Friday, April 30, 2021

Najee Harris and Other Draft Day One Observations

I never thought that I would have done this, and I don't believe that I had ever done it before, but last night I turned on the NFL Draft at 8:00, and I stayed with it up until the Steelers made their pick at slot number 24, three hours and twenty minutes later. It helped to have the distraction of social media and the ability to make humorous (one hopes) comments with other losers/geeks football fans who were doing the same thing.

Anyway, as you might expect, I have some comments to offer.....

I am thrilled - THRILLED - with the selection of RB Najee Harris of Alabama by the Steelers.



He comes from a big time college program, and he has excelled at the very highest level of the college game.  He addresses a serious need of the Steelers.  I watched his Zoom call with local media this morning, and he seems to be a very nice kid.  And if you like omens....the Steelers have an excellent record when selecting running backs named Harris in the first round.   

As for me, I always liked watching him play at Alabama, and I absolutely fell in love with him when I watched him make this jaw-dropping play against Notre Dame last season:


Also, Marilyn loves cheering "Na-jee, Na-jee, Na-jee" when she watched him play, so he's got that going for him, too.

Of course, all draft picks are great on Draft Day, and you really do have to wait until they get on the field against real live NFL players, but on Draft Day, you've got to be optimistic, so welcome to Steelers Nation, Najee Harris.

********

Five quarterbacks were selected among the first fifteen picks:

  1. Trevor Lawrence, 1, Jacksonville
  2. Zach Wilson, 2, NY Jets
  3. Trey Lance, 3, San Francisco
  4. Justin Fields, 11, Chicago
  5. Mac Jones, 15, New England
Lawrence was a no-brainer, of course, but the selection that intrigues me the most was the selection of Alabama's Jones by Bill Belichick and the Patriots.  Scouts weren't as big on Jones as they were the four QBs who went ahead of him, but he was the guy who led Alabama to an undefeated season and the CFP Championship, and someone was throwing the ball to those two first round receivers at 'Bama.  Critics site that he wasn't good at his pro days, and to that I say, to Hell with Pro Days, I saw Mac Jones play in real football games, and he is going to the greatest coach of the 21st century.  If I was a Patriots fan, I'd be feeling pretty good about that selection.

Of course, the chances are also pretty good that one or two of these guys will turn out to be ordinary NFL QB's, at best, and might turn out to be complete busts (think Jamarcus Russell and Ryan Leaf), not that I wish that on any of them.  

********
Can you believe the people that turn up to sit in the audiences at these things?  The outfits, the face paint, the outlandish hats and headgear.  I wonder what some of these people do in real life.  Are any of them doctors, lawyers, CPA's, or high powered business executives?  What if you were in need of delicate heart surgery and found out the day before the operation that your surgeon is the guy who wears a dog mask in Cleveland, or one of the dudes in the garish green and white Jets stuff, or the guy with Iron City Beer cans welded to a construction worker's hard hat? 

******** 
I started watching ESPN, but as soon as I saw that Mike Greenberg was the anchor and Booger McFarland was on the desk, I went to the NFL Network and stayed there, not that their gurus were any more rational than Mel Kiper Jr.

********
Apparently, at some point, and I am not sure when this happened exactly, and new position came about in football called "edge rusher" or, more simply, "edge."  That being the case, I suggest that the NFL call this guy in to host next year's Draft festivities.




Monday, April 26, 2021

Rehashing the Oscars


Unlike the telecast itself, and specifically, the acceptance speeches, I am going to try to be brief in my rehash of last night's Academy Awards presentations. 

What was good about them:

  • The setting.  Having he ceremony in a beautiful building like the Union train station in Los Angeles  was different, and quite cool.
  • Emerald Fennell, pictured above, winning the Original Screenplay Oscar for "Promising Young Woman," the only award that that terrific movie won.
  • Acceptance speeches.  For make-up, people, designers, lighting people, editors, and other such technical folks, this is the only time they ever get recognition, so let 'em bloviate, I say.  (More on this later.)
  • Chloe Zhao wearing sneakers to go with her formal gown.
  • The acceptance speech of Supporting Actress winner Yuh-Jung Youn.  Totally charming.
  • Tyler Perry's speech in accepting the Humanitarian Award.
  • Amanda Seyfried's dress.
  • No long drawn out performances of the five nominated songs, which led to...
  • ....the show being over by 11:15, which led to.....
  • ...no stale jokes along the line of "okay, we're halfway through now" at about two and one-half hours into the telecast.  Bob Hope was telling that old chestnut back in the 1940's.
  • Frances McDormand's acceptance speech, which took about twenty seconds.
  • My predictions.  I hit on six of ten (60%), including Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, and Supporting Actor.
  • Texting back and forth with pal Barbara Vancheri, retired Movie Critic of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, during the show.
What was not good about them:
  • No video clips of the performances of the nominated actors.
  • Acceptance speeches.  Despite what I said above, they really do go on too long.  The people who made that documentary about the octopus, a movie that about twelve people will actually see, talked seemingly forever.  I mean, C'MON MAN.  You made a movie about an octopus!
  • That stupid "music trivia" game that came at the exact time in the show when everyone was just waiting for the whole thing to end.
  • The obviously staged piece of schtick that had Glenn Close twerking during that music trivia bit.
  • "Nomadland" winning.  No, this was not a surprise, and yes, I predicted it, and yes, it was a beautifully made movie, but, to me at least, it was not entertaining, which is what a movie should be.  I know lots of will disagree with me there.
  • Chadwick Boseman and Carey Mulligan not winning the Lead Acting Awards.
  • My predictions.  I missed on three of the four acting awards.
  • The final "what was not good" bullet point deserves it's own paragraph, so.....
The Academy pulled a switch-a-roo, by having the Best Picture Award presented before the Lead Acting awards.  This was obviously done with the thought that Chadwick Boseman would be posthumously named Best Actor, and the show would end with an emotional tribute to him.  When he did not win, and when winner Anthony Hopkins was neither in LA nor London (one of the remote sites) to accept his award, the show ended with all of the aplomb of a round of extreme flatulance in church.

As the headline in Variety  might put it, "ACADEMY LAYS EGG."

I'll close with one more picture of Ms Fennell and her Oscar.  She wore sneakers, too!




Saturday, April 24, 2021

"Sound of Metal" and Oscars Predictions


Today I watched the last of the Best Picture Academy Award nominees that I wanted to see, "Sound of Metal."  This makes six of the eight nominated films that I can check off as having seen.

Too many people whose opinions I regard have been telling me to see "Sound of Metal", and I can say that they did not steer me wrong.  It is the story of Ruben, played by Oscar nominee Riz Ahmed, a drummer in a heavy metal band who loses his hearing.  His reactions to this (seemingly) sudden loss, and his attempts to "learn to be deaf", make for a dramatic story.  It is very well acted, and it truly gives you the feeling of what it is like to begin to lose and eventually fully lose your hearing.

Perhaps the best example of this is the actual sound of the movie.  For much of the movie, you, the viewer hear the dialog, people talking, and all background noises as you normally would.  However, most of the time it switches to what Ruben is hearing: muffled noises, incoherent voices, and, eventually, nothing at all, and Ahmed gives a terrific portrayal of a person experiencing the frustrations, the anger, and the fear when such a loss occurs.  While I am no expert at the technical aspects of filmmaking, if this movie does not win the Oscar for Best Sound tomorrow night, then something is very, very wrong.

The Grandstander gives this one Three Stars.

Ahmed as Ruben and Olivia Cooke 
as his girlfriend, LouLou

********
So what are the Oscars without The Grandstander's Annual Oscars predictions.  Before that, though, allow me to list the six Best Picture Nominees that I have seen ranked by my own standards.  Keep in mind, I am not a professional critic, merely a movie fan, this is how I rank these six films from Most Favorite to Least Favorite:
  1. Promising Young Woman
  2. Trial of The Chicago 7
  3. Judah and The Black Messiah
  4. Sound of Metal
  5. Mank
  6. Nomadland
Okay, that's how I would vote.  Now, here are my predictions for what and who will actually take home the Oscar statuettes:

  • Best Picture - Nomadland
  • Director - Chloe Zhao, Nomadland
  • Adapted Screenplay - Kemp Powers, One Night in Miami
  • Original Screenplay - Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman
  • Leading Actor - Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
  • Lead Actress - Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman
  • Supporting Actor - Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and The Black Messiah
  • Supporting Actress - Glenn Close, Hillbilly Elegy (this prediction made using the SWAG method)
  • Best Animated Feature - Soul
  • Best Sound - Sound of Metal

Ten picks.  Will make it easy to calculate my winning percentage come tomorrow night.

Friday, April 23, 2021

Book/Movie Combo: "Horseman, Pass By" and "Hud"


 










The recent death of author Larry McMurtry, which I wrote about last month, prompted me to resolve to try and read some of his works (other than "Last Picture Show" and "Lonesome Dove") that I had not read.  

The first book on the list was "Horseman, Pass By", McMurtry's first novel, published in 1961.  It tells the story of contemporary cattleman Homer Bannon.  Now past eighty years old, he works a smallish cattle ranch in north Texas, lives with his second wife, her unscrupulous son, Hud, and his grandson, Lonnie.  It is through Lonnie's eyes and narration that the story is told.  Another key character is the ranch's cook/maid, an African-American woman named Halmea.

Similar to "The Last Picture Show", this novel evokes the sense of a time and place and an era that is fast slipping away, and the nothingness that living in a small middle-of-nowhere place in Texas can be. The town of Thalia in "Horseman" is the same town as the one in "Picture Show."

The central crisis in "Horseman, Pass By" is the outbreak of a deadly foot-in-mouth disease that develops in Homer's cattle herd, an event that necessitates the slaughter of the entire herd.  This of course, has a devastating effect on Homer, and it leads to actions that drastically effect the lives of Halmea, Hud, and Lonnie.

In 1963, a movie adaptation of "Horseman, Pass By" was released and renamed "Hud", and I watched it just this week, right after I finished reading the book.  It was directed by Martin Ritt and starred Paul Newman, Melvyn Douglas, Patricia Neal, and Brandon De Wilde.  The film was nominated for seven Academy wards and won three, including Neal for Lead Actress and Douglas for Supporting Actor.  Some slight changes from the book - Hud, played by Newman, is Homer's son, there is no second wife for Homer, and the Black cook, Halmea, has become Alma, played by Neal.  If anything, Hud, as portrayed by Newman is an even bigger heel than he was in the novel.  However, the final act that Hud performs in the book is eliminated in the movie.  I suppose that filmmakers in 1963 just couldn't bring themselves to depict what he did in the novel.  Even though we are talking about a sixty year old novel, I'm not going to give the spoiler here if you have only seen the movie.

As in the book, the infection that led to the destruction of the Bannon cattle herds is the central episode of the movie, and the scene that depicted it was especially wrenching to watch.  Newman was nominated for a Leading Actor Oscar - he lost that year to Sidney Poitier - and, not surprisingly, he was terrific as the, shall we say, "anti-hero" Hud Bannon. Not a likable character for the always likable Newman.  De Wilde was only 21 years old playing the 17 year old Lonnie.  He is best know for playing the young boy, Joey, in the classic 1953 western "Shane", for which he received an Oscar nomination.  In the back of my mind, I knew that he had died young: he was killed in a traffic accident in 1972 at the age of 30.

The question is often raised in such instances - which is better the book or the movie?  When seeking to answer, it should always be kept in mind that a book and a movie are two different art forms, and each should be judged on its own merits.  I found both the book "Horseman, Pass By" and the movie "Hud" to be very good pieces of work.  In spite of the changes noted above, the movie held close to the book, and depicted the lives and the emotions  of the characters every bit as well as they were shown in McMurtry's novel.  If you enjoyed one, you will certainly enjoy the other.

I give both he novel and the movie Three Grandstander Stars.


Thursday, April 22, 2021

Neil Walker Retires





Much congratulations to former Pirate Neil Walker, who announced his retirement as an active player earlier this week.  If you are a Pirates fan, you know his story.  The Number 1 draft selection of the Pirates in 2004 out of Pine-Richland High School, Walker joined the Pirates in 2010 and, along with fellow #1 pick Andrew McCutchen and others, he led the Pirates out of a 20 season losing streak and to three straight playoff appearances in 2013-15.  And while it wasn't the only reason, it also wasn't coincidental that the return of the Pirates to mediocrity beginning in 2016 coincided with Walker's trade to the Mets for the steaming pile of garbage that was Jonathon Neise.


Walker had seven solid seasons with the Pirates  - .272 BA, 93 HR, 418 RBI, and then he turned into a baseball journeyman, playing for five other teams.  His career numbers (1,224 hits, 149 HR, 609 RBI) when prorated on a "per 162 game" basis are .267 BA, 18 HR, and 76 RBI. Would you be interested in that for your second baseman?  He lived almost every American kid's dream, he did most of it for his home town team, and earned $51.8 million in the process.

Walker has been much interviewed in the local media these past few days, and it sounds like he wants to stay in baseball, and, possibly, continue his involvement with the Pirates in some capacity.  He seems to carry no rancor or bitterness towards his old team (the absence of Neal Huntington probably has a lot to do with that attitude).  My friend Dan has maintained for years that Neil Walker would someday become the manager of the Pirates, and who's to say that that won't happen at some point in the future? 

Hey, if anyone should be a "Pirate for Life", who better than Neil Walker, The Pittsburgh Kid?

Happy times with Cutch and Walker

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

To Absent Friends - Walter Mondale


 Walter F. Mondale
1928 - 2021

United Sates Senator
1964 - 1977

Vice President of the United States
1977 - 1981

Nominee/Candidate for President of the United States
1984

United States Ambassador to Japan
1993 - 1996

Public Servant



Vice President and Mrs. Mondale
in the Oval Office with
President and Mrs. Carter


With Minnesota mentor Hubert Humphrey

RIP, Fritz.

Monday, April 19, 2021

April News: Surprising Pirates, and a Bittersweet Farewell

As T.S. Elliot put it, when he wasn't writing about cats, April is the cruelest month.  Not sure if that is the case thus far in these months, but it has been a surprising one as far as your Pittsburgh Pirates are concerned.

The Buccos won the season opener and the following day began a six game losing streak.  Not only that, in that second game, future Face of the Franchise Ke'Bryan Hayes was injured - and it will take a Zapruder Film like study of the game tapes to see just exactly how he was injured - and was sent to the Injured List and hasn't been seen since.  Typical luck of the Pirates, we all said.  Funny thing, though, that since that 1-6 start the Pirates have gone 6-3, and now sport a record of 7-9 and are not in last place in the NL Central Division.  They've done so with some surprisingly good pitching, especially out of the bullpen, but nobody should be kidding themselves.  They are a rebuilding team with a lot of holes and a lot of shortcomings, but for the last nine games, at least, it's been fun tuning in and thinking that, hey, we might see a pretty good ballgame tonight.

So nothing cruel from the Pirates so far this April.

Meanwhile, a bittersweet note was sounded from the other end of General Robinson Street last week with the news that Steelers free agent running back James Conner had singed a contract with the Arizona Cardinals.  Thus ends an eight year saga of James Conner Football in The Burgh, four at Pitt, four with the Steelers, and there may well have never been an athlete in Pittsburgh sports annals for whom you wanted to see succeed more.

My first lengthy piece on Conner was written in November 2016, and it told the story of Conner's triumphs and travails at Pitt, including his overcoming cancer and making it back to Pitt for another season where he established the ACC record for touchdowns scored in a career.  



When Conner was drafted by the Steelers the following Spring, it had "storybook" written all over it, and I couldn't remember a Steelers draft pick that I wanted to see make it big so badly as I wanted to see James Conner do so.


Conner showed flashes of brilliance in his four years with the Steelers.  In his second year, 2018, he had over 1,000 yards combined rushing and receiving, scored 13 touchdowns, and made the Pro Bowl.  Too often, though, Conner couldn't stay on the field due to injury.  He missed fourteen games over the course of his four years, and often times he had to leave games due to injury.  The ability to say healthy is a skill every bit as important as being fast, being able to catch a ball, or being able to elude tacklers, and for whatever reason, those injuries plagued Conner's time here.  Were all of those injuries the result of undergoing months and months of rigorous chemotherapy while in college?  One has to wonder.

Conner left town on a classy note, issuing a statement thanking the city, Pitt, the Steelers, and all the fans for their support over the years.  I am sure that everyone who enjoyed watching James Conner play at Heinz Field for the Blue & Gold and the Black & Gold over the last eight years hopes that he finds good health and lots of success with the Cardinals.

Wednesday, April 14, 2021

The Oscars 2021


It has been several weeks since the nominations for this year's Academy Awards were announced, and it is only now that I am getting around to writing some thoughts and comments on them.  Usually, I am all over that within 24 hours, but this year, well, call it a result of a weird year that changed everything  about how we consume movies.  What movies are eligible for 2020 Oscars?  Were they ever shown in a theater, and if so, who went to see them?  We all watched movies differently this year, mostly through streaming services like Prime or Netflix, so who knew it they were actually a "movie" as defined by the Motion Picture Academy?

Regardless, movies, actors, writers, directors, and others have been nominated, and I ended up seeing a surprising number of the nominees.  So for what it is worth, here are my thoughts.  

Let's start with the Best Picture.  Eight movies have been nominated.  I have NOT seem three of them - The Father, Minari, and the Sound of Metal.  I have heard nothing  but good things about the Sound of Metal, so I am hoping to watch that before the Oscar ceremony on April 25.  I doubt that I will see the other two.  That leaves the five that I have seen:

Judas and the Black Messiah 
Mank
Nomadland
Promising Young Woman
Trial of the Chicago 7

(My original write-ups on these various movies are linked in the body of this post.)

I really enjoyed Judas and The Black Messiah, Promising Young Woman, and Trial of The Chicago 7.  In fact, I  rated Trial of the Chicago 7 my favorite movie that I actually saw in calendar year 2020.   Mank was an interesting period piece with a great performance by Gary Oldman, but I was frankly surprised to see it garner the acclaim that it has.  Of course, it is a story that Hollywood is telling about itself, so maybe that explains it.  Nomadland was a piece of filmmaking art, to be sure, and another slam bang performance from Frances McDormand, but as entertainment? Not to my taste.  It is the favorite among critics and will probably win the big prize come Oscar Night.

Interestingly enough, Trial of the Chicago 7 won the Best Ensemble SAG Award, and that is often a harbinger for the Oscars, and if it wins I will have no problem with that.  Not will I have problem with Judas and The Black Messiah winning, as that was one terrifically told movie.  The movie that has stayed with me the most since I saw it, however, is Promising Young Woman.  That is the one movie of all of these that I can see myself watching again and again and again as the years go on.

A word about a movie that didn't get nominated.  Until Promising Young Woman came along, my favorite movie that I have seen in calendar year 2021 had been Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods, and the only sniff that that one received from the Academy was for Best Original Score.  I mean, C'MON MAN!!  If Spike Lee isn't still PO'd at the Academy, he should be.  As a side comment, I hope it does win this one, if only for including the terrific a cappella version of Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin' On" on the soundtrack.

As for the other categories (and I will only make comments on the films that I have actually seen)....

Chadwick Boseman has collected both a posthumous Golden Globe and SAG Award for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and I suspect that that will also happen at the Oscars. He was terrific in that movie (as he was in Da 5 Bloods), and him receiving this award will be another poignant reminder of what was lost with his way-too-soon death.  The only other nominee that I saw was Oldman in Mank, and he was very good in that one, too.

I've seen three of the Supporting Actor nominees: Leslie Odom Jr (One Night in Miami) and Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield, both for Judas and The Black Messiah.  Kaluuya has won this award both at the Globes and SAG, but my questions are: Why in a Supporting Role? And why are both he and Stanfield cast as Supporting Actors in the same movie? Both had equally prominent parts in the same film.  I don't get it.

I've seen three of the Lead Actress nominees.  Frances McDormand was great in Nomadland.  She's always  great.  Viola Davis was great in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.  She's always great.  To me, though, Carey Mulligan blew them both away in Promising Young Woman.  Some buzz that I have heard on various movie podcasts is that they expect Mulligan to win, and I hope she does.  They don't expect that the Academy will bestow a third Oscar on McDormand this time, which makes this Mulligan's year.  The wild card, though, was Davis' win in this category for the SAG Award.  This will be an interesting one to watch.

The only Supporting Actress nominee that I've seen has been Amanda Seyfried from Mank, so I'm not sure how qualified I am to make any comments on this one, but here is an interesting theory I heard kicked around in podcast-land.  Will the Academy give Glenn Close, a six time nominee-but-never-a-winner a "lifetime achievement" make-up Oscar for her role in Hillbilly Elegy, a movie that was for the most part, completely panned by critics. That would be a shame and almost an insult to Ms. Close should it happen.

The other categories that interest me are Director, Adapted, and Original Screenplay Awards.  I strongly suspect that Chloe Zhao will be the Best Director for Nomadland, and as I said, as a piece of filmmaking art, it would be deserving.  

In the Adapted Screenplay category, the only movie I've seen besides Nomadland is One Night In Miami, which was another really good movie, and I'd be happy if it won.

In the Original Screenplay category, I have seen Judas and The Black Messiah, Promising Young Woman, and The Trial of The Chicago 7.   Many are conceding this one to Aaron Sorkin for Chicago 7, and it would not be undeserving, but he has won Oscars before so I am hoping that the Oscar this year goes to Emerald Fennell for Promising Young Woman.  Ms Fennell is also a nominee for Best Director. She won't win both, and this would be a way to reward her for her work on the terrific movie that she made.

So we will finally find out in eleven days, April 25, who this year's Oscar winners are.  That is way, way too long after the close fo the year to be awarding these things.  Let us hope for a return to a February Oscar ceremony come 2022.




Tuesday, April 13, 2021

Book Review: "Our Team" by Luke Epplin

This recently published book tells the story of the 1948 World Series Champion Cleveland Indians, and it tells it through the prism of four men instrumental in that triumph....team owner and baseball maverick Bill Veeck, pitcher and Cleveland idol Bob Feller, outfielder Larry Doby, and legendary pitcher Satchel Paige.  Not coincidentally, all four of these men are members of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Signed by owner Bill Veeck midway through the 1947 season, Doby became the first Black player in the American League, three months after Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's color line for the Brooklyn Dodgers.  While Robinson's story is well known, and deservedly so, Doby's story as a trailblazer is lesser known, but it is every bit as harrowing and heroic as was Robinson's.   This book is well worth reading only to learn of the trials and travails that faced Larry Doby.

When I was given this book as an Easter gift (Thanks, George!) I was really interested to see how the book would portray Feller.  If you are steeped in baseball history, you probably know his story.  Coming straight out of the corn fields of a farm in Van Meter, Iowa, Feller debuted with the Indians in 1936 at the age of 17 with a fast ball the likes of which no one had ever seen.  By the age of 22, Feller had notched three 20+ win seasons in six years.  Then World War II came along, Feller enlisted in the Navy, served with distinction in combat in the Pacific Theater, and lost three prime years in his career.  He retired from baseball in 1956 with 266 wins, and the question of "How many wins would ol' Rapid Robert have piled up if he hadn't lost three prime years of his career to military service?" became a major part of the Feller Narrative.  It could also be noted that no one brought up that question over the years more than Feller himself, but I digress.

Life circumstances found me living in Cleveland for four years during the mid-1970's, and if you followed baseball, you sure heard a lot from and about Bob Feller.  He was revered in Cleveland, and deservedly so, much like Roberto Clemente and Bill Mazeroski are in Pittsburgh.  However, every story I would read about Feller during those years, every interview I would hear him give, he came across as an extremely bitter guy.  "These guys today make too damn much money"...."Marvin Miller has ruined the game of baseball"...."If it wasn't for the War, I'd have won more games than Warren Spahn."  This was the gospel according to Bob Feller.  And if you dug down deeper, you would learn that Feller's attitude towards and acceptance of Black ballplayers as the game was being integrated was far from enlightened.

So would we get the standard hagiography from author Epplin about Feller in this one?  Simple answer: Nope.  The book gives a pretty unvarnished look at Feller.

As the War drew to a close, Feller asked for and received an early discharge from the Navy so he could come back to the Indians and begin getting back some of the money that he had lost.  He pitched in nine games and went 5-3 in 1945, and then embarked on a barnstorming tour across America with all-star teams, white major league players playing teams of all-stars from the Negro Leagues, whose main drawing card was Satchel Paige.  Much of the 1946 season, when he went 26-15, was spent planning his most elaborate barnstorming tour ever.  His Feller All-Stars visited more cities, traveled by airplanes (unheard of prior to that) and made more money that any other barnstorming tour.   Feller was reported to have earned over $80,000 from the tour alone that year, more money than any other player in the majors.  So it seems that Feller, who came to decry the large salaries reaped by players in the free agency era of the game, was actually way ahead of the game when it came to realizing how to squeeze the most bucks out of the marketplace.  That doesn't make him a sinner, but it does make him a bit of a hypocrite. 

The Negro Leaguers on the tour received a smaller share of the proceeds than their white counterparts, not surprisingly, but most of the Black players didn't hold it against Feller, since they were making more money than they ever had as a result of these tours.  Some players, though, did feel that the books were being cooked against them.  Paige himself brought a lawsuit against Feller to reclaim funds he felt that he was owed.  The suit was settled out of court, and it must have been interesting when Paige joined the Indians in 1948 and became Feller's teammate.

A story was also told about how Feller brought a souvenir back with him from the war: a high-powered military telescope that the Indians used to steal signs while stationed in the Municipal Stadium scoreboard.  Feller never denied doing it, and in fact, bragged about it, and felt that it was perfectly okay to do so. No word as to whether the Indians banged on garage cans to relay the signals to their batters.

The 1948 pennant race became a bittersweet year for Feller.  At the age of 29, and despite a 19-15 season, Feller had "lost it" a bit, and was no longer the dominating pitcher he once was.  He lost a game on the last weekend of the season that would have clinched the pennant of the Indians, lost the opening game of the World Series, despite pitching brilliantly, and with a chance to close out the Series in Game Five, he got rocked by the Braves and knocked out of the game in the seventh inning.  Cleveland won the Series the next day in Game Six, and in the locker room afterwards, Feller was subdued and withdrawn, more disappointed in his own shortcomings in the Series than he was happy for the team's Championship.  So much for being a good teammate.

In focusing on Feller in this essay, I am leaving out the narratives in the book about Veeck, Paige, and especially Doby.  The backgrounds and the stories told of each of these men and their contributions to the '48 Indians are equally as compelling as the Feller tales, if not more so, in this book, and they make for great reading.

"Our Team" gets Three Stars from The Grandstander.


Friday, April 9, 2021

To Absent Friends - Prince Philip




Today we bid farewell to a man who has been on the World's stage for, literally, my entire life: HRH Prince Philip, the Queen's Consort.  ("Consort: a wife, husband, or companion, in particular the spouse of a reigning monarch."  - Oxford Languages.  I looked it up.)

It is not for me, an American who considers the British Monarchy a living, breathing anachronism, to comment on the life of the Prince.  I highly recommend the obituary for the Prince that appears online today in the Washington Post.  It's great reading, and you can read it HERE.  It portrays the Prince pretty much as we here in the Colonies have come to see him portrayed in "The Crown": a real man's man who oft-times comes across as a foot-in-his-mouth twit.

As you read his obit, you will also come to see that he was someone who gave up the life that he really wanted, that of a career man in the Royal Navy, to become a man, a consort, who was destined to live in the shadow of his wife, Queen Elizabeth II, and in service to the Empire.  Their marriage was certainly different than the marriages  of ordinary folk like you and me, but I can only hope that they found a lifetime of happiness together.

RIP Prince Philip.



Friday, April 2, 2021

Pirates 2021, and The "Timberwolves Experiment" Begets "The Pirates Project"


If you are a regular reader of The Grandstander, you know that I usually write this post before Opening Day, but the timing just didn't work out, so here I am, a day late.

So I watched the Pirates 5-3 win over the Cubs yesterday and enjoyed it immensely.  The highlight, of course, was what you see in the picture atop this post: Ke'Bryan Hayes' first inning two run home run that gave the Bucs a lead that they never relinquished, thanks in large part to lousy pitching from the Cubs (11 walks) and stellar relief pitching from the Pirates (6 IP, 1 H, 0 BB, 9 K).  We will gloss over the fact that the game took an interminable amount of time to play, that the Pirates could manage only 5 runs when given 11 free passes, and that the Ghost of Starling Marte will apparently still haunt Pirates baserunners, and just revel in the victory.

But have no illusions about this team.  They are going to be bad, and they will struggle to avoid losing 100 games, but that is not necessarily a bad thing, as Ben Cherrington (GMBC) is doing the right thing.  Unloading marketable players for prospects to rebuild the farm system and develop a team that will come 2023 or 2024 bear fruit and contend for championships. with current players like Hayes, Mitch Keller, Kevin Newman, and Brian Reynolds being the centerpieces.  That's what the Astros and Nationals did; that's what the Brewers, Blue Jays, and Padres are now doing.  It's the way to go.

Intellectually, I get it, but the cynicism that the Nutting Administration has built up inside of me wonders what will happen when the time comes to, as they say, Go For It.  Will the team pay the piper with the current core of four above (assuming all goes right in there development), and pay to bring in missing pieces?  Because we have heard this all before, and we were told that players like Josh Bell and Jameson Taillon and Austin Meadows would one day be the centerpieces of contending championship-caliber teams, which they may very well be with the Nats, Yankees, and Rays.

In the meantime, try not to think of the season long slog that this Pirates team will experience, but enjoy each individual game that you watch or attend.  If you just happen to catch a game that the Pirates win with Mitch Keller pitching a two hit shutout, or Brian Reynolds going 3-for-four with a home run and four RBI, consider it as you would a record album:  It might be lousy, but it has one or two terrific tracks on it.

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"The Pirates Project"

What, you may ask, is The Pirates Project?  It will be a season long wagering experiment, and idea that began when my pal Dan asked over the winter, "If you bet against the Pirates, who are going to lose way, way more games than they will win in 2021, will you end up making money?"  I tested out this theory by taking the worst team in the NBA, the Minnesota Timberwolves, and made small bets against them every game over a long period of time, and wrote about it back in February.

The Timberwolves Experiment ended after thirty games on March 31.  Over that thirty game period, the T'Wolves were bad.  Through twenty games, they were 4-16, and I was making a profit equal to 11.6% of my total wagers.  However, in games 21 through thirty, that team crossed me up by going 4-6, and reducing my ROI to a mere 2%.  

Still, this proved to me that with a bit of study and attention, and over a larger sample size, you can make some money by betting against a crummy team all of the time.  Hence....The Pirates Project.

The plan is to make a bet on the Money Line for whomever the Pirates are playing that day.  The amount bet will vary by the odds for any given game.  I categorize this as a hobby, not a plan to bet rich.  I doubt that any given bet that I make throughout the season will be higher than three dollars, and most of them will be closer to one buck a game.  I know that there might be stretches where the Pirates might go on a hot streak and win, say, nine of twelve games (even bad teams do that), and screw up the profit margin, but over the long haul, it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

One thing about this that makes me squeamish is that it puts me in a position of rooting against the Pirates, the team that I have loved for over sixty years of my life, but I don't think that that will happen.  I was cheering hard for them yesterday, and was excited for the win, even though it put me $1 in the red to start the season.  When I am watching them play, I'll never root for them to lose.

Will I be able to stay with this over the course of a 162 game season?  That's the big question.  Right now the plan is to get through the month of April.  Then the month of May, and so on.  I will be on vacation - public health protocols permitting - in North Carolina for a week at some point this summer, and I don't know if my Fan Duel account will work in that state, so I may miss ten or so games there, but I am hoping that I can stick with it for over a hundred games.  Until then, one month at a time, and of course, I shall keep all Loyal Readers updated on the progress of the Project.