by that point.

Christmas morning. Marilyn discovers that her hairdryer, without any advance warning, is now, like Jacob Marley, as dead as a doornail. Fortunately, she did have a back-up in the spare bathroom. Good thing since Target was closed on Christmas Day!

Christmas afternoon. The toilet in the guest bathroom will not flush. Yuck! So, literally as he was about to carve the turkey, Clark Griswold, played by Yours Truly, retrieves the plumber's helper from the garage, crosses his fingers as he applies plunger to commode and gets the toilet to flush successfully! Crises averted. After thoroughly washing hands, the turkey then gets carved. Barely skipped a beat, and some people in the house didn't even realize what had just happened.

Christmas night. The guests have all departed, most of the clean-up had been done, and we discover that the garbage disposal no longer works. The good news is that it had worked all day long when it was most needed. Bad news, of course, is that a trip to Lowe's for a new garbage disposal, not to mention a visit from the plumber, is in our immediate future.

As Dean Martin put it, memories are made of this.

TO ALL LOYAL READERS.......

2011-12-23T08:21:00.002-05:00

Thank you for visiting The Grandstand!

2011 Books in Review

2011-12-22T13:53:00.002-05:00

So far in 2011 I have read 48 books. Yes, I actually keep track of these things! Many of them I have written about in this blog over the past 12 months, but as people are wont to do at year end, I thought I would list my favorite ones for you in case you are looking for a last minute Christmas gift, or just want a good read in the down time between Christmas Day and New Year's Day. There are 15 titles in my Top Ten list. (I am currently in the middle of book #49, but it would not have made this list even if I had already finished it.)

In no special order of preference......

Non-Fiction:

"Bloody Crimes, the Chase for Jefferson Davis and Death Pageant for Lincoln's Corpse" by James L. Swanson. The title kind of describes the book. Good stuff for history buffs.

"Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand. The unbelievable story of the wartime ordeal of Olympic athlete Louis Zamperini and his unbelievable recovery. Any story about man's inhumanity to man makes for difficult reading, but this is so well written and such an amazing story, that it is well worth it.

"56, Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports" by Kostya Kennedy. Even if you think there isn't anything more to learn about Joltin' Joe's 56 game hitting streak, this is well worth reading. Kennedy intersperses the book with the viewpoints of current day ballplayers, including Pete Rose, that put the enormity of The Streak into great perspective.

"Rawhide Down, The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan" by Del Quentin Wilber. This story of the attempt on the President's life in 1981 reads like a best selling fiction thriller.

"In The Garden of Beasts" by Erik Larson. The story of the man -and his family - whom FDR appointed as Ambassador to Germany in 1933 as Hitler and the Nazis were coming into power. Book proves that truth can be better than fiction.

"Nobody's Perfect - Billy Wilder, A Personal Biography" by Charlotte Chandler. This is an older book. You'll probably have to go to a library to find it, but if you are a movie fan, it's a must read about one of Hollywood's greatest screenwriters and directors.

"Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure" by Matthew Algeo. Shortly after he left the White House, Harry Truman and his wife drove from Missouri to New York and back - by themselves! No entourage, so security, just a couple of retirees on a solitary road trip. Fascinating look at an America that, for the most part, doesn't exist anymore, and a study into how the institution of the "Ex-Presidency" has evolved over the last 60 years.

"Hound Dog, the Leiber and Stoller Autobiography" by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Like the Wilder book, this is an older book by two of the absolute giants of American rock and roll songwriting.

"Stan Musial, An American Life" by George Vecsey. Great book that captures the life and times of perhaps the most overlooked great ballplayer of all time.

"Bottom of the 33rd" by Dan Barry. The story of the men who played in and surrounded the longest game in professional baseball history, a 33 inning contest between the Rochester Red Wings and Pawtuckett Red Sox in 1981. It is about so much more than baseball.

Fiction:

"Mystery" by Jonathan Kellerman. Any new entry in the Alex Delaware series will always make my list. And I understand that there will be another one coming in early 2012.

"The Confession" by John Grisham. An innocent man is about to be executed. The actual killer wants to prevent it. Will he be able to do it with the help of a young minister and the attorney of the convicted killer? A can't-put-it-down page turner in the best Grisham tradition.

"Buried Prey" and "Shock Wave" by John Sandford. Am including these latest Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers, respectively, novels as an entry. What a bonus to have Sandford put out two novels in one year.

"V is for Vengeance" by Sue Grafton. The latest in Grafton's "alphabet books" featuring PI Kinsey Millhone. Maybe not the best of the series, but a solid effort nonetheless, and when you've read A through U, you just have to put the newest one on the year end list.

There you go. The Grandstander will keep readin' and keep writin' about 'em in 2012!

Pitt Gets Its Man...Again

2011-12-22T12:14:00.003-05:00

It has been announced by the University of Pittsburgh that their next head football coach will be University of Wisconsin offensive coordinator Paul Chryst. There will be a formal news conference this afternoon at 3:00 to introduce the new coach.

Chryst seems to have the background and the resume to make him more than qualified to earn the position, however, if we have learned anything from Pitt over the last 12 months, it is not to get too excited over a coaching hire. (In case you've lost track, Chryst will be Pitt's SIXTH head coach, counting interims, since last December.)

So, let us all wish the new coach good luck and much success with the Panthers. It is said that he is a low key guy and not a spell-binder when it comes to speaking. Chuck Noll was pretty dull, and Todd Graham was a veritable orator, and we know how both of those guys worked out.

I will also be very interested to see what kind of pre-season publicity campaign the Pitt Ministry of Sports Propaganda will pump out next spring and summer. I'm guessing that there will not be a special website as there was last year.

*****
Pitt is to be commended for moving quickly after the Graham debacle, hiring Chryst eight days after Graham slithered off into the desert. At the same time Penn State is now in its sixth week of trying to find a successor to Joe Paterno. There could be reasons for that, including that Penn State has become so toxic that no one wants the job, but I was struck by a quote from someone on the PSU coaching search committee to the effect that they do things differently at Penn State, and that they aren't going to rush into hiring a guy quickly just because every other school does. It seems that hubris is still a quality very much present at Happy Valley.

Early Christmas Gift from San Diego

2011-12-19T08:32:00.003-05:00

Well, as the title suggests, the Steelers get an absolute gift from San Diego last night as the Chargers open up a big old can of Whoopass on the Ravens. Now, the Steelers can win out and not only win the AFC North, but secure the #1 seed in the AFC. Who'd have believed it?

This now raises a huge question for Rooney U: to play or not play the hobbled Ben Roethlisberger tonight against the 49'ers? Here are the possibilities, as I see it:

Ben plays, avoids further injury, Steelers win. Best possible outcome.

Ben plays, avoids further injury, Steelers lose. Hey, it can happen, the 49'ers are a pretty good team.

Ben sits, Steelers win. Not likely.

Ben sits, Steelers lose. Right back where we were prior to the Ravens choke job of last night.

Ben plays, Steelers win OR lose, Ben aggravates injury and is lost for rest of the season. Worst possible outcome.

Making a decision like this is why Mike Tomlin makes the big bucks.

My own guess is that Ben plays tonight, and we all keep our fingers crossed.

Good-bye and Good Riddance

2011-12-15T10:08:00.003-05:00

Obviously, the title of this post refers to the departed Pitt football coach Todd Graham, or, as he has been called in the cyber world these past 18 hours or so, Fraud Graham, or Toad Graham, or...well, you get the idea.

I will admit, before any of you might point it out to me, that I liked Graham at the start. I liked his hype and enthusiasm (while acknowledging that it could blow up in his face it the team played lousy, both of which occurred). I also knew that he was peddling a brand of snake oil that just about every college coach tries to sell, and I knew that based on his track record, he was never going to be at Pitt for the long haul. I figured a couple of winning seasons at Pitt and he was gone to whatever more prestigious SEC or Big 12 school that came calling. I also didn't like how poorly the team played, how he deflected criticism away from himself, and how he hung his players, Tino Sunseri in particular, out to dry.

All that said, the by now well documented manner and speed in which Graham has abandoned Pitt and his players has set new records for lowering the bar in an already sleazy world of college athletics. Graham is getting roasted in print, on the airwaves, in the blogosphere, in the Twitter-verse, and in other places with which I am no doubt unaware. All such roasting is well deserved.

The irony is that Steve Pederson - if he survives as Pitt AD, and a strong case can be made that he should not - is about to lead Pitt on a mission that will no doubt end up with some other coach under contract to some other university jumping his contract and abandoning his school and players, just as Graham did to Pitt.

And you know what will happen then? People will be hailing this as a "great hire" by Pitt.

And Sonny Bono will once again be hailed as a prophet because the beat will go on.

Oh, and to any Arizona State fans out there, good luck. When the 2012 season opens with Graham on your sideline, he will be coaching his fourth team in five seasons. He'll probably be gone by the time 2015 rolls around, and I'm being very generous with that guess.

Book Review: "Bottom of the 33rd"

2011-12-14T09:32:00.003-05:00

Shortly after 8:00 PM on April 18, 1981, the night before Easter Sunday, in Pawtucket, RI, the Rochester Red Wings and Pawtucket Red Sox squared off in what everyone thought was just another insignificant early season Triple-A minor league baseball game. About 1,700 fans showed up on this cold and windy night in decrepit McCoy Stadium, little knowing what they were in for.

Over eight hours and 32 innings later, the 2-2 ball game was suspended (why it took so long to suspend the game, is a key part of the story), long after it has passed into history as professional baseball's longest game. Two months, one inning, and 18 minutes later, the game was completed. Dan Barry writes a compelling story about "Hope, Redemption, and Baseball's Longest Game." It is not a dry play-by-play summary of the game, and thank God for that, but it is the story of all of the people who were involved in that game - the players, managers, bat boys, front office officials, club house boys, umpires, players' wives, broadcasters and reporters, and the 28 shivering fans who remained in the stadium when the came was finally suspended. The reader becomes involved with these people and becomes drawn into the surreal atmosphere that surrounded this game.

What I liked about the book is how Barry told the story of these men by reviewing both their pasts and what the future held for them. For example, three teammates on that Pawtucket team were pitchers Bobby Ojeda, Bruce Hurst, and catcher Rich Gedman. Five years later, all three played in the 1986 World Series. Baseball fans all know of the crushing nature of the Red Sox loss to the Mets in that Series, and the scene where the Sox' Hurst and Gedman went to the Mets locker room to congratulate Ojeda, now a Met, painted a most poignant scene of the bond created, not only by the 33 inning game, but by minor league experience itself.

Two future Hall of Famers played in that game Cal Ripken, Jr. (2-for-13) for Rochester and Wade Boggs (4-for 12) for Pawtucket. Players like Hurst, Gedman, Ojeda, and Marty Barrett went on to have good major league careers. Some appeared in the majors for the proverbial cup of coffee, while others never got the coveted call to The Show. One player went 0-for-13 for Rochester and one went 0-for-11 for Pawtucket. One pitcher pitched 10 innings of scoreless ball in relief. And for all you Pirates fans out there, the father of current Bucs' reliever Jason Grilli, Steve Grilli, pitched in that game.

One thing that impressed me above all else is how HARD it is to make it into the Major Leagues. This is embodied in one of the key persons of the game, Pawtucket first baseman Dave Koza. Koza was a home run hitter with one fatal flaw - he could not hit a major league curve ball. How he dedicated his life to become a big league ball player, how that call never came, and what has happened to him in the thirty years since that 33 inning game is an almost Shakespearean tale. So, when you are watching a major league baseball game, and screaming that So-and-So out there on the field stinks, be very sure that the guy you are excoriating is a very good baseball player.

(As an aside, when I read about Dave Koza, I thought about Matt Hague, the first baseman at Indianapolis who hit a lot of home runs last year and for whom many Pirates fans have been clamoring. Hague didn't get the September call up by the Pirates last year, and he is barely mentioned by the team in the pre-season ruminations. Perhaps there is a good reason for that.)

I imagine that only baseball fans will read this book, and that's a shame, because it really is about a lot more than baseball. It is a great read for everybody.

Many thanks to two Loyal Readers, both named Bill, for recommending this book too me!

Short Subjects: NA Strings, Casey at the Bat, Baseball Thoughts, and James Harrison

2011-12-13T11:41:00.005-05:00

Selected Short Subjects.....

We had ourselves a real treat this past Monday evening when we attended the North Allegheny Orchestra's Winter Concert. The concert featured the NA 9th grade, 10th grade, and Senior Orchestras and closed with a performance by the NA "Golden Strolling Strings." We have heard for years about the Strolling Strings, but last night was the first time that we had seen them. I said last night that their performance was breathtaking and that it left you speechless, so I will not even try to put into words how terrific it was. Amazing performances by a group of amazingly talented kids.

The North Allegheny School District is to be commended for its promotion and support of The Arts among its students. Too bad that these kids don't get the publicity that the football team gets.

Oh, and special kudos to niece and Goddaughter Monica Pike, ninth grade violinist extraordinaire!!

*****

Yesterday afternoon we also took in the new Martin Scorsese movie, "Hugo." If you are a Scorsese fan, don't go expecting another Raging Bull, Goodfellas, or The Departed. Do expect to see a rather engaging family movie that tells a very cute story about fitting in and what your life's purpose might be. Do expect a loving tribute to the movies, particularly the very earliest days of the movie art. Do expect some amazing visual shots. (Such visuals would be enhanced by seeing the 3D version of this, which we did not, due to the fact that 3D was not available at the dumpy Rave Cinema on McKnight Road.)

This is another movie that had garnered some Oscar buzz and has already been named to many Top Ten lists. It will probably win lots of technical awards, and Scorsese's name might carry it far during the Awards season. Good movie , but I don't put it ahead of "The Descendants."

*****
The Pirates are in the news with the announcement of the trade of the ulcer-inducing Jose Veras to Milwaukee for infielder/outfielder Casey McGehee. On the face of it, I like it. After all, who's going to miss Veras? McGehee has been a pretty good hitter over the years, but the red flag comes up when you see how his numbers have declined over each of the last three seasons, particularly in 2011. Still, he provides insurance, certainly better than anything currently available to them, at third base in the event that Pedro Alvarez' 2011 flame out continues into 2012.

*****
Speaking of the Brewers, Ryan Braun gives us yet another reason to dislike him with the news of his positive test for PED's. It's gonna be a different Brew Crew without Prince Fielder and without Cryin' Ryan for 50 games next year. What a shame.

*****
One more comment on Albert Pujols. If ever a perfect situation existed, it seemed that marriage of Pujols to the baseball-mad city of St. Louis seemed to be it. I naively never imagined that Pujols wold ever leave St. Louis. Another case where, as it always is, it was all about the money. It's the only way that these guys keep score. The ONLY way.

I am guessing that $210 million in St. Louis would have bought Albert a whole lot more than $250 million will buy him in Los Angeles/Anahiem, but, as I say, that's not how these guys keep score.

*****
If Pujols manages to help the Angels win a World Series or two over the next five or six years, perhaps Arte Moreno won't mind paying a 40+ year old Pujols $25 million a season at the end of that contract.

*****
If you had any hope at all of the Pirates keeping Andrew McCutchen or Neil Walker over the long haul, I am guessing that, like me, you have been disabused of that notion after (a) the terms of the recently agreed to CBA, and (b) this latest wave of free agent signings in baseball.

*****
Looks like the NFL has handed down a one game suspension to James Harrison for his illegal hit on Colt McCoy last week. I am going to avoid the talk shows today, because I am sure that the Yinzers of SteelersNation will be up in arms. All I can say is that if James Harrison played for any other NFL team, particularly, Baltimore, Cleveland, or Cincinnati, he would be the most hated man in the city of Pittsburgh. He's a great football player, but he got what he deserved today.

DK on Pujols

2011-12-09T09:40:00.003-05:00

Rather that try to paraphrase, I will just cut & paste from Dejan Kovacevic's blog in this morning's Trib on line. It summarizes my feelings exactly.

Take it away, DK.....

>> St. Louis and its Cardinals do everything right by baseball. The city and its fans fill the stadium night after night, the ownership pays for a way-above-market payroll in a metropolitan area the size of Pittsburgh. But the Cardinals can’t keep the best player in the game.

Albert Pujols is an Angel.

And really, if you want a good feel for how little this fazes the national baseball media, good luck finding one outrage-type piece anywhere outside St. Louis this morning. If you see one, please link it here. I haven’t seen any. All I saw were how great this was for the Angels, the balance of power in the AL West, and all that. Everything’s great. This is just how it is in baseball.

>> This isn’t just the Cardinals’ loss. Even if you didn’t like what Pujols did to the Pirates, any pure baseball fan surely enjoyed seeing him play on the North Shore nearly a dozen times every summer. No one ever will do to PNC Park what Pujols did, with a .376 average and 29 home runs in just 89 games.

>> Pujols is to blame, too. He had a chance for a one-of-a-kind legacy with one team, and he chose 10 years and $250 million over 10 years and $210 million. That’s greed of a scope that’s hard to comprehend.

Halftime at the Super Bowl

2011-12-08T11:14:00.004-05:00

The National Football League announced this week that the halftime entertainment at the upcoming Super Bowl will be Madonna.

In making this announcement, the NFL has upheld one of their most sacred traditions in choosing the Halftime Show for their Showcase Event: A 50-something rocker who is at least 25 years past his, or in this case, her, prime. Really, didn't Madonna peak in the late 80's?

I will say this, though. The last female entertainer that I remember performing at the Super Bowl was Janet Jackson, and we all remember how THAT turned out, right? If anyone might be able to top Ms. Jackson's performance, it would be Madonna looking to be totally outrageous in trying to jump start her career.

Czar Roger might want to rethink this.

Your Very Active Pittsburgh Pirates

2011-12-08T10:37:00.002-05:00

The Pirates continue to make news in this off season by being somewhat active at baseball's winter meetings this week.

The earlier, pre-meeting signings of catcher Rod Barajas and short stop Clint Barmes were supplemented yesterday by the signings of free agent outfielder Nate McLouth and pitcher Eric Bedard. (Still no word on the pursuit of free agent first basemen Albert Pujols or Prince Fielder. Kidding.)

No question that Barajas and Barmes represent a marginal improvement over what manned those positions last year, although Barajas' age, 36, is a concern.

In McLouth, the team brings back a fan favorite, whose trade to the Braves a few years back filled the fan base with outrage. It can be argued in retrospect, that this was an instance where the team knew what they were doing. McLouth never had a season in Atlanta like the one he had here in 2008 (26 HR, 94 RBI, and a Gold Glove), and the Pirates did obtain Charlie Morton, Jeff Locke, and Gorkys Hernandez. Morton had a good year last year, although we still await Locke and Hernandez to do anything on the major league level. In his projected role of fourth outfielder and pinch hitter, he should be okay.

The Eric Bedard signing is one that I think I like. A lefthanded pitcher, Bedard sports a 56-50, 3.70 ERA lifetime record. More important to the Pirates, a cynic might point out, Bedard will come at half the salary Paul Maholm would have cost the team had they picked up his option. And there is a red flag attached to Bedard, and that is frequent trips to the disabled list over the years. He is, a cynic would again point out, a good #3 or #4 starter on a staff that is filled with #3 and #4 starters. Still, if he can stay healthy, and if the team can score runs for him, two pretty big "ifs", Bedard could be a very nice addition to the Pirates.

The four players listed above do make the Pirates a somewhat better team than they were in 2011. Unfortunately, the key word in that sentence is "somewhat." Marginal improvement won't make a sub-.500 team a contender, and may not even make them an above .500 team, but as we all know, a .500 record is not the goal for the Pirates. Championships are!

In other Pirates news....

Derrek Lee rejects arbitration and will test the free agent market. Looks like the Pirates option at 1B next year will be a platoon of Garrett Jones and an as yet to be determined right handed batting first basemen scrapped from the bottom of the free agent barrel or some suspect now toiling in the Pirates minor league system. Maybe they can bring back Bob Robertson. I hear that he tears it up at Fantasy Camp every year, and they can probably get him for the minimum salary.

The team releases pitcher Ross Ohlendorf. Given what Ross did to the team in arbitration last year and his lousy performance in both 2010 and 2011, this might be the least surprising personnel move in recent Bucco history.

The team is making inquiries for a veteran third baseman just in case Pedro Alvarez' struggles of 2011 continue into 2012. Just as Alvarez' horrible season was the biggest story for the team, in my opinion, last season, the specter of what Alvarez might or might not do in 2012 remains the most important factor that will determine the success or failure of the team in 2012.

To Absent Friends - Harry Morgan

2011-12-08T10:24:00.003-05:00

Harry Morgan passed away yesterday at the age of 96. A long-time veteran character actor, Morgan is probably best known for playing Col. Sherman Potter on the classic TV series "M*A*S*H", and who would want a starring role on that series as their epitaph?

However, if you a somewhat older, you remember him as Detective Sgt. Bill Gannon, Joe Friday's sidekick on the 1960's revival of "Dragnet." If you are older than that, you remember him on the early 60's sitcom, "Pete and Gladys", and if you are even older than that, you remember him as a character on the 1950's sitcom, "December Bride." And if you are either a fan of Turner Classic Movies or are just really, really old, you know Morgan as an actor who appeared in over 100 movies in his career. Watch old movies on TCM often enough and you will probably see Morgan at least once a week. He played a key role in the all-time classic western, "High Noon." He also appeared as a regular in several other TV series, some of which I never heard of, after MASH finished it's run in 1983.

The point is, Morgan was a lot more than just the one role for which he will be forever remembered. You've seen him a million times, and it seemed that he was always good in anything that he did.

RIP Harry Morgan.

Book Review: "V is for Vengeance"

2011-12-07T09:07:00.003-05:00

One of my favorite series of fictional detective stories is Sue Grafton's "alphabet series" of novels featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone. The series began back in the early 1980's with "A is for Alibi" and has proceeded along alphabetically up to the just released "V is for Vengeance."

One of the neat things about this series is that the characters have aged in real time. The series began in the early '80s (1983, I believe), when Kinsey was in her early thirties. This current story takes place in 1988 and Kinsey celebrates (sort of) her 38th birthday in this one. Because these stories are still in the 1980's, there are no cell phones, office computers are rare, there is no Internet. This differs from many series where characters that might have sprung to life in the 1950's and 60's remain forever young while still operating in the 2000's.

I have read all of these stories, A through V, and like any series, some are better than others. Recent stories - "T is for Trespass" and "U is for Undertow" - have been among the very best of the series, however, so Grafton seems to get better with age. The stories are all written in the first person with Kinsey narrating the tale. However, in some of the later books, Grafton has interspersed chapters written in the third person and told from other characters' points of view. This device has served to make the stories better, I believe, and is used once again in "V", and one of the chapters is told in the third person while the character is interacting with Kinsey, which I believe is a first for the series. It is the first time that I can recall another character describing Kinsey.

This story begins innocently enough with Kinsey inadvertently witnessing a shoplifter while she herself is shopping. This leads to murder, interaction with organized crime, a crooked cop, and a rather unusual romantic tale. You also learn a lot about shoplifting and just how big a business it is.

While "V for Vengeance" may not rank as highly as some of the other entries in the series, I grade it a solid B.

Grafton has announced that she will continue the series through the letter Z. That means four more books, with "Z is for Zero" arriving sometime in the late 2010's with Kinsey at age 40. I look forward to each of them.

Ron Santo

2011-12-07T08:55:00.003-05:00

The Baseball Hall of Fame announced earlier this week that Ron Santo had been elected into the Hall of Fame by whatever incarnation of the Veteran's Committee is currently in place. I have no beef with Santo's enshrinement. I remember him as a player with the Cubs, a very good player, good enough to be a nine time All-Star.

It is too bad that the Vet's committee could not have come to this conclusion one year earlier so that Santo could have lived to experience it.

Santo also achieved a degree of post-playing days fame because of his heart-on-his-sleeve approach as an announcer on the Cubs radio broadcasts. Soundbites of samples of his broadcasts are priceless. No wonder he was so beloved in Chicago.

*****

Gil Hodges once again fell short of enshrinement in this latest vote, and comparison will no doubt be made (and will continue to be made) of Hodges' numbers to Santo's and other contemporaries. My post of a few days back about Hodges caused a flurry of comments when I posted it on Facebook. To be clear, my biggest gripe with the "Gil-Should-Be-In" crowd is not with Hodges per se, but rather with the fact the Hodges would be receiving no where near hype had he played anywhere else but Brooklyn.

On Pitt, High Schools, Rematches, and Herman

2011-12-04T11:16:00.005-05:00

Cleaning out the Mental In-Box.....

Herman Cain bows out of the GOP Presidential race after several revelations of marital infidelity come to light. OK, seeya later, Herm. Newt Gingrich, whose own checkered past regarding how sacred he has held his marital vows is well documented, soars to the top of the polls among GOP voters. What am I missing here?

Congrats to local high schools Montour and North Allegheny for winning their quarter-final games in the PIAA Football Championship tournament. If they win their semi-final game next week, they will advance to the State Championship games in Hershey in two weeks. This means that these HIGH SCHOOLS will have then played 16, count 'em, 16 games during their season, the equivalent of one full NFL regular season, and will finish playing football one week before Christmas. Does anyone besides me find that to be totally absurd?

So the BCS Championship game, which will take place 36 days from now, will be a rematch between LSU and Alabama. You all recall, even though you have probably been trying to forget, that scintillating offensive yawn-a-thon that these two teams played last month, a 9-6 overtime win by LSU. Really, has America been clamoring for a rematch of a game where neither team scored a touchdown? Will anyone outside of Baton Rouge and Tuscaloosa even care about this game five weeks from now, and after 34 other meaningless bowl games have been played?

And now, a word about Pitt Football....

Todd Graham became head coach at Pitt last winter, and spent the entire off-season talking about winning championships, scoring boatloads of points, and pretty much setting the world on fire. I liked the enthusiasm in contrast to the usual gloom and doom that is part and parcel of pre-season coachspeak. However, I stated in this forum before the season began that all of that hype could come back to bite Graham in the you-know-where if Pitt bombed out. Well, Pitt did bomb out, finishing their season yesterday at 6-6, and Graham has been hearing the critics loud and long over the team's pedestrian performance this season.

This is not to say that Graham will never work out for Pitt. Everyone has said that Graham needs to get "his players" in at Pitt that will be capable of running "his system" effectively, so give the guy a full recruiting class or two to make that happen. Who knows it it will ever happen, but the guy does deserve a chance. Again, I kind of like the bombast and self-confidence. However, those characteristics can and sometimes did cross over into arrogance and it-wasn't-the-coaches'-fault finger pointing, which I didn't like.

It should also be noted, that many of the people who are now screaming about Graham and saying he'll never win and should be fired (after ONE year) were last year at this time calling for Dave Wannstadt's head on a platter, which Pitt delivered to them. It should be noted that Graham was coaching a team this year that was almost wholly comprised of Wannstadt recruited players.

The season will end sometime later this month, or early in January, when Pitt plays in some completely irrelevant bowl game with some ridiculous corporate name attached to it. The god-awful bowl system in college football is a topic that is belabored ad nauseum, so I won't add to it here, other than to say that 6-6 Pitt playing in such a game is eloquent testimony to the system's god-awfulness.

Our Christmas Tree for 2012

2011-12-04T10:57:00.004-05:00

To your left you see a picture of the Sproule Christmas Tree for 2012. It has been standing since Thursday evening, and it has already secured it's place in our family lure as one of the more memorable Tannenbaums of our 37 years of wedded bliss, and not for the right reasons.

We have had disasters with the lights, have had difficulty getting it to stand straight, have had repair intercessions from both neighbors and visiting friends...all in all, it has been a pretty frustrating experience with this particular tree. Clark Griswold had an easier time with his tree.

However, as I type these words at 11:07 on Sunday morning, our tree is standing tall and straight, smells terrific, and looks absolutely beautiful. Keep you fingers crossed that the troubles are behind us.

It often seems that the most long held and cherished memories from Christmases (and vacations) past are the memories of when things DIDN'T go right, so perhaps we will look back fondly and laugh about the events surrounding the erection, decoration, and exhibiting of our 2012 Christmas Tree.

That's what we are telling ourselves, anyway.

News Item from Columbus, Ohio

2011-12-02T08:00:00.002-05:00

The news came out of Columbus this week that, after denying (lying?) that he was talking to the University or was even interested in returning to coaching, Urban Meyer has accepted the position as Head Football Coach at Ohio State at a salary of $4 MILLION per year over a five year contract.

Good to see that so many lessons were learned at THE Ohio State University in the wake of the Jim Tressel fiasco.

A Very Tired Hall of Fame Debate

2011-11-30T10:20:00.003-05:00

The old Put-Gil-Hodges-in-the-Hall-of-Fame Debate has been raging in recent days on the SABR-L listserv. This is a debate that should be packed away with all of the batting practice baseballs and never be discussed again. It rekindles ONLY because of the New York-centric influence among many baseball writers, and ONLY because Hodges played on one of baseball's iconic teams, the Boys of Summer Era Brooklyn Dodgers. Oh, and Hodges also managed the New York Mets when they won their improbable World Series championship in 1969. I grant you that that was no small feat, but there are a lot of managers who have won one World Series, so that in and of itself does not make you Hall of Fame worthy.

But back to Gil Hodges the player. Here are his stats over 18 seasons and 2,071 games:

HR 370
RBI 1,274
BA .273
OPS .846

Now, consider these stats of a player who played in relatively the same era as Hodges, only fewer season, 14, and games, 1,841:

HR 364
RBI 1,159
BA .266
OPS .848

The player in question? Rocky Colovito. How many people are on the bandwagon pushing for HIM to get into the Hall of Fame?

By the way, I take no credit for coming up with the Colovito comparison. One of the posters on SABR-L did that. There are as many people debating against Hodges for the Hall as there are for him. My point is, why even argue it at all?

When a Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words...

2011-11-30T09:22:00.002-05:00

Thanks to to the Post-Gazette's Rob Rodgers.

Movie Review: "The Descendants"

2011-11-29T13:33:00.003-05:00

Yesterday we decided to take advantage of our retired status and headed out to The Waterfront to take in a weekday matinee. The movie we selected was the newly released, highly touted George Clooney movie, "The Descendants." The movie is getting a lot of Oscar buzz, and I can do nothing but add to the praise. This is a really, really good movie.

The movie takes place in Hawaii, where Clooney plays an attorney who controls 25,000 acres of pristine Hawaiian land that the family is planning on selling to developers. At the same time, he is facing a very serious family crisis. His wife lies in a coma following a boating accident, and he is now faced with the responsibility of dealing more directly with his two daughters, age 17 and 10, than he ever has in the past. He admits that he was always the "secondary parent." As he faces the wrenching decision of how to deal with his wife's condition, his older daughter reveals to him a secret about her mother, his wife, that only adds to the turmoil.

This is a movie that is at times both funny and heartbreaking. It points up the fact that no one's life is ever perfect, and how everyone has to deal with the curve balls that life throws at us.

As I mentioned, this movie is getting four star reviews left and right, and the kudos are well deserved. Clooney is getting talked up big for the Best Actor Academy Award. Having recently seen another actor getting similar buzz, Leonardo DiCaprio in "J. Edgar", I will give my vote to Clooney. A young actress named Shailene Woodcock, who plays the older daughter, is excellent, and I would expect her to get a Supporting Actress nomination. Other small but excellently portrayed roles are Robert Forster as Clooney's father-in-law, Beau Bridges as one of his many cousins, and Judy Greer, who's peripheral involvement with Clooney's family is a critical part of the movie.

Another thing that recommended this movie to me was the involvement of Alexander Payne, who directed this movie and wrote the screenplay. Payne had similar duties for one of my favorite movies in recent years, "Sideways" (he won the Oscar for Best Screenplay on that movie). "Sideways" is a movie that I can watch again and again, and I think that "The Descendants" could fall into that category as well.

December is the time when lots and lots of good movies get released, but try to make time on your movie going calendar to see this one. Excellent movie.

Thanksgiving Leftovers

2011-11-28T18:22:00.002-05:00

Here's hoping that all readers out there had a terrific, fun, and safe Thanksgiving holiday and weekend. Ours was a great one and doings over the long weekend kept me away from the keyboard for several days, so let's serve up a helping or two of leftovers from the long weekend.

Leftover Turkey

"Turkey" sure is an appropriate term to describe the much ballyhooed Backyard Brawl between Pitt and West Virginia. I heard a great line from Ron Cook on The Fan this morning. He was saying how when you see a great game between two good teams the thought occurs to you that "it's a shame one of these teams has to lose." In watching Pitt-WVU on Friday, his thought was that it was shame that one of these teams had to win. My own thought was that when WVU muffed two punts giving Pitt the ball deep in WV territory, and all that Pitt came away with was two field goals, well, you just had a feeling that that was going to come back to haunt them, and did it ever.

As you all know by now, if you care about this, is that the brunt of all things wrong with Pitt lies with QB Tino Sunseri. I prefer to hold college players to a different standard than their professional counterparts, and I don't like to go overboard in criticizing college athletes. That said, Sunseri did not play well at all in that game on Friday, and this has been pretty much the case all season. In two years as the starting QB, it does not seem that he has improved in his play, and you could probably make a case that he has regressed. Is that his fault? His coaches? I don't know, but it is pretty clear that Pitt is going to need improved play at quarterback in 2012 to improve upon what has been a very disappointing season.

Still, I hate hearing people dump on a college kid, who is, nominally, at least, an amateur, the same way they would, to use examples from recent history, Kordell Stewart or Neil O'Donnell, pros who were paid big bucks to perform, just kind of goes against the grain with me.

As for first year coach Todd Graham, I have plenty of thoughts on him, but I'll save those until after the regular season ends this weekend against Syracuse.

Leftover Stuffing

Let's stick with football for the moment and talk about that Steelers game in KC last night. They won't be showcasing that one in the film rooms at Canton, will they? The Chiefs did everything in their power to give that game to the Steelers, and they still had a chance to win it in the end. Any kind of performance other than what Tyler Palko gave the Chiefs last night and that win would have probably been a loss for the Steelers.

Well, no one says that wins have to be pretty, and a win is a win, and you are what your record says you are and blah blah blah. A tough one with the Bengals next week. I'm figuring that the Steelers are going to almost have to win all of their remaining five games to hold on to the Wild Card spot in which they currently sit.

Also, will people please stop saying that the Steelers need to run the ball more. Were you watching last night? They CAN'T run the ball. The game has changed and neither Franco Harris nor John Henry Johnson is suiting up for them any time soon. They are a PASSING team, and when the receivers have a lackluster game like they did last night, combined with the non-running game, you get the near-unthinkable almost-loss you saw last night.

Final note on last night's game. A law should be passed that requires that Chris Collinsworth be the analyst on EVERY telecast of a football game. He's the best guy out there.

Leftover Pumpkin Pie

I did not see any of the Pittsburgh Thanksgiving Day parade on Saturday, but I did note that the big celebrity (not sure if he was called "Grand Marshall" or not) was Mitch Ryder. Mitch Ryder! The Detroit Wheels, sad to say, were not with him. I am guessing that 80% of the people who were watching the parade had absolutely no idea who he was. I mean, I don't even think the Pirates would line up Mitch Ryder to do a post-game SkyBlast concert. Is that the best that Macy's could come up with for the City's parade? Not even Luke Cravenstahl would show up for a photo op with Mitch Ryder! Who are they getting next year? How about Danny Bonaduce?

And on the other side of the coin, how do you think Mitch felt when his agent called and said that he had a great gig for him - riding in a Thanksgiving parade in Pittsburgh.

The Dishes Are Done

The Thanksgiving and Fall decorations have been packed away, and the Christmas decorations, with the exception of the Christmas Tree, are in place in our house. We look forward to a busy few weeks between now and Christmas Day with family and friends. We started the season off today by taking in the new, highly touted George Clooney movie, "The Descendants." I will write more on that in a separate posting later in the week, but will tell you now that it is a very good movie.

TO ALL LOYAL READERS.......

2011-11-23T22:51:00.001-05:00

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!!

The Week That Was

2011-11-20T08:26:00.002-05:00

Looking back on the week this Sunday morning.....

High(?)light of the week for me involved the return of an old nemesis - kidney stones. The unmistakable pain in my right side came on Thursday morning. There then followed a call to the doctor, a CT scan, a visit to the doctor, lots of water drinking, and the continued use of a strainer. I have not been in any pain since Thursday morning, but the offending little bugger currently lodged in my internal plumbing has yet to pass, so the story isn't over yet.

I posted about this event on Facebook on Thursday, and few posts that I have ever made on Facebook have drawn the number of comments from Friends as this one did. Everyone's concern was and is most appreciated.

*****
I worked the WPIAL Sportsmanship Summit at the Heinz History Center this past Monday morning. A great event with over 600 high school athletes in attendance. I really enjoyed seeing the energy of all of these kids. Made you realize that the high school athletes with the sense of entitlement of, say, Terelle Pryor, are the exception, thankfully.

Last year's featured speaker was Pitt Womens Basketball coach Agnes Beranatto, and she was terrific. This year the speaker was Lavar Arrington. Let's just say that it is safe to assume that Arrington never took a public speaking course while matriculating at North Hills High School or Penn State.

*****
News Item: Franco Harris steps down as chairman of the Pittsburgh Promise under political pressure from Mayor Luke Ravenstahl because of his expressed support of Joe Paterno.

You can question Franco's judgement in this matter while at the same time admiring his loyalty to his old coach. What cannot be questioned is the naked political opportunism of Boy Mayor Cravenstahl in his attack on Harris in the news media. The Mayor, who has made a habit during his administration of being invisible during moments of crisis, never misses an opportunity to grandstand in the very worst sense of the word. But, hey, he did get that cameo spot in the new Batman movie, and Davey Lawrence never did anything that cool, did he?

*****
While being stalled in Monday morning rush hour traffic this week (it was raining, after all), I tried to relieve the boredom by punching the radio buttons, and I was astonished to be reminded that Jack Bogut is STILL on the air in morning drive time on WJAS, the Music of Your Life station (aka, the Geezer Station). Yes, Bogut is still doing all of the same old boring stuff he did at KDKA back in the Jurassic Age. I am not quite sure what this says about the Pittsburgh market.

It made me wonder about just how old this guy is, so I googled him when I got home. I find out he even has his own website! Interestingly enough, his bio on his website does not include his year of birth. It does say, however, that he came to Pittsburgh in 1968. Forty-three (43) years ago!!! He has to be well into his seventies.

Maybe fresh air is good for your teeth.

*****
It is being reported that the Pirates are close to signing a two year deal with free agent short stop Clint Barmes, age 32. The deal is reported to be worth $5 million. On Twitter last night, Dejan Kovacevic stated that the "Pirates have no peers when it comes to lateral, inexpensive offseason moves. Looks like that will be 2 for 2. Actual upgrades, anyone?"

Can you describe this move and the Rod Barajas signing any better?

Will either of these signings significantly improve the Pirates in any way?

My SABR and Facebook friend Dan Bonk described the Barajas move as a completely irrelevant free agent signing, and the Barmes signing will prove, no doubt, to be the same.

My brother Bill summed it up very well - "The Pirates: Where ballplayers in their thirties go to die."

*****
Amazingly, Tim Tebow is turning out to be one of the biggest stories of the year in the NFL. I tuned into the Thursday night NFL game at the end, just in time to see him engineer that 95 yard game winning drive against the Jets. (What happened to Rex Ryan's vaunted defensive schemes?) He may win ugly, and his style may not be sustainable in the NFL, but right now, Tebow is 4-1 as a Broncos starting QB, and how can you ignore that?

What surprises me is how much of a lightning rod Tebow is for criticism. Why? Some have speculated that this is because of his public profession of his Christianity. While I am somewhat suspicious of people who wear their religion on the sleeves, I don't think Tebow is any more or less overt in this than any one of dozens of athletes you could name, and they don't get dumped on by the public as Tebow seems to be.

Maybe the criticism stems from the fact that Tebow is not the ideal of an NFL quarterback or, even worse, not a good "Fantasy Guy." Hey, if he doesn't have the goods, the other teams in the league will catch up to him soon enough. Until then, though, give the guy credit for winning games right now.

*****
Speaking of the NFL Network, they seem to be working on another set of announcers for their Thursday night telecasts. This time it's Brad Nessler and Mike Mayock. Nessler is a more than capable play-by-play guy. Mayock is okay, I suppose, but he suffers the same disease as all color guys in that he has to comment and expound on EVERY SINGLE PLAY.

The good news is that (a) it is a two man booth and (b) Matt Millan and Joe Thiesman are not there any more.

*****
A Sunday with no Steelers game. How are you planning on spending this day?

Before MLB Signs That New CBA.....

2011-11-19T16:07:00.002-05:00

As I knew would happen, the naysayers are weighing in on the new playoff structure (additional wild card team and a One Game Wild Card Playoff game - hereafter to be known as the OGWCP game), so before Bud and whoever the guy who replaced Don Fehr is sign off on that new Bargaining Agreement, they should consider the following Modest Proposal to make everything right with the purists.

Get rid of 14 franchises. Contract them, dissolve them, just make them go away.

Make sure one of those 14 teams is the New York Mets. They've only been around for 50 years, so nobody really cares about them anyway.

Move the Dodgers and Giants back to Brooklyn and New York.

There will now be 16 teams remaining divided into two 8 team leagues.

No teams west of the Mississippi. Their scores never make the morning papers in the east, so they're pretty much irrelevant as it is.

Play a 154 game schedule that would include double headers for every team for every Sunday.

No night games.

One pennant winner per league, even if the pennant winner opens up a 20 game lead in mid-August, thus effectively killing any interest in that league's games for the remainder of the regular season.

Limit the amount of televised games to one per week. Teams contract with local TV stations to televise about 20-25 games per year. All telecasts to be in black & white.

What do you think?

Movie Review: "J. Edgar"

2011-11-18T18:23:00.003-05:00

The new Clint Eastwood directed and Leonardo DiCaprio starring movie, "J. Edgar", was heavily advertised during the baseball playoffs, and those ubiquitous commercials had me convinced that this was a movie to see. It had so much going for it....a great director in Eastwood, perhaps the best actor of his generation in DiCaprio, and a subject, J. Edgar Hoover, that was ripe for controversy and, perhaps, some rousing action.

Sorry to say, the whole was not as good as the sum of its parts.

While Hoover certainly deserves credit for building the FBI into the elite crime fighting organization it is today, a case could also be made that Hoover was also one of the more evil figures in our history. Personally, I was interested to see how Eastwood, whose personal politics are somewhat right of center, might portray Hoover. Would he emphasize the crime-busting anti-Communist passion of Hoover? Would he gloss over the Hoover who wiretapped seemingly everybody and use those findings to blackmail several Presidents and Attorneys General into keeping him at his post as FBI director until the day he died?

Well, the movie does show Hoover, warts and all, and it also plays up Hoover's long term relationship with his #2 man at the Bureau, Clyde Tolson. Unfortunately, the movie, which is told in flashbacks as Hoover dictates his memoirs to a present day Agent, is somewhat disjointed, which makes it somewhat hard to follow. The colors in the movie also are washed out through much of the movie. Sometimes that works well, but I don't think it did here. As a fellow viewer said to me as we exited the theater, "I expected more."

One thing that did not disappoint was DiCaprio's performance. He is really a great actor. I haven't seen everything he's done, but I've never seen him be anything less than excellent in anything that I have seen him in. I also like Armie Hammer, despite some ridiculous make-up, as Tolson. Very good performance there.

One of the historical figures portrayed in this movie was Robert Kennedy, and this leads me to a pet peeve. Whenever the Kennedys are portrayed in movies or on TV, why must the actors speak with such obviously phony New England accents? Is it really necessary to use accents when portraying historical figures? Would it make the movie any less valid if Jack or Bobby Kennedy just, you know, spoke their lines without making you think you are watching a bad version of Rich Little on the screen? Don't know who the actor was who played RFK in this movie, but the "pahk-the-cah" affectations were distracting in the extreme. Maybe they should have had him wearing a Red Sox hat, too.

BIG Changes in Major League Baseball

2011-11-18T11:34:00.003-05:00

Major League Baseball has announced some MAJOR changes to it's structure that include the following:

The Astros to move to the American League in 2013, thus creating two 15 team leagues, which means that interleague play will now occur throughout the 26 week season. Purists and old school seamheads are already bemoaning this fact, but this particular genie left the bottle in 1997 when interleague play began, and there is no turning back. Why is this only important to baseball people? Nobody cared when the the NFL and AFL merged in 1970 and inter-conference play became a fact of life. No one even thinks of this when the NFL schedule comes out.

Expansion of the playoffs to include two wild card teams in each league with the wild cards meeting in a one game playoff to start the post season. While you can argue that this dilutes the playoff pool, I think I like this. When wild cards were introduced, people said that the idea of down-to-the-wire-pennant-races had been killed, and we see that that hasn't happened. The final week of the 2011 season is ample proof of that. I also think that having a one game playoff between the wild cards will provide real incentive to finish first in your division. Now it will really MEAN something for the Yankees to finish ahead of the Red Sox, and vice versa.

And how pressure packed will that one game playoff be? Off the charts. If you say that it isn't fair to play 162 games and risk being eliminated in one game, then I say just play better, finish in first place, and avoid that one game shoot out.

Word is being leaked that teams and the players are close to coming to an agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement. Well, nice to know that there will be no NBA-like work stoppage, but I am guessing that the Yankees will still be the Yankees, and the Pirates will still be the Pirates under the new CBA. I know, I know...the Yankees are only playing by the rules that are in place, and the Pirates are cheapskates who make lousy decisions anyway. The beat will continue to go on.

The Florida Marlins are now the Miami Marlins with some very cool new logos and colors. They are making a splash with their new stadium by making, by all accounts, serious contract offers to free agents Albert Pujols, Jose Reyes, and Mark Buerhle. As one Loyal Reader has pointed out to me, when the Pirates got a new stadium, they made a splash by signing Jason Kendall to a $60 million long term contract. That was 10 years, two principal owners, and three GM's ago, but you could say that the shadow of that contract still hangs over the Pirates to this very day.

Welcome, Rod Barajas

2011-11-13T10:50:00.005-05:00

Lost amidst the noise and the news coming from State College this past week was the signing by the Pirates of free agent catcher Rod Barajas. By all accounts, the Pirates were front and center in the courting of Barajas, and Barajas himself said all the right things about coming to the Pirates.

So, the team now has a catcher to replace Ryan Doumit. Barajas himself has admitted that he is neither a high average or high on base percentage guy, but that he can hit the ball out of the park (16 HR in 2011 and 125 over a thirteen year career). By contrast, Ryan Doumit has hit 67 HR over a seven year career, and sports a .271 career BA and .777 OPS, as opposed to .238 and .698 for Barajas. Of course, Doumit's biggest problems have been his many many trips to the DL and a salary commitment of $15 million over the next two seasons. Barajas will make $4 million next year (highest on the team as of today).

The one number on Barajas that scares me the most is his age: 36. Fairly old for a ballplayer, and really old for a catcher. Why am I filled with images of Pirates free agent signings of years past of guys who are in their mid-thirties who turn out to be washed up when they arrive in Bradenton? I really hate to be such a pessimist on this, but the Pirates track record on such matters makes you leery to say the least.

Thank You to All Veterans Today!!

2011-11-11T10:37:00.001-05:00

On Penn State

2011-11-11T10:08:00.003-05:00

Throughout the last several days, there has been some terrific writing and reporting from all across the country on this subject. I will not add to it except to say this.

If you have grown up, lived, and worked in Allegheny Country, western Pennsylvania, and the state of Pennsylvania, chances are very good that, if you are not one yourself, you know someone who is a Penn State alumnus and a dyed-in-the-wool Penn State fan. A family member, a co-worker, a neighbor, someone from church, you know these people, and this week I feel truly bad for these people. They are certainly not "victims" in this case, but they are indeed part of the collateral damage that has resulted from this mess.

It is easy to tweak and kid the caricature of the "bleeds-blue-and-white" Penn State fan. I've done it myself, but let's face it, part of that teasing stems from jealousy. I am envious of people that have spent a portion of their life at a place and institution that has engendered a passion and devotion that has lasted their entire lives. I wish I felt that way about any institution with which I have been associated over the years. These folks have not been well served by the stewards of their University.

As I mentioned, there has been some absolutely terrific writing from writers and reporters all over the country on this topic. Locally, I can point to Gene Collier, Dejan Kovacevic, Joe Starkey, and Bob Smizik. Smizik has also posted on his blog links to writers from papers all over the country to make it easier to find these stories.

No writing that I have read, however, was as eloquent than an email that I received from my nephew George, now age 41. George is the son of two Penn State alums, was born and raised in Centre County, and is a Penn State grad and a proud member of the Blue Band. As his thoughts came to me via a personal email, I will not share it here, but I can assure you that his thoughts summarize the sadness and disappointment that has been felt by these loyal alums and fans over this matter. I am sure that he speaks for thousands of Penn Staters across the land. I will take the liberty to share one sentence from his note to me:

It is "exquisitely ironic that a culture (Penn State football) that was in the business of creating upstanding and heroic men, didn't create a sufficient hero in this case."

This will probably be the last thing I wrote on this topic. It hardly falls within the fun-and-games part of life that I usually opine on, and I doubt that there is much of anything that I could add to what will be written in the weeks, months, and years ahead as this story continues to evolve.

Book Reviews - A Baseball Icon and a Football Time Capsule

2011-11-07T20:26:00.005-05:00

I have just concluded reading a couple of old books with a sporting theme that I would like to mention to you now.

The first is Richard Ben Cramer's biography of Joe DiMaggio, "Joe DiMaggio, The Hero's Life." Cramer spent five years researching and writing this book which was published in 2000, one year after Joltin' Joe's death. If you are a baseball fan and have even a rudimentary knowledge of baseball history, you already know a lot of the "baseball stuff" about DiMaggio - the sterling quality of his play, the 10 pennants and 9 World Series championships, and, of course, the epic 56 game hitting streak in 1941. However, as is often the case with such biographies, it is the off the field stuff, the post-playing days life, that make for the most interesting reading. For example, you will learn a lot about Marilyn Monroe in this book.

You will also learn that this most beloved of baseball heroes was not the most lovable of men. He was demanding of those around him, but would turn his back on you and cut you off completely if he thought that you were disloyal to him, or, even worse, using your relationship to him to your advantage. He was cheap and never paid for anything.

This is a pretty long (over 500 pages) book, thoroughly detailed, and sometimes slow moving, but worth reading for those who appreciate baseball history.

The second book is even older, "...And Everyday You Take Another Bite" by sportswriter (now boxing commentator on HBO or Showtime) Larry Merchant. This book was written in 1971 and was Merchant's somewhat iconoclastic view of the National Football League in 1971. I had read this book when I was in college, and I stumbled across it in a used bookstore in Cooperstown last month.

Yes, I said 1971, forty years ago. Think about it. When this book was published, the Steelers had never even made the playoffs, ESPN did not exist, Monday Night Football had been on the air only one year, and that relatively new event on the sporting landscape, the Super Bowl, had only just started using Roman numerals. Bob Sproule had not yet met Marilyn Moellenbrock! I had enjoyed the book when I read way back then, and I thought it might be interesting to see what had changed, and what had not changed, since Merchant wrote this book. It was like opening a football time capsule.

The book opens with Merchant's write-up of the previous season's Super Bowl. It was number V, and it was won 16-13 by the Baltimore Colts on a last second field goal that defeated the Dallas Cowboys. If you recall, the game was an error filled contest - fumbles, interceptions, wacky plays, and inept quarterbacking by Johnny Unitas, Earl Morrall, and, especially, Craig Morton. The sloppy play by both teams was made all the more apparent when set against the hype and bombast that NFL used to stage this showcase event. And this was during a time BEFORE 6:30 kick-offs, four hour pre-game shows, and $3 million per minute commercials.

In any event, Merchant's first chapter that summarizes the game is a classic.

The book details the pervasive influence that television was exercising over the game. Again, this was before the birth of ESPN, the NFL Network, and Thursday Night Football. So Merchant's warning bells were quite prophetic.

Some of the book is terribly dated. Remember Dave Meggesey? Didn't think so.

However, there is just all sorts of fun memories that can be dredged up reading this book. Such as....

The 1968 "Orange Juice Bowl" when the lousy Steelers beat the lousy Eagles 6-3 in a game where both teams were "as futile as the law allows." At the time, it was felt that the loser of that game would win the right to draft O.J. Simpson. Ironically, the Eagles won two of their final games and lost the right for the #1 pick. Merchant says that Eagles coach Joe Kuharich thus "refined the art of losing to its finite limit - losing while winning."

And isn't any book that tells Joe Kuharich stories worth reading?

Lots of stuff on Joe Namath, which, in retrospect, seem a bit overblown looking back on it.

Stories about Joe Don Looney. Again, any book with stories about that dude is worth reading.

Vince Lombardi had only died within the prior year, so Merchant spends some time on him, and how he was officially canonized by the NFL.

Some good stuff. It might be hard to find this book anywhere now, so if you care to read it. I'll be happy to lend it to you.

Andy Rooney on D-Day

2011-11-06T17:57:00.001-05:00

In my post earlier today, I made reference to an Andy Rooney essay on D-Day. It was run this morning on CBS' Sunday Morning show.

Watch and listen.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7387328n&tag=contentMain;contentBody

A Trip to the Movies, Football Fun & Games, and Other Topics

2011-11-06T10:11:00.007-05:00

Cleaning out the Mental In-Box....

As I usually try to confine this blog to light-hearted topics, saving outrage for baffling moves on the part of the Pirates, I will not expound on the truly awful news coming from Penn State this weekend. Better writers than I are opining on that, and I refer you to Gene Collier in today's PG, Joe Starkey in today's Trib, and Bob Smizik's blog on post-gazette.com, for more analysis. All I can ask is this: why did no one - no one -at the University call the police when the 2002 assault in the shower room was witnessed and reported to various University officials?

Okay, I will now return to the Fun & Games Department.....

For the first time in months, we took ourselves out to the movie theater yesterday and saw "Tower Heist" starring Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy. Now some readers who know me will be shocked - SHOCKED - to hear that I went to see Ben Stiller in anything. However, he did not play the usual put-upon character he usually plays (see those awful Focker movies), so I'm glad I kept an open mind. This is a movie that will never win any awards, but it was fun and entertaining, and a nice way to spend two hours. Also, it has been awhile since I've seen an Eddie Murphy movie, and I had almost forgotten how really FUNNY he is.

I watched the Alabama -LSU game last night that LSU won 9-6 on OT. Two great defensive teams, to be sure, but if you purport to be the Number One team in the nation, shouldn't you be able to play at least SOME offense?

On the other hand, any game where you can see Nick Saban lose has its merits.

You can get into all sorts of debates over the validity of overtime in regular season games, but I can recall Myron Cope once commenting that sometimes a tie can be a just result in a game. I think that game last night was an example of that premise.

The SEC Loyalists out there are already tub-thumping for a rematch of LSU-Alabama in the BCS Championship Game. Please, God, save us from that.

Got into an interesting, if short, exchange with a Facebook buddy last night. He was saying how awful the Oklahome State - Kansas State 52-45 game was because it was circus with no defense at all. I was saying how the 6-6 Alabama game was far from the "game of the century" the flacksters were promoting because of the complete lack of offense. I would say that we were probably both right.

Pitt once against snatches defeat from the jaws of victory, blowing a 10 point third quarter lead against Cincinnati last night. I was switching back and forth between that game and the Alabama game, but I saw enough to state that the Pitt offense in that fourth quarter was thoroughly awful. Almost unwatchable.

Then again, West Virginia loses to Lousiville yesterday. Big East football really is terrible, isn't it?

I have written in the past about how I enjoy listening to the "60's on 6" radio station on the Sirius XM satellite radio. Great music from the 1960's. However, when you listen for an extended period of time, as we did on our recent drive to Cooperstown, you learn that not everything from that era was great, and some of it was downright bad. As evidence I give you "Honey" by Bobby Goldsboro, and anything by Bobby Vinton.

I was saddened to read in the paper a few weeks back that Highland Country Club has closed. I was never a member there, but for a period of time in the 1990's my boss was, and, thus, I was able to play there quite a bit when entertaining customers. Highland was never ranked as one of the truly great country club courses here in western PA, but I always found it a fun and enjoyable course to play. Too bad.

Also saddened to hear that Joe Frazier, 67, has been stricken with liver cancer and is now in hospice care.

And of course, I was also saddened to hear of the death of Andy Rooney. This morning's "CBS Sunday Morning" show was devoted to Rooney, and it included his essay on D-Day, which is something everybody should see.

Finally, I hear tell that a football game of some note will be played at Heinz Field this evening. The Ravens have been struggling of late, and the Steelers are coming off that huge win against the Patriots. What the hell, the Steelers to win tonight!!

"Million Dollar Quartet"

2011-11-04T15:39:00.004-04:00

On a December day in 1956, musical legends Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis really did meet in the Sam Phillips' Sun Records studio in Memphis, and really did have a jam session. That session has been fleshed out dramatically for the purposes of creating the musical "Million Dollar Quartet" that Marilyn and I took in at the Benedum Theater last evening.

While the show does tell a story, it is really all about the music, and the four actors who play the leads really do it up right. These guys are not "impersonators" as we have come to know them, but actors playing a part, and they all do it really well. The idea of an "Elvis impersonator" has become a show biz cliche. What this role in MDQ requires is someone playing Elvis (and Cash, Perkins, and Lewis), and the actors in last night's production hit just the right notes. The actor who played Elvis got the hip-shaking moves down right, and while the voice isn't exactly like Elvis, you know that you are seeing the 1956 version of Elvis on stage.

The show confirms that the pre-Army Elvis Presley was and is the "real" Elvis, the Elvis who really was The King. People whose only impression or knowledge of Elvis Presley consists of cheesy movies and a fat guy in a white jump suit on a Vegas stage, really need to learn more about Elvis prior to his 1960 induction.

(Which brings to mind John Lennon's quote when he learned that Presley had died in 1977: "The real Elvis died the day he went into the Army.")

Back to the show, the actor who played Jerry Lee Lewis really stole the show. Pure energy and he played the piano just like the Killer.

The encore to the show was great with each actor performing a signature song of each artist:

Hound Dog by Elvis, Ghostriders in the Sky by Cash, See You Later, Alligator by Perkins, and a rousing finale of Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On by Lewis. And, of course, when it was over, the announcement was made that "Elvis has just left the building."

Great show!!

To Absent Friends - Matty Alou

2011-11-03T16:31:00.003-04:00

News arrives today that Matty Alou passed away today in his native Dominican Republic at the age of 72. Alou is, of course, famous for being one of the three Alou brothers who played in the major leagues in the 1960's and -70's.

Pirates fans will remember him coming to the Pirates after in 1966 in one of Joe L. Brown's great trades (Joe Gibbon and Ozzie Virgil went to the Giants). All Alou did in his five seasons with the Bucs was put together seasons where he produced batting averages of .342, .338, .332, .331, and .297, winning the NL batting championship in 1966. Over 15 big league seasons, he compiled a .307 lifetime batting average.

I will remember Alou as being a part of some of my favorite Pirates teams of all time in the late 60's when the Pirates often challenged for a pennant, but never quite made it, but, man could those teams hit...Clemente, Stargell, Clendennon, Alou, Mota, Pagliaroni....Some cherished memories there.

It might also be noted, that even when Alou left the Pirates, he served them well. He was traded after the 1970 season to the Cardinals for Nelson Briles and Vic Davillio, two key guys on the 1971 World Series Champions.

RIP Matty Alou.

The Clemente Picture

2011-11-01T13:53:00.003-04:00

Below you will see a picture of the picture of Roberto Clemente that I won at the World Series Gala at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown last week. We bought the frame and decided to hang it in a place of honor in our den at home.

Appropriate that it hangs below a painting of Forbes Field, don't you think?