Ben Makes It Official, The Best Sports Day of the Year, and One Other Football thought

Ben Roethlisberger made it official this past week and formally announced his retirement from pro football and the Steelers after an historic eighteen year career.  I have written a lot about Big Ben in recent weeks, so I won't belabor it any further in this space, other than to say thanks, and best wishes for a happy life for Number 7.

The speculation now begins as to "who comes next?" for the Steelers at the most important position on the field.  Talk show hosts and callers will be frothing at the mouths throughout the off season and well into the 2022 season and beyond.  What do I think?  Well, I think that Mason Rudolph has earned the right to go into the season at the top of the depth chart.  He has not earned the right to go to training camp without facing competition for the job.  That competition could come from current #3 guy Dwayne Haskins (meh), a veteran that they could obtain via trade or free agency (Russell Wilson? Bring him on.  Mitch Trubisky? Intriguing.  Kirk Cousins?  Please no.), or a drafted QB (Any chance Kenny Pickett might be available with the 20th pick?).  

Whatever and whoever it is, it will no doubt be THE storyline for the next twelve months where the Steelers are concerned.  I am old enough to remember bad quarterback play before Terry Bradshaw arrived in 1970, and I remember some mediocre (with some exceptions) quarterback play in the the twenty years After Bradshaw (AB) and Before Ben (BB), and eighteen seasons of Hall of Fame caliber play at the position since 2004.  HOF worthy QB's don't grow on trees, and I just hope that I live long enough to see another one at the position for the Steelers, but at my age, that is not necessarily a sure thing.

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As I type this, we are less than an hour away from the start of one of my favorite sports days of the year:  NFL Conference Championship Sunday.  It is hard to imagine either of the two games today matching what we saw last weekend in all four of the Divisional Round games, especially that absolute classic between the Chiefs and the Bills and Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen.

As for today, I have put coin of the realm on the Chiefs at -7.5 over the Bengals and the Rams at -3.5 over the 49ers.  Cannot want to see the duel at quarterback between Mahomes and Joe Burrow in Kansas City.  

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Final thought following last week's NFL games.....

Has anyone fallen in the Court of Public Opinion as quickly as has Aaron Rodgers?

In the space of the last few months, he went from lovable prospective  "Jeopardy" host and affable State Farm pitchman to lying anti-vaxxer kook and a possible right wing nut job.  When his Number One seeded Packers lost the the 49ers last week, social and mainstream media exploded with people ripping him with a vengeful glee that was almost shocking to read.

Sic transit gloria mundi, A-aron.

 

A Question of Style (For Grammar and Newspaper Nerds Only)

I am guessing that many will skip over this edition of The Grandstander, but I came across something while reading the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette yesterday that bugs me, and I surely can't be the only one.

The Post-Gazette's style policy, for lack of a better term, dictates that after a person is initially identified in a news story, he or she is then referred to throughout the balance of the story as Mr., Mrs., Miss, or Ms.  Thus, Mayor Ed Gainey becomes "Mr. Gainey" and actress Meryl Streep becomes "Miss Streep" and so on.  The exception to this seems to be on sports pages where Coach Mike Tomlin becomes "Tomlin", Sydney Crosby becomes "Crosby" and so on.  With me so far?  

Anyway, Tuesday's PG offered a front page story from sports columnist Ron Cook on the state of the Steelers going forward after Sunday's playoff loss.  The story was labeled as "Commentary", and it followed the PG's style policy and was peppered with references to people like Mr. Tomlin, Mr. Roethlisberger, Mr. Rooney and so on.  Turn to the sports section and columnist Joe Starkey wrote his version of the same story, but the honorific of "Mr." was nowhere to be seen.  Just continued references to Tomlin, Freiermuth, Harris, Mahomes, et cetera.

Personally, I find the continued references to Mr., Mrs, Miss, and Ms throughout a story to be unnecessary and annoying, but if that is the policy, why doesn't it apply on the sports pages?  Had Ron Cook's "commentary" been printed on the sports pages, which it very well could have, would all of the "Misters" been scrubbed out of it?  Don't get me wrong, I don't want to spend the upcoming summer reading "Mr. Shelton's" continued explanations as to why the Pirates lost another one, but I'd also prefer not to read a news story where some jamoke who was arrested as a suspect in a triple homicide is respectfully referred to as Mr. ______ in the news article.

In all fairness, I believe that this is fairly standard style policy among newspapers throughout the land, but it still bugs me.

Having said all that, I think that there should be one exception to the "No-Mister" deal, and that is when heads of state are involved.  Joe Biden and Boris Johnson (or any of their predecessors; this has nothing to do with politics) should be referred to as President Biden and Prime Minister Johnson or simply "the President" or "the Prime Minister" in news stories as a matter of respect to the offices that they hold.

Anyone else with me on this?

And So It Ends

As noted British sportswriter Tommy Stearns Elliot would have put it, the Steelers season, and a Hall of Fame career, ended in Kansas City last night "not with a bang, but a whimper."  

After a surprising first quarter ended in a 0-0 tie, the Steelers got on the board first and led 7-0 on a defensive touchdown scored by - who else? - T.J. Watt.

All that that appeared to do, however, was wake up Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs, who scored TD's on their next five possessions on their way to a 42-21 win that wasn't as close as the score indicated.  The experts, it appeared, were correct in their pre-game assessments of this contest.

The career that came to an end, was of course, that of Ben Roethlisberger.  

As has been the case all season, both Roethlisberger and the team got off to a horrible start, only to rally late in the second half and pile up some yardage and touchdowns.   That worked well against the Browns and the Ravens the last two weeks, but it amounted to nothing but garbage time window dressing against the Chiefs last night.  Still, garbage time or not, it was somehow fitting that Big Ben's final in game action had him leading the Steelers downfield and completing a pass inside the Chiefs' ten yard line as the clock expired.   

Two Super Bowl wins and a third Super Bowl appearance, every passing record, and numerous other records, in Steelers history, and among the Top Five or Ten in various NFL statistical categories, more thrills and exciting games and plays than I can remember, and never a losing season.

Thank you, Ben.

Now, what to make of the Steelers very strange season and what the future might hold?

Well, against all evidence as seen by the naked eye, the Steelers somehow managed to win more games than they lost (9-7-1) and made the playoffs.  They had an awful penchant for starting out horribly and finishing games strongly, and actually winning them.  It seems that when they followed Matt Canada's dink-and-dunk game plans, which featured a lot of six yard passes when it was third-and-eight, it seemed like a good college team could beat them.  Late in games, it appeared that Roethlisberger would say "enough of this shit" and go to no-huddle hurry-up calls, and victory would be snatched from the jaws of defeat.  I'm no coach, and I am sure that Matt Canada has forgotten more about football than I will ever know, but his system sure didn't appear to be a good fit for the 2021 Steelers.

As for the future of the team itself, it would seem that they need help in the middle of the defense (teams would run at will against them), offensive line (they couldn't run the ball, although Najee Harris appears to be the Real Deal), a corner to replace the aging Joe Haden, perhaps a wide receiver or two, their second best defensive player, Cam Heyward, will be 33 next season, it appears that GM Kevin Colbert is retiring and will need to be replaced, and, let's see, what else?  Oh, yeah, a new starting quarterback, or at least someone who will compete with and push and perhaps be better than Mason Rudolph.  Speaking of Rudolph, I, for one, am not ready to consign him to the scrap heap.  Sure, he's no Bradshaw or Ben, but he might be another Neil O'Donnell, and he took the team to the Super Bowl one year.

Other than that, they appear to be set for 2022.

The rest of the Opening Weekend of Playoff action had some moments, but I'll save those until at least after the final Wildcard Weekend game between the Rams and the Cardinals is played tonight.

Rogers & Hammerstein's "Oklahoma!"

Historians of American musical theater will tell you that one of the transformative plays in the history of that particular art form was "Oklahoma!".    It was the first collaboration of Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II. It opened on Broadway in 1943, ran for over 2,200 performances, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1944, has had numerous award winning revivals on Broadway, the most recent in 2019, was a hit movie in 1955, and to this day remains a staple for amateur theatrical productions and high school musicals.  It is credited as being the first musical that used the songs and the dancing as an integral part of the story being told.

Like I said, it is significant and historic in about a dozen and one ways, and - confession time - until this past Saturday night, I had never seen a production of "Oklahoma!".  While I knew many of the songs, I wasn't really even sure as to what this play was even about.  It arrived this year as part of the Broadway in Pittsburgh 2021-22 season, and is based upon the 2019 revival production which, we are told, is a re-imagining and "different" look at this old war horse of a show.

What can you say about the music?  Many, many classics:  Oh What a Beautiful Morning, Surrey With the Fringe on Top, I Can't Say No, People Will Say We're In Love, and, of course, the title tune, which isn't sung until the end of the show.  All great.  I really enjoyed the first act of the play, but was surprised by the rather dark turn that the show took in Act II. Was this the "reimagining" of the story that everyone was talking about?

To find out, I sought out the 1955 movie adaptation and watched it this week.  

That production starred Gordon MacRea, featured Rod Steiger, Eddie Albert, James Whitmore, and several other older Hollywood stars with whom I was not familiar, and "introduced" Shirley Jones to the silver screen.  It was her first movie role.  Jones, by the way, will turn 88 this coming March 31.

The movie did tell the same story as the play I saw on Saturday....a romantic rivalry for the fair Laurey Williams between well scrubbed hero Curly McLain and the brooding not-quite-all-there hired hand Jud Fry....comic relief provided by cowhand Will Parker and his fiancee Ado Annie, the girl who can't say no, and itinerant peddler Ali Hakim...all presided over by fiesty Aunt Eller (who was played much younger on the stage than in the 1955 movie)....and a tragic turn of events before the requisite happy ending.

I was surprised to see that the movie was directed by Fred Zinneman.  A highly regarded director, Zinneman was known for dramas such as High Noon, A Man for All Seasons, A Hatfull of Rain, and Day of the Jackel.  Oklahoma! was the only musical that he ever directed.

So what did I think?  I thought that the movie sort of brushed off the "tragic turn" to which I referred earlier and swept it under the rug so they could quickly get to the happy ending.  The stage production made it more of the focal point for Act II, so in that regard, perhaps it was more realistic and made for the dark tone of the current touring production.

The Grandstander will give Two and One-half stars to the show he saw on stage last Saturday, and Two Stars to the 1955 movie, which comes across as dated and somewhat cornball here in 2022.

Three shows into the current Broadway in Pittsburgh season, and here is how I would rank the shows that we have seen thus far:

1. Summer, The Donna Summer Musical
2. Oklahoma!
3. The Band's Visit

Coming up in February: "Pretty Woman" and "Hamilton".

"Licorice Pizza"

"Licorice Pizza", written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, was released at Christmas and has been getting Oscar buzz and making many critics' Best Ten lists for 2021, so it was one that I definitely wanted to see.

It is a coming-of-age story of sorts set in the San Fernando Valley of greater Los Angeles area during the Nixon Administration, when oil embargoes were put in place, and there were long lines to get gas for your car.  Remember those good ol' days?

The story revolves around 15 year old Gary (Cooper Hoffman, son of Phillip Seymour Hoffman), a high school student and a semi-star child actor who meets and falls for 24 year old Alana (Alana Haim), a wannabe actress who Gary meets when she comes to his school as an assistant to the photographer who is there to take school pictures.  Naturally, Alana tells the little punk to buzz off, and naturally, this only fuels Gary's ardor.  The two then form an odd partnership as Gary hustles his way into different business ventures (his acting career seems to have gone into the tank after he hit puberty): selling waterbeds, opening a pinball emporium, filming videos for political candidates, trying to get Alana acting gigs.  When does the kid ever go to school?

It's a fairly sweet story made notable by several oddball characters: an American friend of Gary's family who owns a Japanese restaurant, a female casting agent who continually harps on Alana's "Jewish nose", and Bradley Cooper as real life person and total off-the-wall whack job Jon Peters at the time when he was Barbra Streisand's boyfriend.  (Was Peters really like that?)  There is also a city councilman running for Mayor of LA who is trying to hide the fact that he is gay, and co-opts Alana, who is volunteering for the campaign, to act as a beard for his relationship with his partner.  It is a pivital scene in the movie, and it again highlights the best part of the movie, the character of Alana and how she is portrayed by Haim.  The scene of her navigating an an out-of-gas truck backwards down the twisting roads of her San Fernando Valley town is terrific.

I liked the movie, but I'm not sure that it is an Oscar worthy movie.  Cute and entertaining, but not a masterpiece.

Two and One-half Stars from The Grandstander.

 Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman

To The First Absent Friends of 2022

As often happens when the calendar turns to a new year, the Departure Lounge fills rapidly, and as a result, The Grandstander falls behind in recognizing Absent Friends.  The exigencies of time means that I will be recognizing three Absent Friends in this post, and, as a result, they will no doubt be getting shortchanged in these write-ups, which is a shame, because each deserve full length treatments.

Let us take them in the order in which they left us.

Betty White

1922-2021

Betty White died on New Year's Eve, just a few weeks short of her 100th birthday.  A story I saw on her on CBS Sunday Morning last week indicated that Betty White's relationship with television began, literally, before television even exited.  It seems that she appeared on some experimental versions of this new art form before the medium was unveiled at the 1939 New York World's Fair.  IMDB lists an astounding 550 credits in her filmography.  Game shows, movies, talk and variety shows, voice overs, and, of course, her two most memorable roles in the classic sitcoms, "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Golden Girls."  (That same Sunday Morning tribute showed a clip from the MTM Show where her character, Happy Homemaker Sue Ann Nivens, removes a burnt and fallen soufflé's from the oven and then slams the oven door shut with her knee.  My word description doesn't do it justice, but, trust me, it was hilarious.)  Then there was a Super Bowl commercial for Snickers and a hosting gig on Saturday Night Live at the age of 88.   And no one, no one, could deliver a double entendre like Betty White.

I talked with my pal Barb Vancheri, retired film and entertainment critic for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, earlier in the week,  and she told me that she once had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing Betty White, and that she was a nice and as delightful as could possibly be imagined.

Peter Bogdanovich

1939-2022

The obituaries for film director and actor Peter Bogdanovich made for interesting reading.  They of course mention how he burst on to the Hollywood scene as a 32 year old wunderkind director when his "The Last Picture Show" was released.  There quickly followed smash hit comedies "What's Up, Doc?" and "Paper Moon", which were then followed by major flops such as "Daisy Miller" and "At Long Last Love".  His life was then peppered with love affairs, divorces, tragedies (including a homicide), bankruptcies, and ostracism from the Hollywood establishment.

In writing about "What's Up, Doc?" in this space back in 2018, I made this observation:

Also, whatever happened to Peter Bogdanovich's directing career?  After "The Last Picture Show" and this one, he had one other big hit, "Paper Moon" (1973) and after that, pretty much nothing of note.  In fact, IMDB lists more acting credits (53) for him than director credits (34).  He is probably most remembered as Dr. Elliot Kupferberg on "The Sopranos".

The story of Bogdanovich's own life would make a pretty good movie, I think.  Until someone decides to do that, though, I would highly recommend that you seek out and listen to Season One of Turner Classic Movies "The Plot Thickens" podcast, wherein Ben Mankiewicz interviews Bogdanovich.

I found it interesting that in searching Google Images for a picture of Bogdanovich to use in this post, it was almost impossible to find a single photo of him where he is smiling.

Sidney Poitier

1927-2022

Yes, two pictures of the great Sidney Poitier grace this post, pictures from perhaps his two most famous roles: itinerant handyman Homer Smith in "Lillies of the Field" (1963) for which he became the first Black male to win a Best Actor Oscar, and as detective Virgil Tibbs in "In The Heat of the Night" (1967).  In 1967, Poitier had an MVP caliber year, appearing in three box office blockbusters:  "In the Heat of the Night", which was the Best Picture Oscar winner that year and for which Rod Stieger won the Best Actor Oscar, "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner", and "To Sir, With Love".  Oddly, Poitier did not receive an Oscar nomination for any of them, but I think it is safe to say that none of those movies would have been as good had he not been in them.

You can see Poitier delivering one of his most famous lines in this YouTube clip here.

I would strongly urge you to seek out some of the news obituaries for these three Holly wood luminaries from Variety, the New York Times, or the Washington Post.  They all make for great reading, and tell they stories far better than I.

RIP Betty White, Peter Bogdanovich, Sidney Poitier.

Pittsburgh and Ben Say Goodbye

 

It was an emotional scene at Heinz Field this past Monday night when Ben Roethlisberger played his final game in front of the home crowd.  Steelers Nation turned out in full-throated support to say goodbye to the future Hall of Fame quarterback, and the nation got to witness it as it all played out on ESPN on Monday Night Football.  No need for me to recite the litany of Big Ben's historic statistical accomplishments.  You can find those easily enough on line, but no statistical table will capture what I will always remember about Roethlisberger: That the Steelers were never completely out of a game when the ball was in Ben's hands late in the fourth quarter.  Everyone remembers Santonio Holmes' amazing catch to win Super Bowl XLIII against the Cardinals, but please don't forget how Roethlisberger drove the team 90+ yards down field with time running out that culminated in that picture perfect pass that he threw to Holmes. And in a season where the Steelers are not-all-that-good a team and where his own skills have diminished notably, at least two Steelers victories this year, the first win over Cleveland and the win over the Ravens, can be attributed to the sheer force of Roethlisberger's will.

In that final home appearance, Ben did not play all that well, 24 for 46, 146 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT, the Steelers managed to win against a traditional rival, kept their dim playoff hopes alive, and assured themselves of a non-losing season for the 18th year in a row.  And Roethlisberger put a cherry on top of a career long domination of the Cleve Brownies.   It was somehow even sweeter that Ben's final home game was a victory over the Browns.

Of course, Ben and the Steelers have one more game to play at Baltimore on Sunday.  The Ravens have lost five in a row, so a Steelers/Roethlisberger victory in that one is not unimaginable, and, win-or-lose, it seems appropriate that Ben's final regular season game will be against another traditional AFC North rival.  Too big a domino (Jacksonville beating Indianapolis) has to fall for the Steelers to make the playoffs, and in a perverse way, I almost hope that they don't make it.  As a seventh seed, they would likely have to face the Chiefs or the Titans, and the result of such a matchup would likely not be pretty for Steelers fans.  So let's just let the scene of Ben Roethlisberger's final game be what we saw at Heinz Field this past Monday Night.

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Other thoughts on this Steelers-Browns game...

Lost amid the hoopla for the Ben Farewell was the terrific performance of rookie running back Najee Harris: 188 yards rushing, a spectacular 37 yard TD run that sealed the victory in the final minute of the game, and a stiff arm that turned a Browns DB into a rag doll on a long run earlier in the game.

And, oh yeah, he broke Franco Harris' team record of rushing yards by a rookie.  Let's see what he'll be able to do when (if?) the Steelers are able to get a solid offensive line in place for him.

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And how about those Browns.  Yet another season when Playoff and even Super Bowl ambitions crashed and burned along the Lake Erie shores.  Now, even the future of Baker Mayfield in Cleveland has come into doubt.  One of the big stories of the coming off season will be what will the Browns do with the Mayfield, who can become a free agent after the season.

And where has the Steelers defense that we saw on MNF been all season?  Nine sacks of Mayfield, and they shut down RB Nick Chubb when he was in the game.  And if I'm a Browns fan, I'd be asking the same question that was being asked by Peyton and Eli during the game: why wasn't Chubb in that game are often?

It was pointed out by Joe Starkey on his show yesterday that were it not for their two losses to the Steelers this year, the Browns would now be sitting at 9-7 and in the hunt for a playoff spot. So while the Steelers have not had the kind of season that their fans want and desire, they can take a lot of satisfaction in knowing that they were surely responsible for ruining the Browns' season.

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We will save the agonizing over what-happens-next for the Steelers at quarterback for later, but consider these options:

• Turn the position lock, stock, and barrel over to Mason Rudolph.
• Draft a QB in an early round and turn it into a training camp competition between Rudolph, Dwayne Haskins, and the draftee.
• Sign a veteran free agent QB to serve in the interim before the next Bradshaw/Roethlisberger wunderkind is ready to take the reins.  Names like Russell Wilson, Aaron Rodgers, and even Baker Mayfield have been bandied about.

Oh, it's going to be sports talk show heaven around The Burgh as this scene plays itself out.