Book Review - "The Correspondent" by Virginia Evans

February has been a brutal month.  The northeastern part of the country, including Pittsburgh, has been hit with frigid temperatures and way above normal amounts of snowfall, the leadership of our federal government continues to take us deeper and deeper into the proverbial shitter, and here in The Grandstand, I have made eight posts this month and seven of them have been Absent Friends posts extolling the lives of nine significant people that we have lost this month. 

So, in what may well be my final post of the month, let me offer you a bright spot with a Four Star reading recommendation.

This novel currently sits in the #1 spot on the New York Times best sellers list.  It was brought to my attention by my pal Dan last year.  He read it on a neighbor's recommendation and said it was the best book that he had read last year.  Linda bought it for herself, but before she could read it, I picked it up myself and, as the cliche goes, I could not put it down.

The novel tells the story of Sybil Stone Van Antwerp, a retired attorney, divorced, a mother and a grandmother, who lives in Annapolis, MD and spends her days reading, tending to her gardens, and writing letters.  Old fashioned, handwritten letters and notes to her children, her brother, her sister-in-law, to just about anyone in her life, including customer service representatives of companies with whom she deals.  And there is one letter that Sybil writes throughout the book that she never finishes and never gets sent.  What is that all about?

The novel is written purely in the form of the correspondence both sent and received by Sybil over the course of ten years, 2012-2022.  It is certainly a different way to tell a story, but through this, we learn all about Sybil's life, about her parents, siblings, marriage, children and in-laws.  We also learn about one particular court case in which she was involved that is now coming back to her in a disturbing way.  Also, about a Christmas gift that her brother gave her that ends up having a remarkable affect on her life in these years covered by the book.

As I said, the whole structure of the novel and the story that it told was fascinating to me, and I polished it off in just a couple of sittings.  I highly recommend it.

Four Stars from The Grandstander.

In reading more about the book after I finished it was interesting as well.  "The Correspondent" is Virginia Evans' first published novel.   It received little pre-publication hype or promotion from the publisher.  It was not a book club selection by Oprah, Reese, or Jenna.  It seems that this became a hit in an organic and old fashioned way.  Someone bought it and read it, and told two other people about it.  Those people told two more and so on and BOOM!! A best seller was born.

Virginia Evans and her best seller

To Absent Friends - Jesse Jackson

 

Last week death claimed one of the towering figures of the American Civil Rights Movement, and indeed, a dominant figure in American culture since the 1960's, when the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson died at the age of 84.

Far be it from to enumerate Jackson's contributions to both the Civil Rights Movement in particular or to American society in general.  I will only say that I admired him, and that his death takes away another bit of America's conscience when it is most sorely needed here in 2026.

I will also remember Jackson as one of the greatest orators of our time.

How about this for inspiration when he told a crowd that everyone can be Somebody.

And could any minister, priest, or rabbi deliver as moving a eulogy and moving as was Jackson's eulogy for Jackie Robinson?

And to show that he never took himself too seriously, listen to him here on Saturday Night Live when, in a tribute to Dr. Suess, he read Green Eggs and Ham in pure Jesse Jackson style.

RIP Jesse Jackson

"I am.....somebody!"

Jackson (L) with Martin Luther King in Memphis 

moments before King's assassination

1968

To Absent Friends - Bill Mazeroski

 

Maz

1936 -2026

Bill Mazeroski died two days ago at the the age of 89.  He authored the single most dramatic and important sports moment in Pittsburgh sports history with his 1960 World Series Game 7 walk off home run that defeated the mighty New York Yankees. If you were alive and a sports fan in Pittsburgh back then, it is a moment that you will never forget, so why do I lead this post with a picture, albeit a posed one, of Maz taking a throw at second base instead of THIS picture?

Well, I do so because Bill Mazeroski is probably the single greatest defensive player, certainly the greatest defensive second baseman, that baseball has ever known. If you were lucky enough to have been a Pirates fan through the 1960's, as I was, and you got to watch Bill Mazeroski play second base day-after-day, year-after-year, as I did, then you know, you simply just KNOW, that there was no one better in the field than Maz was at second base.

He won eight Gold Gloves, led the league in put outs five times, assists nine times, and double plays eight times. His 1,706 double plays is still the all-time record for second basemen in history.  He was selected to ten all-star teams.  His batting stats are certainly not noteworthy.  He was a career .260 hitter with an OPS of .667. Pro-rated over 162 games, he averaged 10 HR and 64 RBI, which is probably why he often batted eighth in the batting order.  Still, he DID hit that Game 7 walk-off HR (he also homered in Game 1 of that Series), and that made him immortal, and for the person who just looks at stats, the temptation became to dismiss him as just another player who was lucky to have lightning strike him at one opportune time in his career. Like I said, though, if you SAW Maz play over the course of his career, you don't need any fancy advanced SABRmetrics to know that he was a Hall of Fame player on his defensive merits alone, and 29 years after he played his last game, the Veterans Committee of the Hall of Fame bestowed upon him the honor that he deserved.

Sports fans in the city of Pittsburgh have been fortunate over the years to have been able to  watch so many greatest-of-the-great players perform for the local teams - Clemente, Stargell, Bradshaw, Greene, Harris, Lemieux, and Crosby just to name a few - but I would have a hard time coming up with anyone who may have been more beloved than Bill Mazeroski.  That '60 Series winner was a big reason, but Maz was always so humble about it.  While I can't say that I ever had what could be called a conversation with him, I was in his company on several occasions over the years at charity golf outings, and he was just about the most unassuming guy you could imagine.  And he was always a presence in town at  any Pirates related event over the years.  I would guess  that a "Bill Mazeroski" autograph, like this one that I own 

can't be worth very much, because Maz had to have signed hundreds of thousands of them over the course of his life.

They built a statue of Bill Mazeroski outside of PNC Park not long after the Park was opened.  Of course, it depicts him circling the bases after that 1960 World Series home run.  I wish that the designers would have taken a different route when designing that statue.  It should be a statue of Maz turning double play, something like this:

And while researching photos for this post, I came across this great one.  It shows Maz at his position at second during the last game played at Forbes Field in June, 1970.   That section of the wall that has been stripped of the ivy with the "406" marker?  Yes, that is the part of the left field wall over which THAT home run traveled.

With Bill Mazeroski's passing, only two members of the 1960 World Champs remain, Bob Skinner and Vernon Law.  Maz was also a member of he Bucs' 1971 World Series winners, and now only ten of those players are still with us (see list at end of post).

RIP Bill Mazeroski.

	1971
Pitchers	Steve Blass
	Nelson Briles
	Dock Ellis
	Dave Guisti
	Bob Johnson
	Bruce Kison
	Bob Miller
	Bob Moose
	Bob Veale
	Luke Walker
Catchers	Manny Sanguillen
	Milt May
	Charlie Sands
Infielders	Gene Alley
	Dave Cash
	Jackie Hernandez
	Bill Mazeroski
	Jose Pagan
	Richie Hebner
	Bob Robertson
Outfielders	Roberto Clemente
	Gene Clines
	Vic Davalillo
	Al Oliver
	Willie Stargell
Manager	Danny Murtaugh
	Deceased	16
	Still With Us	10

To Absent Friends - Mike Wagner

 

Mike Wagner

1949-2026

One of the "Super Steelers" of the 1970's left us this week when safety Mike Wagner died at the age of 76.  Wagner was a safety on those four Super Bowl championship teams of the 1970's.  In a ten year career wherein he started all but three regular season games (116 of 119) and 14 post season games, Wagner was an integral part of the famed "Steel Curtain Defense" that dominated the decade of the 1970's.  He had 36 interceptions in his career and five post-season interceptions, including two more in Super Bowls against quarterbacks Fran Tarkenton and Roger Staubach.   Teammate Andy Russell said that he was probably the Steelers best safety ever.

He retired after the 1980 season, obtained his MBA from Pitt, and had a thirty-plus year career in the investment banking business.  He never left Pittsburgh, and was active in Steelers Alumni events and was always at team reunions. He was inducted into the Steelers Hall of Honor in 2021.

Steelers fans often refer to the "Super Steelers of the Seventies", and the definition of "Super Steelers" can pretty much be whatever you want it to be.  My own definition is that a "Super Steeler" is a player who earned four Super Bowl rings during that incredible six season span (1974-1979) where the team won four Super Bowls.  There were twenty-two of those guys, and seven of them, plus Head Coach Chuck Noll, are no longer with us.   I have included a list of those Super Steelers at the bottom of this post.

When one of those guys leaves us, it is worth noting.

RIP Mike Wagner.

Putting a lick on Roger Staubauch in th Super Bowl

Intercepting Staubach in Super Bowl X

Per the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

“Probably the reason why I liked that play so much is because it stuck in Staubach’s craw for over a decade,” Wagner said. “He was really flustered by that.”

“SUPER STEELERS”
Rocky Bleier
Mel Blount
Terry Bradshaw
Larry Brown
Sam Davis
Steve Furness
Joe Greene
L.C. Greenwood
Randy Grossman
Franco Harris
Jon Kolb
Jack Lambert
Gerry Mullins
Chuck Noll (HC)
Donnie Shell
John Stallworth
Lynn Swann
James Thomas
Loren Toews
Mike Wagner
Mike Webster
Dwight White
Hall of Fame

To Absent Friends - Robert Duvall

 

Actor Robert Duvall died earlier this week at the age of 95, and no, I would never have guessed that he was that old.  He was the consummate actor, good in everything he ever did.  When I think of Duvall, I think immediately of two roles of his.  The first, of course, is that of Tom Hagen, the Corleone Family consigliere in "The Godfather" (1972) and "The Godfather Part II" (1974). The other is his portrayal of retired Texas Ranger turned cattle driver Augustus McCrea in the 1989 TV mini-series "Lonesome Dove" (that he didn't win an Emmy for that part is a crime).

But that's just me, and if your initial thoughts of Duvall are different than mine it is certainly understandable, because his list of acting credits, and there are 145 of them in IMDB, is astonishing.  You actually learn, or at least I did, that Duvall was in some great movies that you saw and you didn't actually remember that he was in the cast.  His first feature film role was that of Boo Radley in1962's "To Kill A Mockingbird".   He had a bit part as a cab driver in the Steve McQueen classic "Bullitt" (1968), and he was the original Major Frank Burns in the movie "M*A*S*H" (1970).  He was in "True Grit" with John Wayne in 1969, "The Eagle Has Landed" with Michael Caine in 1976,   "True Confessions" with Robert DiNiro in 1981, and "The Natural" with Robert Redford in 1984. He was nominated for seven Oscars during his career and won one for "Tender Mercies" in 1983.   

There were other great roles, and, I have probably left out some of your favorite Robert Duvall movies.  In fact, in looking at his filmography, I noticed a credit for a 2018 movie called "Widows".  It was a heist movie that I recall enjoying, but didn't remember that Duvall was in it.  So I go into The Grandstander archives, and sure enough, on February 19, 2019 my write up on that movie included this:  

"A terrific cast also features Liam Neeson, Robert Duvall, Colin Farrell, and Daniel Kaluuya.  Consummate old pro Duvall pretty much dominates every scene that he is in."

And before all of the movie roles, Duvall made his bones acting in series television.  Name a series that was on the air in the 1960's, and chances are, Duvall made an appearance.  Naked City, Playhouse 90, Twilight Zone, The Fugitive, Route 66, and The Wild, Wild West are just a few of them.

What a Career.  What an Actor.

RIP Robert Duvall.

The consigliere  win his Don

With Tommy Lee Jones in "Lonesome Dove"

As Gus McCrea in "Lonesome Dove"

Hawkeye Pearce (Donald Sutherland) and Major Burns

"M*A*S*H"

A Nazi colonel in 

"The Eagle Has Landed"

To Absent Friends - Roy Face

Elroy Face

1928 - 2026

"The Baron of the Bullpen"

Roy Face, a mainstay of the Pittsburgh Pirates bullpen for fifteen seasons through the 1950's and -60's, died this past week at the age of 97.  He died eight days short of his 98th birthday.

Was Roy Face the first dominant "closer" in major league baseball?  Since the role of the relief pitcher, the idea of a "closer", and the statistic of the Save, has evolved and changed over the years, it is hard to answer that question, but this I know.  I attended my first Pirates game in 1959.  That was the season that Face finished with an astonishing record of 18-1 (more on that later) so Roy Face was certainly the most dominant relief pitcher in the first seven or eight years of MY baseball fandom.  As I said, the role of relief pitchers was different then than it is today.  Face, nicknamed "The Baron of the Bullpen" by announcer Bob Prince, would often be called into a game in mid-inning, and not just in the ninth inning, with men on base.  He would then often finish that game, pitching multiple innings.

About that "Save" statistic.  Let me quote from an essay by John Thorn, MLB's official historian, that he wrote in 2024 about Chicago sportswriter Jerome Holtzman:

Holtzman recognized in 1959, when he was still with the Sun-Times, that something dramatic was happening on the field that was invisible in the box score and, by extension, at the bargaining table when relievers came to negotiate their salaries for the next season. As he told Darrell Horwitz in an interview in 2005: “Elroy Face was 18–1 with Pittsburgh in 1959. I was traveling with the Cubs. The Cubs had two relief pitchers: righthander Don Elston and lefthander Bill Henry. They were constantly protecting leads and no one even knew about it.” It burned him that Face was piling up wins by blowing victories and then having the Pirates rally for him; ten times Face had allowed the tying or lead run.

He came up with The Save. The Sporting News began listing league leaders during the 1960 season; by 1969 it was an official MLB stat. In 1974–1975 its definition came under further modification, but there is no denying the impact of Holtzman’s invention. 

So while that 18-1 record in 1959 jumps out at you, perhaps it wasn't reflective at how good Face actually was that season.  In any event, it did lead to Holtzman inventing this new statistic.  It is a statistic that led to guys like Dennis Eckersley, Rich Gossage, Bruce Sutter, and Billy Wagner getting plaques in Cooperstown.

That aside, my own memories of Face include a feeling of supreme confidence whenever he came into pitch in the late innings with the game on the line.  I was able to be in Face's company over the years at a couple of golf outings and at SABR meetings.  Like many of his generation, he harbored some bitter feelings about "all the money these guys are making today".    I also remember a game that Marilyn and I attended at Three Rivers Stadium once.  While looking for a place to sit and eat some pre-game fare from the concession stand, who do we see sitting at a high top table all by himself but Elroy Face.  I asked if we could join him, he said certainly, and we had a nice conversation with him for fifteen or so minutes.   During the course of that conversation, he mentioned that the most he ever made in a season was $65,000.  I just looked it up and $65,000 in 1963 would be worth about $688,000 in 2026, which is well below what the MLB minimum salary of $780,000 is today.  Maybe he had a right to be bitter.

Roy Face was also, most importantly, a key member of the Pirates 1960 World Series Championship team.  He saved three of the four Bucco victories in that Series.  Now only three members of the team are still with us:  Vernon Law who will turn 96 in March, Bob Skinner who will turn 95 in October, and Bill Mazeroski who will be 90 in September.

RIP Roy Face, The Baron of the Bullpen

A  Sports Illustrated cover in 1963

 

The Seattle Super Bowl and Other Thoughts

 

The Seattle Seahawks 29-13 win over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LX has been in our rear view mirror for four days, so there is no point in going into great detail about the game at this point.  It was a game that lacked in drama.  If this same game had taken place at 1:00 on an October Sunday afternoon, it would have been noted in the rundown of scores and written off as a relatively dull and one sided affair.  However, this game took place at the Super Bowl, so it is a game of great consequences, history wise.  

The game was noteworthy for the other worldly performance of the Seahawks' defense.  They completely overwhelmed Pats' QB Drake Maye and the offensive line that was supposed to protect him.  Poor New England left tackle Will Campbell (#66).  I'd hate to be him sitting in the film room when the coaches grade that performance.

I don't know how sustainable that Seattle defense will be over the next five years or so, but this past Sunday they looked "Steelers Steel Curtain" and "1985 Bears" good.

A word about the quarterbacks.

As I watched this game unfold, I said to those watching with me that the blame for New England's performance was going to fall, unfairly, all on Drake Maye, and he has been taking a beating since that game.  No mistake, Maye played a bad game and it appeared that he was in way over his head on Sunday afternoon.  He was playing injured, so there is that, and as mentioned above, his offensive line gave him ZERO chance to succeed in this game, and he is only in his second year in the NFL cut him some slack. He finished second in the voting for league MVP this season and with good reason.  I think the Pats are set at quarterback for the foreseeable future.

The Sam Darnold Redemption Story is one of the better ones in the NFL over the last couple pf seasons.  He was a high first round draft pick, number three overall, I believe, of the Jets (where careers go to die), and he bombed there.  He was discarded by New York and went to San Francisco as a back-up, and then became free agent signee of the Vikings in 2024, where he led the team to 14 wins.  The Vikes bombed out in the playoffs where Darnold didn't play well.  He was released and then signed with Seattle this past season, where he led Seattle to a pretty good season.  Yet all season long, the talking heads kept saying that Darnold would eventually be Seattle's undoing.  Well, it didn't happen, did it?  No, Darnold didn't have a great game either in the Super Bowl (the Patriots have a pretty good defense, too), but he didn't make any mistakes, and his team, you know, WON THE GAME.  

No one is comparing Sam Arnold to Joe Montana, but I think he's earned the right to now tell the doubters to eat it.  And I wonder what the outlook would be like in Steelers Nation right now if instead of signing free agent Aaron Rodgers last year, the team had signed free agent Sam Darnold instead.

BAD BUNNY

Yes, we watched the much discussed Halftime Show featuring Bad Bunny.  Yes we were entertained, and yes, we enjoyed it.  No, we didn't understand the words sung in Spanish, but we loved the music, the dancing, and the overall spectacle of the performance.  As the days passed, and we came to learn the meaning of what was being communicated on stage to the audience, we came to appreciate the show even more. There was an actual wedding that took place during the show.  How could you not like that? And how can you possibly take a stance against  this message that was communicated:

If it wasn't so sad and pathetic, it would actually be funny watching so many of our so-called leaders in Washington twisting themselves into knots in the months leading up to the Super Bowl and in the days since over what they conceive as being "un-American", "unpatriotic", and "disgusting", even threatening deportation and FCC licensing of the TV networks.  Which prompts me to ask, Why was the leader of this rabble watching this show at his Super Bowl party down there in Berchtesgaden-by-the-Sea, aka, Mar-a-Largo?  Why wasn't HE watching his boy Kid Rock performing the All-American Alternative Halftime Show?

There is great irony here.  Super Bowl Halftime entertainment, like much of popular music, has passed me by.  I get it, and if the NFL chooses to go with what is current and popular, fine by me.  I have glanced at halftime shows over last five years or so briefly and have basically said "talented people, but not for me", and have used halftimes to get something to eat and go to the bathroom.  That would have probably been the case this year, but for all of the fuss raised by the so-called patriots who are currently in the process of destroying the America that has been built since the end of World War II. 

So I watched the Bad Bunny show, and I enjoyed it, and I'm guessing that most people did.  The TV ratings numbers show that in excess of 135 million people watched the Super Bowl halftime show.

5 million people tuned into the Kid Rock alternate show (the leader of the anti-Bad Bunny forces, as noted, did not).

12.5 million people tuned into the Puppy Bowl Halftime show on Animal Planet.

Super Bowl Commercials

Four days after the fact, the commercial that sticks with me most was for Dunkin' that featured Ben Affleck and actors in character from '90s sitcoms, although I wish that  Alfonso Ribeiro would have been able to do a few steps of "The Carlton" in there.    The worst commercial was for an electric razor for Manscaping that talked about keeping beards and sideburns trimmed, but was REALLY talking about men shaving....somehwere else.  Didn't need to see that.

That's it, that's the list.

FINAL NOTE:  I went down a road in this post that I usually try to avoid when writing The Grandstander.  I am going to try not to make a habit of these kinds of posts.  If you were offended, I'm not going to apologize.  I have hated seeing what has been happening in this country over the last year, THAT has been truly offensive to me, and sometimes you just have to say something about it.