To Absent Friends - Tina Turner and Joe Kapp

Yeah, I know.  Tina Turner and Joe Kapp.  What a juxtaposition. 

Tina Turner

1939 - 2023

The death of Tina Turner at the age of 83 last week probably shouldn't have come as a shock, but it was nonetheless, especially since we had just seen her remarkably portrayed at the Benedum Theater earlier this month in the Broadway in Pittsburgh production of "TINA: The Tina Turner Musical."  It brought to life the memories of seeing Ms Turner perform so many times over the years on television, and did anybody embody the glory days of MTV more than Tina Turner?

I can think of no better tribute than sharing this compilation video of Tina Turner doing one of her signature numbers, CCR's "Proud Mary."

Her death also brought to mind memories of a Halloween party that Marilyn and I attended in 1985.   I was Bruce Springsteen in all of his Born in the USA glory, and Marilyn was Tina Turner.  

Get a load of those 

gams on "Tina"

********

Back in the early days of what has come to be known as "The Super Bowl Era" in the NFL, the Minnesota Vikings hired Canadian Football League coach Bud Grant to be their head coach, and he brought CFL quarterback Joe Kapp with him.  Grant and Kapp soon had the Vikings playing in the Super Bowl, the IVth one to be exact.  It was a Super Bowl that they would lose to the Kansas City Chiefs, but it marked the beginning of a period where Grant would take the Vikings to four Super Bowls.

Kapp and Grant

Those Vikings were known for tough and hard hitting play - remember the Purple People Eaters defense? - and Kapp was the perfect QB for those teams.  He was hardly a stylish quarterback, even circa 1970, and he probably wouldn't make it in the NFL today.  His long passes resembled a guy throwing a shot put, but he was as tough as they come, challenging defenders when he took off running, hitting them head on rather than running out of bounds.  The Sports Illustrated cover depicts him perfectly.  

Kapp was 85 when he died earlier this month.  In addition to my memories of him that came back to me, I learned a couple of interesting things about him when reading his obits.   One, he became one of the leading advocates for the Chicano/Latinx community throughout his life.  Two, he is the only quarterback to lead his teams to a Rose Bowl, a Super Bowl, and a Gray Cup Championship game. Three, he had a so-so career as a head coach at his alma mater, California at Berkeley (20-34-1 over five seasons) and was the Cal head coach when the Bears defeated Stanford on this game ending kickoff return that ended with the Cal runner plowing into the Stanford band in the end zone.  It is perhaps the most famous play in College Football history, and Joe Kapp was a part of it.  He also fashioned a modest acting career (27 IMDB credits), most notably as a prison guard in Burt Reynolds' 1974 movie, "The Longest Yard."

RIP Tina Turner and Joe Kapp

In The Area of Critical Commentary.....

 BABYLON

We were slated to see "Babylon" as our New Year's Eve movie, but for reasons that I have since forgotten, we never made it to the theater that day.  Well, we finally got around to seeing it last night, and it was, in may opinion, well worth the wait.  The movie is from Oscar winning director Damien Chazelle ("La La Land") and over its three hour length it weaves together four separate stories of Hollywood in the late 1920's and early 1930's when talking pictures were introduced and silent pictures were headed to extinction. Yeah, it is a story that has been told many times (Singin' in the Rain, Sunset Boulevard, The Artist), and the story as told by Chazelle, who also wrote the screenplay, is BIG and BOLD and BRASH.

It follows the stories of four people: Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt) a big, big star of the silent era, who is failing to make the transition to talkies, Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), a girl from the wrong side of the tracks in New Jersey who comes to California to make it in the movies, makes it and then loses it,  Manny Torres (Diego Calva), a Mexican American working as a gopher on movies sets who longs for bigger and better things in the movie industry, and Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo), a Black jazz musician playing on the sets of silent films who suddenly makes it in the movies, but then wonders if it's worth the price he has to pay.  Chronicling  it all is Elinor St. John (Jean Smart), a Hedda Hopper-like gossip columnist.

Did I say that it was BIG and BRASH?  The first thirty minutes of the movie, before the title card of the movie itself appeared on screen, took place at the home of a major studio mogul, and it showed a Hollywood Babylon Era party in full swing.  Unlimited booze, drugs, and sex.  People dancing in various states of dress and undress.  An elephant - an elephant! - as a featured part of the party.  Thirty minutes of full sensory overload.  Amazing stuff.

There were no happy endings in this one, and I'll give no spoilers here.  A scene late in the movie between Brad Pitt and Jean Smart summed up wonderfully just what Pitt, and those like him, have accomplished with their careers was a great one. The entire movie was pure Oscar-bait stuff, but it didn't receive a lot of love from either critics or the Motion Picture Academy.  In our house, it was a split decision.  I liked it a lot; Linda, not so much.

It was one heck of a lot better than Best Picture of the Year "Everything Everywhere All At Once", I can tell you.

Two and Three-Quarters Stars from The Grandstander.

TED LASSO

One episode remains in Season Three of this Emmy Award winning series, and while neither the producers of the show nor Apple TV have said so, all signs are pointing to the fact that this will be the final season for this one.   To me, the series has continued to be a terrific one, funny and moving, and great performances from all the actors involved.  However, it appears that there is not much of a story left to be told.  AFC Richmond has come back into the Premier League after a year of relegation, they have played in fits and starts, but they have rallied in the final weeks of the season, and with one game remaining in the season, a victory will give them the EPL Championship.  Whether they win or lose that game match is almost immaterial.  Coach Lasso has done his job, and appears that he needs to move on.  We'll find out this coming Wednesday evening.

What has surprised me, however, is the critical backlash that seems to have come upon this show.  If you read any number of critics online, they are almost unanimous in their derision of Season Three of the show. These same critics who praised "Ted Lasso" to the high heavens are now ruthless in savagely attacking it.   Maybe it hasn't cleared to bar it set in its first two seasons, but to read some of these critics, you'd think that it has turned into a 21st century version of "Gilligan's Island."  I mean.....

PERRY MASON

We are only three episodes into Season Two of the HBO Max series, "Perry Mason", but we are really enjoying it.

This is not the Raymond Burr's Perry Mason. It is, instead, a grittier, more noir-ish origin story for Mason, one that is more in line with author Erle Stanley Gardner's original vision of him.

Set in the 1930's, this is a beautifully done period production.  I have heard critics who have lived in Los Angeles all of their lives praise how the show evokes their city of another era.  And both Matthew Rhys and Juliet Rylance are quite good in the roles of Mason and his partner (no longer secretary) Della Street.

If you haven't seen this one, you should take a crack at it.  You don't have to have seen Season One to enjoy Season Two, but it might help fill in some background for you. 

To Absent Friends - Jim Brown

Jim Brown

1936 - 2023

Okay, ever since the news came down last Friday of Jim Brown's death at the age of 87, I began to wonder about what I would write about him in an Absent Friends post.  I soon realized that there is nothing that I could write that would capture the true greatness of Jim Brown.  Maybe Red Smith or Frank Deford could have done so.  Or Hemingway.  But The Grandstander?  Not a chance.

Brown played in the NFL for only nine seasons, 1957 through 1965.  I saw him play only on black and white television, but his impact was immediate on this then young boy's consciousness as a football player, no one I have seen since lug the football has surpassed Brown as a ball carrier and as an all around bad-ass tough guy football player.  He is conceded by many to be the greatest football player in NFL history.

Here are just some of his accomplishments:

• NFL Rookie of the Year, 1957
• Three Time NFL MVP
• Nine time Pro Bowler
• Eight time NFL Rushing leader
• Five time NFL Rushing TD leader
• Best player on the 1964 NFL Champion Cleveland Browns
• Member of the 1960's All-Decade Team
• Member of each of the NFL's 50th, 75th, and 100th Anniversary teams
• 12,312 rushing yards at the time of his retirement was the all time record and it stood for nineteen years
• 126 total touchdowns (106 of them rushing)
• Averaged 104.3 yards per game rushing over nine seasons. It remains the leading average yards per game in NFL history
• Member of the Pro Football, College Football, and Lacrosse Halls of Fame
• In 2020, upon the 150th anniversary of College Football, he was named the greatest College Football player ever

He quit football prior to the 1966 season to concentrate on making movies, and after Art Modell threatened to fine him every day he was late to training camp because filming of "The Dirty Dozen" was running over time.  Nice move, Art.  He did fashion a modestly successful acting career (58 IMDB acting credits).

Perhaps the perfect football player, he was far from a perfect human, and his obits have not shied away from his numerous arrests, often for domestic violence incidents.  He was never convicted of a felony, but he did spend a few months on jail later in life on some sort of rap involving a broken windshield (??).

He also fashioned a career as a social  activist, and a foundation that he started, Amer-I-Can, to work to rehabilitate gang members and incarcerated individuals still is doing good work in those areas.

"The Cleveland Summit"

He also convened what came to be known as "The Cleveland Summit" in 1967.  It involved influential Black leaders and athletes at the time, including Bill Russell and a 20 year old Lew Alcindor, and its purpose was to listen and offer counsel to Muhammad Ali at the time he was refusing to accept induction into US Military service. In his Substack column today, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar writes of what took place in that summit.  If you don't feel like reading the entire thing, I will leave you with Abdul-Jabbar's final words that ended his piece on Brown:

The great thing about great men is that long after their light has dimmed, their deeds still light our way.

RIP Jim Brown

 

A Really Bad Stretch for the Pirates

Back on April 26, I wrote THIS ARTICLE about the then 16-7 Pittsburgh Pirates that highlighted the fact that they were about to enter a critical eighteen game stretch wherein twelve of those games would be against upper echelon, by record at least, MLB teams: three each against the Dodgers, Rays, Blue Jays, and Orioles.  

Here is what followed:

• Won 2 of three from Los Angeles.  Good.
• Won the first two games of a three game series with the Nationals.  The score of that second game was 16-1, and it pushed the Pirates' record to 20-9, second only the the Rays in all of MLB.
• They lost the third game of that series to the Nats and then the slide began.
• 0-3 against the Rays.
• 0-3 against the Blue Jays.
• 1-2 against the Rockies.
• 1-2 against the Orioles

Not only did they go 2-11 over the course of this streak, but it wasn't until the eleventh game after that 16-1 win over the Nats that the Pirates scored their 17th run of that streak.  Eleven games to score more runs than they did in that blowout of Washington.

In the only games that they won, 2-0 over the Rockies and 2-0 over the Orioles, were behind a complete game shutout and seven shutout innings pitched by Mitch Keller.  In the entire month of May, Keller has been the only, and I mean THE ONLY bright spot on the team.  The team has been exposed to be very weak offensively, and while they are still stealing bases at a high clip, they are still prone to jaw dropping gaffes on the base paths.  In one of the games, the Bucs had three runners thrown out at third base.  Not something you see every day in the big leagues.

Earlier this week, the Pirates split a two game series with Detroit and the hitters showed some signs of coming back to life with an 8-0 win on Wednesday.  They are now 23-20 and one game out of first place in the NL Central, and would you have signed on for that at the beginning of the season?  Sure you would have, but the Jekyll and Hyde performances of the April Pirates vs. the May Pirates certainly gives one cause for concern. 

Tonight begins a six game home stand against the Diamondbacks and Rangers.  Let's see where they stand relative to .500 at the conclusion of those six games.

And how long before we start seeing some of these prized prospects like Henry Davis, Endy Rodriguez, Nick Gonzales, and Quinn Priester in Pittsburgh instead of retreads like Mike Mathias and Chris Owings, to name two?

To Absent Friends - Dick Groat

"Who is the greatest athlete to ever come out of (insert name of city/state/region here)?" is always a popular sports talk show gambit whenever no one is calling in.   If you play that game in reference to the Pittsburgh area, the name of Dick Groat, who died yesterday at the age of 92, comes up pretty quickly.

A two sport athlete from Swissvale, PA, Groat was an All-American basketball and baseball player at Duke University.  His Number 10 basketball jersey was the first number retired by Duke, and he is still revered by the folks in Durham.  He led the nation in scoring and assists and was the third overall selection in the NBA draft after his senior year.   He played one year for the Fort Wayne Pistons in he NBA before concentrating on his baseball career, a career that would last for fourteen seasons and include 2,138 hits, an MVP Award, a National League batting title, five All-Star designations, and being a key member of two World Series winning teams, the 1960 Pirates and the 1964 Cardinals.  He is a member of both the College Baseball and Basketball Halls of Fame.

He was, of course, the shortstop and team Captain of Pittsburgh's most remembered and beloved team, the 1960 Pirates.   It was that season when Groat won the batting title and was named the National League's Most Valuable Player.   Second baseman Bill Mazeroski is in the Baseball Hall of Fame, primarily because he is often conceded to be the greatest defensive second baseman ever, but for the first half of his career, someone was partnering with Maz at short on all of those jaw-dropping double plays, and that someone was Dick Groat.

Groat's leadership and contributions to that magical season were recognized on a national level, too, as this Sports Illustrated  cover shows.

Of course, you have to be of a "certain age" to remember Groat as a baseball player, and most people in western Pennsylvania know of Groat today as the longtime color analyst on the radio broadcasts for Pitt basketball games, and job he held for forty (!!) years.  Also, back in the 1960's, he and former Bucs teammate Jerry Lynch built and opened Champion Lakes Golf Course near Ligoner, a course that remains to this day one of the finest public golf courses in southwest Pennsylvania.

Groat's was, as Pirates owner Bob Nutting said in the paper today, "A life well lived."

I can remember chatting with Groat on several occasions as he took my money at the pro shop cash register.  I can also remember a SABR meeting in Pittsburgh back in the mid 2010's when Groat was the guest speaker.  He was astonished when the crowd there gave him a standing ovation when he entered.  It was a well deserved reception, and his humility on that occasion was striking.  

Groat was last seen just last week in a video when Steve Blass informed him that he would be inducted in this year's class of the Pirates Hall of Fame.  He appeared to be very frail both physically and in his speech, so I suppose that yesterday's news of his passing doesn't come as a surprise. Still, the passing of one of the sporting heroes of your youth always hits hard.  

As I always do on such occasions, I report that Groat's death leaves only six members of the 1960 World Series roster for the Pirates with us, Joe Christopher, Roy Face, Vernon Law, Bill Mazeroski, Bob Oldis, and Bob Skinner.  All but Maz, who will turn 87 in September, are in their nineties, now.  Which of this sporting tontine will be the one to open that figurative  bottle of champagne?

Linda and I were at the Pirates-Dodgers game yesterday afternoon, where the Pirates recognized this sad occasion.

RIP Dick Groat.

The Reynolds Contract and Twelve Key Games Upcoming for the Pirates

From the long term point of view, yesterday was a very good day for the Pittsburgh Pirates when it became known that the team and outfielder Brian Reynolds agreed to an eight year contract extension worth $106 million in guaranteed money.   It is the largest guaranteed contract for any Pittsburgh professional athlete in history, and it came from Bob Nutting and the Pirates.  By all accounts, this is a good deal for both sides (I'll spare all the nitty-gritty details; you can find such info elsewhere in the interwebs if you so desire), and it gives the fan base what we have all been screaming about for years: a sign that the Pirates are willing to finally pay to keep a key player.  

Time, of course, will tell if this turns out to be a good deal for the Pirates, but for today at least, we all need to give the team - and Bob Nutting - their due.  They've stepped up to the plate and delivered for once.  Will they continue to do so?

All that aside, five days ago I wrote about how surprisingly well the team had been in the opening weeks of the season. At the close of this past  weekend, the team's record was 16-7, the best in the National League.  Admittedly, save for three games against the Astros, the Pirates had faced weaker teams in the the League.  Last night, however they began an 18 game stretch wherein twelve of those games would be played against stronger teams with winning records: the Dodgers, Rays, Blue Jays, and Orioles.  It could be said that how the team fares in those twelve games will tell us a lot in how sustainable the Bucs' early success might be.  What would be considered a successful record for the Pirates in those twelve games?  What would convince you that maybe, possibly, perhaps the 2023 version of the Pirates are on the brink of something really good? 

On the theory that you should beat up on the bad teams and break even with the good teams (generally speaking, of course), then I would say that anywhere from 5-7 to 7-5 or better in this stretch would be considered a good run for the team.  4-8 or worse would certainly make one nervous, would it not?  This run began poorly last night when the Pirates blew a 7-2 lead and lost to the Dodgers, so let's hope that they can bounce back tonight and tomorrow.

Oh, and sandwiched among those twelve games are three games apiece against the Nationals and Rockies.  The Bucs swept Colorado in a three game series in Denver last week, and the Nats are well on their way to contending for the worst record in MLB this year, so it behooves the Pirates to take care of business in those six games as they battle against the Big Boys in the league over the next three weeks.

 

To Absent Friends - Two Great Satirists

I do not want to let the month of April pass without noting the deaths of two of the All-Time great satirists of our era, Mark Russell and Al Jaffee.

Mark Russell

1932 - 2023

Mark Russell, born in Buffalo, NY, began his career as an Inside-the-Beltway guy, performing regularly in the lounge of Washington DC's Shoreham Hotel.  He parodied popular and well-known songs with his own lyrics that made comments on the news of the day out of Washington, and he was an equal opportunity guy:  no politician, regardless of which side of the aisle they sat, was safe from Russell's barbs.

He soon began to appear on the television talk show and variety show circuits which took his act to the rest of the country, and from 1975 to 2004, he did regular live programs on PBS where he performed in the round before a live audience while working at a stand up piano.  No one, dating from JFK and LBJ, Tricky Dick, the  Clintons, the Bushes, and Barack Obama, was a sacred cow to Russell, and if the truth were known, I am guessing that the subjects of his parodies were probably among his biggest fans (with the possible exception of the Trickster).

Russell was once asked if he had any writers, and he replied that, "yes, he had 535 of them, 100 in the Senate and 435 in the House of Representatives."  He effectively retired in 2010, making very rare public appearances beyond that.  When I heard of his passing, I wondered what his act would have been like during the administration of the 45th President.  I am not going to post it here so as not to stir up any controversies, but if you search YouTube, you can find a video of Russell sitting a piano at a birthday party in 2016 and doing a song about then Candidate Trump, and it was amazingly accurate in predicting what was to befall us.

Al Jaffee

1921-2023

When MAD Magazine was unleashed upon an unsuspecting nation in the early 1950's, Al Jaffee was one of the original artists for the publication, and there he remained until his retirement in 2019 at the age of 98.

The subversive and crazy humor that MAD had on generations of comedians and regular teenaged (mostly) boys, including Yours Truly, cannot be measured (to this day I still think of actors Fred Astaire and Roddy McDowell as "Fred Upstairs" and "Roddy McTowel"), and Jaffee was foremost among the editorial staff that made this giant imprint on our popular culture.  Among Jaffee's regular features was "Crazy Inventions" (some of which, like the multi-bladed razor, actually came about) and "MAD's Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions."  He may be best known, however for the inside back cover of the magazine, the MAD Fold-In.  Conceived as a one time gag as a riff on the fold-outs of magazines like Playboy, the fold-in became so popular that it became a regular feature of the Magazine, and Jaffe ended up doing over 400 of them.  Here is one of them which, based on he subject matter, no doubt dates from 1964:

RIP Mark Russell and Al Jaffee.