To Absent Friends - Irma Kalish

Irma Kalish

1924 - 2021

Time for another of those Absent Friends whose obituary you stumble across in the news and just say "wow."  Or at least, I do.

Irma Kalish was a writer, a comedy writer, primarily a writer for television sitcoms.  She wrote in partnership with her husband Austin "Rocky" Kalish, who died in 2016.  Her career stretches back to the days of radio with her first significant gig coming as a writer on the Martin & Lewis Radio Hour.

Her credits are as long as your arm, and include such shows as....

My Favorite Martian

Gilligan's Island

All In The Family

Maude

The Bob Newhart Show

My Three Sons

I Dream of Jeannie

The Patty Duke Show

Gidget

That Girl

F Troop (Aside to pal Tim Baker - She also wrote the lyrics to the F Troop theme song!)

And if you look her up, you will find that I am leaving out as many credits as I have listed.  She was also active in the Writers Guild, the Producers Guild, and an organization called Women in Film.

You may not ever have heard of Irma Kalish, but if you are like me, you would have laughed a lot less in your life had she never existed, and I can't think of a better epitaph for a person.

RIP Irma Kalish

“It was always my contention that in order for a woman to write, she had to be twice as good as a man, which fortunately was not that difficult.” - Irma Kalish

NFL Week 1 - Steelers Win, and Other Thoughts

• Trailing the Bills 10-0 at halftime and looking totally futile offensively, it looked like all of the dire comments about the Steelers offensive line were 100% accurate.  Not sure what might have been done in the locker room at halftime, and that O-line is still far from jelling, but it was a different story in the second half, and the Steelers ended up with 23-16 victory over very good Buffalo team.  Not many saw that coming, including The Grandstander.
• All the angst over the will-they-do-a-deal-or-won't-they over the TJ Watt contract ended on Friday, but the sturm und drang then centered on whether Watt would be able to play after his training camp "hold in."  As evidenced by the picture atop this post, I think it was a lot of wasted energy worrying about it.
• Najee Harris' debut was, um, ordinary at best.  Much of it could be a function of the offensive line, but he did rip off one terrific run in the drive that led to the TD pass to Dionte Johnson.  Good things to come there.
• Speaking of Johnson, all the dropped passes last year could be forgiven based on how he managed to hold on to that Roethlisberger TD pass.
• Ben Roethlisberger made me think today of a veteran baseball pitcher whose best days might be behind him but who relies on craftiness and guile to continue to baffle opponents and win games.  That is going to serve the Steelers well as they await for the offensive line to develop and play as a seasoned unit.
• Whatever concerns there might be about the Steelers offense, there should be none about the defense.   They held a high powered offense and a really good quarterback to one TD today.  They constantly pressured Josh Allen.  As the offense comes together, the defense will keep the team in games and might even win a few for them.

Elsewhere in the NFL....

• I have family and friends in Cleveland, and God bless them all, so to them I apologize for what I'm about to say:  I still love seeing the Browns lose, especially when they cough one up like they did this afternoon in Kansas City.  Don't get me wrong.  The Browns are good, and they dominated the Chiefs well into the second half, but then the ghost of Hue Jackson descended upon them.  Feel free to throw these words in my face if the Browns finish ahead of the Steelers in the standings this season.
• I only wish that the CBS cameras would have shown Jimmy Haslam in the owner's box after the Chiefs took the lead or after that Mayfield INT late in the fourth quarter.
• New Orleans 38 - Green Bay 3.  I didn't see any of this game, and, obviously, the Packers defense stunk out the joint.  They allowed Jameis Winston to throw 5 TD passes and 0 interceptions.  Aaron Rodgers, after an off season of drama and self-centeredness, totally defecated in the bed.  I'm sure he'll turn that around, but, wow, he seems to have stunk it out today.
• Tomorrow's Final Jeopardy answer:

• Watching football games with full stadiums was fun to see.  It made me realize just how silent is was during all those games last season.  I just hope that we don't pay for this with another public health crisis.
• As I type this, I am watching the Rams play the Bears on SNF.  Two comments. (1) That stadium in LA looks absolutely amazing.  It is just a beautiful looking structure when looking at it from the outside. (2) It took all of 3:06 for Andy Dalton to throw a soul crushing interception.  That Bengals DNA just can't be washed away.
• This just in...Andy Dalton with a soul crushing fumble for the Bears.
• 98 year old Bears owner Virginia McCaskey looks exactly like her father, Papa Bear George Halas, wearing a wig.
• Seeing all the commercials today for that Arby's prime rib cheese steak sandwich has pretty much made up my mind as to where we're going for lunch tomorrow.
• I'm packing it in now with the Rams up 10-0 at the end of the first quarter and driving.  Looking forward to watching the "Peyton and Eli" version of MNF on ESPN2 tomorrow night.

Hitting a Milestone

Sometime between 8:00 and 9:00 o'clock tomorrow evening, September 11, 2021, the time will be marked when I will have officially completed my 70th trip around the sun.  I've passed the stage where I pay a great deal of attention to birthdays anymore, I mean, after you start qualifying for senior prices at barber shops, movie theaters, and golf courses, why bother, but when you turn to a number evenly divisible by ten, well, you do get a little introspective.

I've led a very fortunate life.  Great parents - whose lessons still resonate with me decades after they've been gone - good brothers and sisters, two generations of terrific nephews and nieces, and good friends too numerous to even attempt to list, but they know who they are.  Also, shortly after my 21st birthday, I met Marilyn, the young lady who two years later made the crazy decision to agree to marry me.  I hit the lottery the day that she came into my life.  What a great ride it has been and continues to be, and we, she and I, are looking forward to more - many more - good years ahead.  

Okay, enough of the serious introspection, and let's do some true Grandstander shit....

Three members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame stopped by this week to wish me the best upon reaching this milestone birthday, a number with which they were most familiar.  So my thanks good out today to Artie Donovan of the Colts, Sam Huff of the Giants, and Ernie Stautner of the Steelers.

And as I have done in the past, I send along greetings to two other Hall of Famers who also share the date of September 11 as their birthdate, Coaches Paul "Bear" Bryant and Tom Landry.

Unlike them, I would have been a terrible football coach, but I do think that I can pull off wearing a hat every bit as well as they did.

Are You Ready for Some Football?

The King of Sports in America, the National Football League, kicks off the 2021 season tomorrow night with the traditional Thursday night opener between the reigning Super Bowl Champions, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the guaranteed TV ratings grabber but often over-rated Dallas Cowboys.

Will this finally the the year when Father Time catches up to the ageless wonder, Ton Brady?  We will begin to get an answer to that question beginning tomorrow night.

On the local front, the Steelers open the season with a difficult opponent, the Buffalo Bills, on the road, and some questions:

• How will a completely rebuilt offensive line function?
• Will rookie Najee Harris give the Steelers what they so sorely lacked last season, a running game?  The answer to that question could be a function of the answer to the first question.
• What's the deal with TJ Watt and his contract situation?
• How will 39 year old Ben Roethlisberger do at quarterback in his 18th season with the team?  (Again, see question #1)

Personally, I think that the team is going to be better than many are expecting them to be this year.  Will it be good enough to sustain a deep run into the Playoffs?  The defense will be solid and good, but there are questions on offense, and it all hinges on the maturation and development of the offensive line, and the performance of their aging QB.  I see a 9-8 or 10-7 season, a wild card spot in the Playoffs and at least one win in the postseason.

As for the NFL as a whole, here are some predictions for you:

AFC Division Winners: Bills, Browns, Titans, Chiefs

NFC Division Winners: WFT, Packers, Buccaneers, Rams

Super Bowl:  Buffalo Bills over the Los Angeles Rams  

One other team that I will be watching this season with great interest will be the New England Patriots.  The Brady w/o Belichick vs. Belichick w/o Brady Debate was settled pretty convincingly last season when the Pats failed to make the playoffs, and Brady and the Bucs won the Super Bowl.   I was intrigued on Draft Day when Belichick and the Pats took Alabama QB Mac Jones with their first pick.  I don't think that Jones got nearly enough credit for the job he did for the Crimson Tide, and I can't wait to see what will become of him under Coach Bill.  The Pats could surprise a lot of people this year, but, then again, would that really be such big surprise?

Oh, and this feature will be back for 2021:

The Grandstander Power Rankings, wherein I rank the NFL as if it were the College Football Playoffs and give you the Top Four teams each week, plus a selection of teams that are "knocking on the door."  I will probably wait until five or six weeks into the season until some season opening dust settles before this becomes a weekly feature, but how about a Pre-Season GPR for your consideration:

1. Bucs
2. Bills
3. Chiefs
4. Rams

Knocking on the Door: Ravens, Chargers, Packers, Seahawks.

Okay, the fun all begins tomorrow night along about 8:15.  Let's all enjoy the season!!

To Absent Friends - Tunch Ilkin

 

Tunch Ilkin

1957-2021

A Steeler Forever

It was only three months ago that I wrote this post about the retirement of former Steelers player Tunch Ilkin following a twenty-three year stint as a Steelers radio broadcaster, which followed a 14 year NFL career, thirteen of them with the Steelers.  Sadly, Tunch died yesterday after complications from pneumonia and his ongoing battle with ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease.   He was a few weeks short of his 64th birthday.  It is not for any of us to decree any death a merciful one, but I am glad to know that Ilkin, a man of great faith and community service, is at peaceful rest now.

What I wrote in the linked post above will serve as my Absent Friends tribute to him.  Please go back and read it once again.

RIP Tunch Ilkin.

"Pirates Project" Suspended

Regular readers will recall my writing about my "Pirates Project" for 2021.  Simply stated, the goal was to see if one could make money by betting against a bad team, the Pirates in this case, in every game over the course of the season.

Through 133 games, the Pirates have indeed proven to be a bad team.  They are 48-85, a pace that would produce 104 losses.  That's Leonard Pinth-Garnell bad.  Very, very bad.

So, you ask, how has the betting gone?  Well, I have indeed made money, although not a lot.  Here is how it has broken down on a month-by-month basis:

	Amount Won/Lost	ROI
April	(3.83)	-14.1%
May	3.82	12.7%
June	3.66	14.5%
July	(9.25)	-25.0%
August	7.56	14.8%
	1.96	1.1%
	August total includes game of September 1

The "unit" that I have been betting on this Project has been $1 (sometimes more, sometimes less), but it could have been $5, $10, or $100 a game, the real number to look at is the Return on Investment, and at +1.1%, the effort it isn't worth it, so I have decided to suspend the Project after the conclusion of the Bucs' two game series with the White Sox last night.  I also am ending it because I have felt a little skeevy from the beginning about being in a position of wanting my favorite team to lose.  I never actually rooted against  the Pirates in any game, but I found myself feeling okay when they were getting their heads handed to them, like in that 13-0 loss to St. Louis last week, and that just wasn't right.

Also, from a purely analytical viewpoint, by betting strictly on the money line, any streak where you lose (in this case, when the Pirates win), you can get into a hole that is hard to climb out of.  For example, the Pirates started the month of August by losing 15 of their first 17 games.  It was shaping up to be a HUGE month for me, but they then proceeded to go 5-2 over the next week, and so BIG winnings became merely NICE winnings.  And in baseball, more than in any other sport, bad teams can beat good teams.  It happens a lot.  In July, the Pirates won two out of three from the first place Giants, and I never recovered from that in that month.

So, after 133 games, I have decided to stop while I am (barely) ahead.  However, I am leaving the door open to make some wagers in this final month.  The Pirates have a number of games with teams that are in the same relative boat as they are - Cubs, Nats, Tigers, and Marlins - and they could win a good share of those games.  There are also games with teams still in the Playoff hunt - the Reds and the Phillies - so there may be a few more wagers placed in this Project.  We shall see.

A more positive approach to something like this would be to pick a team that you like, and that you think is going to be good, really good, and bet on them to WIN every game.  Thus, the "Alabama Project" will begin this weekend.  I've heard it said that no one ever became poor by betting on Nick Saban every week, so that is what I'm going to do.  Taking the Tide on the point spread every week, starting with them at -18.5 against Miami on Saturday.  So......