Random Thoughts.....and an Absent Friend, Jerry Lee Lewis

Cleaning out the Mental In-Box.....

Quick hit football thoughts:

• Another rough day at the office yesterday for Steelers rookie quarterback Kenny Pickett.  His stat line through five games: 67.9% complete rate, 2 TD's, 5 INT's.  How much of this is Pickett's fault, how much is the O-line's fault, how much is it the game plan's (ahem, we're looking at you, Matt Canada) fault?
• (Speaking of rookie QB's stat lines, how 'bout this one: 14 games, 38.1% completion rate, 6 TD, 24 INT.  Steelers fans will instantly recognize the 1970 season of Terry Bradshaw.  That turned out alright.)
• Steelers entering their bye week, so they have two weeks to try and figure something, anything, out.
• Myron Cope always took the position on his talk show that he "never fires coaches", and he knew more about that kind of stuff than I do, so I won't either, but, man, it sure seems apparent that something  just ain't right with the Steelers offensive way of doing things. (We're looking at you, Matt Canada)  By just about any metric that you care to use, this year's Steelers are the worst offensive team in the NFL.  It becomes more apparent when you watch other NFL games and see those teams throwing downfield to fast and talented receivers.  You know, like how Jalen Hurts and A.J. Brown undressed the Steelers yesterday.  I watched Kenny Pickett for five years at Pitt, and I KNOW that he can throw the ball downfield.  Why won't the Steelers let him do that to guys like Chase Claypool, Dionte Johnson, and rookie George Pickens, who may be better that both of the first two guys?
• Speaking of things the Steelers don't do that other teams do, how about running backs who can rip off gains of 7, 8, 10, or more yards several times a game?  Watching Green Bay play Buffalo last night and seeing their RB's in action made me want to cry.
• No one was more enthusiastic about the drafting of Najee Harris last year, but be honest now, who has been better (and this is damning with faint praise, I realize) at the position thus far, Harris or Jaylen Warren?  It can't ALL be the fault of the linemen, can it?

As to non-Steelers thoughts....

• How much fun is it watching the Buffalo Bills?   Josh Allen surely is the leading contender for MVP after eight weeks of the season, unless....
• ....the leading contender is Jalen Hurts of the Eagles.  The Eagles are undefeated, and Hurts and Company sure laid an ass-kicking on the Steelers yesterday, which, to use the phrase a second time, may be damning with faint praise.
• And how about the performances of Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers so far?  Plenty of season left to be proven wrong, of course, but it seems that these two have all of a sudden "gotten old" and are approaching the end.

All of these thoughts lead to the return of.....

I know you've all been waiting for them, so here we go, through Week Eight.

1. Eagles 
2. Bills
3. Chiefs
4. Cowboys

In my heart, I think the Bills are better, but that may be only because I've seen them more that Philly, but an undefeated team can't be anything less than #1.

Now, on to Baseball.

The third game of the World Series will be played tonight, and if you are surprised that The Grandstander has not written one word about the MLB Post-Season, well, I can tell you that I too am astonished by this fact.  In actuality, I watched some, but very little of the first three rounds of the Playoffs.  (As an aside, I will say that I do like the Three, Five, Seven, and Seven format that MLB has instituted for the first time this season.)   I can attribute this to a couple of factors.  One, the fact that Baseball has begun a descent into the lower tiers of importance in American professional sports; there are reasons for that too numerous to go into right now.  Two,  the level of excellence that both college football and the NFL has been providing this season has overshadowed MLB.  Three, too much other stuff going on in my own life right now.  Four, the Pirates have succeeded in lessening, if not killing, my enthusiasm for Major League Baseball.

Still the World Series is the WORLD SERIES, so attention must be paid.  I watched the first game of the Series with rapt interest.  The Astros staked Justin Verlander to a 5-0 lead which the Phillies overcame and fashioned a 6-5 win in ten innings.  It was an interesting and most entertaining game and a lot of fun to watch, despite it lasting over three and a half hours.  It was a game that reminded you of why you like baseball in the first place.

I skipped Game Two, won by the Astros, in favor of the Pitt football game, wherein Pitt "Pitted" and lost convincingly.  Bad decision on my part.

Tonight the Series moves to Philly, where a no doubt raucous scene will unfold.  The Phillies were the sixth seeded team in the NL and are actually an easy team to root for.  They hit the ball, score a lot of runs, and have good starting pitching, and a bullpen that can be, ahem, adventurous.  Hard to believe that Boy Wunderkind Bryce Harper turned thirty years old this past season.  Perhaps through reasons not entirely his fault, Harper has always been kind of unlikable.  A guy you like only when he plays for YOUR team, but for me at least, and maybe this will last only through this Playoff Year, he seems to have moved beyond that, and I find myself rooting for him and the Phillies.  The Astros are a better team, or they were over this past 162 game season, but we are now down to a best of five series with Philly having the home field advantage, so who knows?  I am looking forward to the remainder of this Series.

Finally, and Absent Friend....

Jerry Lee Lewis

1935-2022

The last of the true pioneers of Rock 'n Roll, Jerry Lee Lewis, died last week at the age of 87.  The first two paragraphs of Lewis' obituary on the pop culture website Vulture describes Lewis far better that I can:

Jerry Lee Lewis was known as the Killer, and it wasn’t a casual sobriquet — a schoolmate called him that after he tried to strangle a teacher. He once shot his bass player in the chest; just about all of his seven wives, including one who was a child, said he beat them; and there’s a lingering suspicion that he murdered wife No. 5. He was the very model of a high-functioning sociopath and somehow defied hard living, drug and alcohol abuse, and serious health problems to make it well into his ninth decade.

The pianist, singer, and showman, who was one of the three or four people who decisively ushered in the rock-and-roll era — and utterly personified an unbridled and dangerous part of the music — died today, his family announced. He was 87 and, after the death of Little Richard in 2020, the last man standing from the dawn of rock and roll.

On his podcast today, Tony Kornheiser said that while Lewis wasn't Elvis, he may very well have been on the next step below him.

A few years ago, I saw the musical "The Million Dollar Quartet" which tells the story of a time when four legends, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Lewis, all recoded together at Sun Studio in Memphis on the same day.  The show's curtain call had each actor perform one song as the performer they portrayed.  I said at the time that during that curtain call, and in fact throughout the entire show, the actor that played Lewis stole the show.  Maybe it wasn't just the actor, but perhaps the energy of Lewis himself that stole that show.

If you've never seen him, here's a clip of The Killer in action on the Ed Sullivan Show back in 1969.

RIP Jerry Lee Lewis.

To Absent Friends - Ron Masak

The news just came across  my Facebook newsfeed that actor Ron Masak died at age 86, and this is the classic case of why I do these Absent Friends posts.

Who is Ron Masak, you may ask?  Well, the news articles about his death highlight his role as Sheriff Mort Metzger in "Murder, She Wrote".

Ron Masak

1936-2022

Masak appeared in over forty episodes off that series over the years, and he is one of those guys who makes you say "Who is that guy and what else have I seen him in?"  His IMDB profile lists 120 acting credits spanning the 1950's up through 2018.  Name any major television series from that era, and he probably made an appearance on it.  He also made over twenty-five feature films, and, like many such actors, he made a killing doing commercials.   His obits refer to him as the "King of Commercials."

However, what I remember about Ron Masak is his appearance in a film called "Second Effort".

In it,  Masak plays a stumbling, bumbling salesman, who, in the opening scene of the film, fails to make a sale to an unseen guy across the desk from him.  That guy turns out to be Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi, who asks, "Ron, do you know why you didn't just make this sale?"  Lombardi then uses the rest of the film instructing Ron in what it takes to be successful in sales, showing that the same principles that made him and his Packers such successes on the football field can be applied to any walk of life, being successful sales person, in this instance.

"Second Effort" was made in 1968, and it instantly became the most successful sales motivational film of all time.  If you made your living as a salesperson, chances are you have seen this movie.  I probably saw it a half dozen times over the course of a thirty-five year career.  My biggest takeaway from the film?  The concept of Lombardi Time.  If the schedule says the team bus leaves at 8:00 AM, Lombardi Time says you better be on that bus by 7:45. So, if your next business appointment is for 10:00, not only should you not be late for it, you damn well better be there at least - AT LEAST - ten minutes before 10:00.

I once read an interview with Masak wherein he says that more people had seen him in that film than in just about any other role he ever had.

Like I have said before, stars are stars, but you can't make movies or TV shows - or sales motivational films - without people like Ron Masak.

RIP Ron Masak.

Speaking of Sports.....

I have to say that the football season thus far, both NFL and NCAA, has been nothing short of terrific.  (Caveat: this excludes the prime time games that the NFL has been feeding us on Thursdays, Sundays, and Mondays.  By and large, THOSE games have been clunkers.)  So much so, that I am going to start this little treatise by going back a week to the Sunday morning game in London between Green Bay and the New York Giants.

The Giants cemented their title as "Surprise Team of the First One-Third of the Season" by handing it to Aaron Rodgers and the Pack that morning (and what exactly is wrong with an NFL game to watch at 9:30 on a Sunday morning??), and they doubled down on it by beating the Ravens this past weekend after Lamar Jackson spit the bit not once, but twice, in the fourth quarter.  The Giants now sit at 5-1, and who saw THAT coming?   

The rise of the Giants also ties in with another unexpected rise, that of their Meadowlands co-tenants, the Jets, who now sit at 4-2 after beating those same Packers at Lambeau Field this past Sunday.  

Come to think of it, perhaps it's the Packers who are the "Surprise Team of the First One-Third of the Season", although not in a good way.

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The best game of this past weekend was the marquis game between the KayCee Chiefs and the Buff Bills headlined by the QB match-up of Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen.  The Bills won this one 24-20 when Allen hit  tight end Dawson Knox for a touchdown with 1:04 remaining in the game.  This TD pass was preceded by a drive-preserving run for a first down by Allen that included this jaw-dropping move:

Yep, Allen did his best Edwin Moses impression by fully in stride hurdling the Chiefs safety.  Like I said, it was jaw-dropping, and Allen has clearly established himself as perhaps the leading MVP candidate in the League at this point.  The Bills and the Chiefs are also clearly the two best teams, certainly in the AFC, at this point, and we can all only hope that they meet once agin in the Playoffs come January.

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This brings us to the local gridders, the Steelers.  After being handed a 38-3 loss to Allen and the Bills in Week 5, the Steelers had dropped to 1-4, and the season appeared to be headed to the dumper.  Especially with a Week 6 matchup against Tom Brady and the Buccaneers in Week 6.  The game appeared to be a hopeless cause for the Steelers in light of the fact that both TJ Watt and Minkah Fitzpatrick and their top three cornerbacks were out for the game as well.  Surely Brady would carve them up like a Thanksgiving turkey, right?

Steelers 20 - Buccaneers 18.

This is why you play the games, and games like this are why you follow sports.

The improbable hero was much maligned QB Mitch Trubisky who came into the game for an injured Kenny Pickett, and led the team on a touchdown drive that culminated in a TD by the other offensive hero of the day, Chase Claypool, and another drive that ran out the clock to preserve a two point lead, a drive that featured two no-chance-in-Hell third and long conversions by Trubisky that maintained possession and allowed him to take a knee to end the game.

This still most likely will be a rebuilding year for the Steelers as Pickett, who will probably sit out this week's game against Miami in concussion protocol, develops into the quarterback the Steelers and their fans hope that he will become.  However, they are now 2-4, tied with the Browns and one game behind the 3-3 Bengals and Ravens in the AFC North, and this is the NFL, so you never know, do you?

Anyway, some scenes from a joyous Accrisure Stadium this past Sunday.

The heroes....

And some Heroes with the G.O.A.T.....

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Okay, I've gone on too long to go into the college football scene, but the two games of most interest this past weekend were:

Tennessee 52 - Alabama 49

Michigan 41 - Penn State 17 (and the game wasn't even that close)

Both stunners.

Maybe next week will be the time for The Grandstander to delve into the NCAA doings.

********

One final sort-of-football note.

Billionaire New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft ("billionaire" being perhaps the key word here) married Dr. Dana Blumberg this past weekend.  Dr. Blumberg, you can see, is an attractive blonde and is 34 years younger than Kraft.  Blumberg is a doctor, so presumably she has a great degree of intelligence so maybe this isn't the embodiment of the cliche of Rich Old Goat Marries Hot Much Younger Woman Looking For A Sugar Daddy.

No word in any of the news stories as to whether or not attendants from the Orchids of Asia Health Spa served as bridesmaids.

To Absent Friends - McCullough, Wills, Lansbury

The Grandstander has fallen way behind in what has been transpiring in the Departure Lounge of late, so let me take this opportunity to catch up....

David McCullough (1933-2022)

I first became aware of historian David McCullough when he served as the narrator for Ken Burns' epic PBS documentary, "The Civil War."   I then read several of his books over the years, including his terrific first book, The Johnstown Flood. McCullough made reading and learning history both enlightening and entertaining.

Born in the Point Breeze neighborhood of Pittsburgh and educated at Shady Side Academy, McCullough was honored by his home town in 2012 when the 16th Street Bridge was renamed in his honor.  He is also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bush in 2006.

Maury Wills (1932-2022)

If I were to make a list of the most transformative baseball players in my life as a baseball fan, Maury Wills would certainly be in the Top Ten, and probably in the Top Five of such a list.  A rookie with the Dodgers in 1959, Wills alerted the baseball world in 1960 of what was to come when he led the National League in stolen bases with 50.  Two years later he stole 104 bases, coming the first to ever crack the 100 mark and breaking a record held by Ty Cobb for 47 years.  Just like that, the stolen base once again became a key weapon in baseball, and it was Wills who paved the way and begat future players such as Rickey Henderson, Willie Magee, Vince Coleman, and, yes, Omar Moreno.  Wills was named National League MVP in 1962.

Following the 1966 season, Pirates GM Joe L. Brown shocked everyone by pulling of a major trade that brought Wills to the Pirates.

The acquisition of Wills was to be the final piece that would put the Pirates, pennant contenders in 1965 and -66, over the top.  It didn't quite work out that way, but Wills did his part.  In two seasons with the Bucs Wills hit .290 and stole 81 bases.

I remember that it was always thought that Wills had what it took to become a successful major league manager, but that didn't work out either.  He spent parts of two seasons as skipper if the Seattle Mariners in the late Eighties, and was fired after a tenure marked by gaffes and blunders on his part.  It also became known at the time that Wills was also battling substance abuse demons.

Wills never came close to election the the Hall of Fame, but a case for his inclusion there could be made.  There a certainly lesser players than he with plaques on the wall in Cooperstown.

Angela Lansbury (1925-2022)

When Angela Lansbury died this week a few days short of her 97th birthday, she left behind a memorable career on stage, in the movies, and on television.  While many if not most people will think of her as Jessica Fletcher in the CBS TV series "Murder, She Wrote", I think of her as the scheming, traitorous, evil, and possibly incestuous, Eleanor Shaw Iselin in the terrific 1962 movie, "The Manchurian Candidate".

She also made a huge splash in 1966 when she opened on Broadway in 1966 as the lead in the smash hit, "Mame".  In fact, were it not for the  long run on "Murder, She Wrote", her role as Auntie Mame in that musical would no doubt have been the lead item in her obituaries.

I read a cute anecdote about her just today.   When "Murder, She Wrote" was about to premier, Lansbury made the rounds with TV critics to promote the show.  One critic asked what other plans she had, and she told him that she had been approached about starring in soon to be developed musical stage version of the movie "Sunset Boulevard."  The critic, thinking of the demands involved in doing a Broadway show and weekly TV series, asked if she has signed the standard five year contract with CBS.  Lansbury got a concerned look on her face and asked "You don't really think that this show will last five years, do you?"  It ran for twelve seasons.

RIP David McCullough, Maury Wills, and Angela Lansbury

Football in The Burgh At The (Approximate) Quarter Pole

Pitt has played five games, the Steelers four, so it's time to take a look at the State of the Union of Pittsburgh Football.

First, the Steelers.

After a sloppy, but encouraging overtime win over the defending AFC Champion Bengals in the season opener, the Steelers have lost three games in a row, are 1-3 and in last place in the AFC North.  In truth, it has become apparent that this 2022 edition of Rooney U is just not a very good team, made even more so since that have played the last three games without their best player, linebacker T.J. Watt.  You can find all sorts of places to point fingers....the offensive line is poor, OC Matt Canada is a dunderhead, Mike Tomlin is a bigger dunderhead, Mitch Trubisky is who we thought he was.  I could go on.

However, in yesterday's terrible loss to the Jets, a ray of light appeared in the person of the first round draft pick.

Yep,  at halftime, with his team down 10-6 and needing a spark, Tomlin gave the car keys to Pitt's Kenny Pickett.  Pickett did indeed provide that spark, completing passes, several of them to rookie George Pickens, whom had appeared to be invisible when Canada was calling the plays for Trubisky, laughing when he got knocked on his ass by a Jets lineman (after completing a pass downfield), and scoring two rushing TD's himself.   On the downside, he threw three interceptions, including one that came on a poorly thrown pass, a pass that never should have been thrown, which the Jets used to begin their game winning touchdown drive. That was a bad interception to be sure, but this loss fell squarely on a defense that couldn't get off the field in the fourth quarter while allowing the Jets, another bad team, to drive the field twice for touchdowns that produced a 24-20 come from behind win for them.

It is apparent to me, among many, that the Steelers aren't going anywhere this season, post-season-wise, so it becomes obvious that if Pickett is going to be your quarterback of the future, as you would hope your first round draft pick will be, you let him play the rest of the season.  We've all read in recent weeks how Peyton Manning and Troy Aikman spent their rookie seasons at the helm of double digit loss teams, and if I recall correctly (too lazy to look it up) the Steelers won and five and six games in Terry Bradshaw's first two seasons.   If Pickett is the guy that we all think that he is, he will take his lumps, learn from them, and grow into the Franchise QB that the Steelers think he will become.

As for the coaches,  I'm a fan of Mike Tomlin, and if he experiences his first losing season in 16 years as the HC, then so be it.  It happens, and he's earned the right to shake it off and get better next year,  As for Matt Canada, I'm not a coach so I can't say whether he's a good or a bad coach.  He's forgotten more about football than I'll ever know.  That said, some of the offensive play calling sent into Mitch Trubisky has been bewildering, to say the least.

The 1-3 Steeles now head into a brutal stretch of scheduling: @Bills, Bucs, @Dolphins, and @Eagles.  Most people are conceding that the Steelers will be 1-7 after that stretch.  However, I'm willing to bet that they will win at least one of those games.  It may only be one game, but I predict that they will not go 0-4 in that stretch.

Then there is the Pitt Panthers.

After an exhilarating win over West Virginia in the season opener, Pitt won two of the next three and took a 3-1 record into Saturday's first conference game of the season.  They were at home against a Georgia Tech team that was in shambles, having fired their coach just five days earlier.  Pitt was a 21.5 point favorite.   And they redefined the derisive term "Pitting" by losing that game 26-21.  Despite losing their quarterback to the pros and their best wideout to the transfer portal, Pitt had hoped to present a rigorous defense of last season's ACC Championship.   They still may, but at this point, that appears to be a long shot.

Oh, and the Robert Morris Colonials are 0-4.

Tough season in western PA, football-wise.