To Absent Friends - Dick Groat

"Who is the greatest athlete to ever come out of (insert name of city/state/region here)?" is always a popular sports talk show gambit whenever no one is calling in.   If you play that game in reference to the Pittsburgh area, the name of Dick Groat, who died yesterday at the age of 92, comes up pretty quickly.

A two sport athlete from Swissvale, PA, Groat was an All-American basketball and baseball player at Duke University.  His Number 10 basketball jersey was the first number retired by Duke, and he is still revered by the folks in Durham.  He led the nation in scoring and assists and was the third overall selection in the NBA draft after his senior year.   He played one year for the Fort Wayne Pistons in he NBA before concentrating on his baseball career, a career that would last for fourteen seasons and include 2,138 hits, an MVP Award, a National League batting title, five All-Star designations, and being a key member of two World Series winning teams, the 1960 Pirates and the 1964 Cardinals.  He is a member of both the College Baseball and Basketball Halls of Fame.

He was, of course, the shortstop and team Captain of Pittsburgh's most remembered and beloved team, the 1960 Pirates.   It was that season when Groat won the batting title and was named the National League's Most Valuable Player.   Second baseman Bill Mazeroski is in the Baseball Hall of Fame, primarily because he is often conceded to be the greatest defensive second baseman ever, but for the first half of his career, someone was partnering with Maz at short on all of those jaw-dropping double plays, and that someone was Dick Groat.

Groat's leadership and contributions to that magical season were recognized on a national level, too, as this Sports Illustrated  cover shows.

Of course, you have to be of a "certain age" to remember Groat as a baseball player, and most people in western Pennsylvania know of Groat today as the longtime color analyst on the radio broadcasts for Pitt basketball games, and job he held for forty (!!) years.  Also, back in the 1960's, he and former Bucs teammate Jerry Lynch built and opened Champion Lakes Golf Course near Ligoner, a course that remains to this day one of the finest public golf courses in southwest Pennsylvania.

Groat's was, as Pirates owner Bob Nutting said in the paper today, "A life well lived."

I can remember chatting with Groat on several occasions as he took my money at the pro shop cash register.  I can also remember a SABR meeting in Pittsburgh back in the mid 2010's when Groat was the guest speaker.  He was astonished when the crowd there gave him a standing ovation when he entered.  It was a well deserved reception, and his humility on that occasion was striking.  

Groat was last seen just last week in a video when Steve Blass informed him that he would be inducted in this year's class of the Pirates Hall of Fame.  He appeared to be very frail both physically and in his speech, so I suppose that yesterday's news of his passing doesn't come as a surprise. Still, the passing of one of the sporting heroes of your youth always hits hard.  

As I always do on such occasions, I report that Groat's death leaves only six members of the 1960 World Series roster for the Pirates with us, Joe Christopher, Roy Face, Vernon Law, Bill Mazeroski, Bob Oldis, and Bob Skinner.  All but Maz, who will turn 87 in September, are in their nineties, now.  Which of this sporting tontine will be the one to open that figurative  bottle of champagne?

Linda and I were at the Pirates-Dodgers game yesterday afternoon, where the Pirates recognized this sad occasion.

RIP Dick Groat.

The Reynolds Contract and Twelve Key Games Upcoming for the Pirates

From the long term point of view, yesterday was a very good day for the Pittsburgh Pirates when it became known that the team and outfielder Brian Reynolds agreed to an eight year contract extension worth $106 million in guaranteed money.   It is the largest guaranteed contract for any Pittsburgh professional athlete in history, and it came from Bob Nutting and the Pirates.  By all accounts, this is a good deal for both sides (I'll spare all the nitty-gritty details; you can find such info elsewhere in the interwebs if you so desire), and it gives the fan base what we have all been screaming about for years: a sign that the Pirates are willing to finally pay to keep a key player.  

Time, of course, will tell if this turns out to be a good deal for the Pirates, but for today at least, we all need to give the team - and Bob Nutting - their due.  They've stepped up to the plate and delivered for once.  Will they continue to do so?

All that aside, five days ago I wrote about how surprisingly well the team had been in the opening weeks of the season. At the close of this past  weekend, the team's record was 16-7, the best in the National League.  Admittedly, save for three games against the Astros, the Pirates had faced weaker teams in the the League.  Last night, however they began an 18 game stretch wherein twelve of those games would be played against stronger teams with winning records: the Dodgers, Rays, Blue Jays, and Orioles.  It could be said that how the team fares in those twelve games will tell us a lot in how sustainable the Bucs' early success might be.  What would be considered a successful record for the Pirates in those twelve games?  What would convince you that maybe, possibly, perhaps the 2023 version of the Pirates are on the brink of something really good? 

On the theory that you should beat up on the bad teams and break even with the good teams (generally speaking, of course), then I would say that anywhere from 5-7 to 7-5 or better in this stretch would be considered a good run for the team.  4-8 or worse would certainly make one nervous, would it not?  This run began poorly last night when the Pirates blew a 7-2 lead and lost to the Dodgers, so let's hope that they can bounce back tonight and tomorrow.

Oh, and sandwiched among those twelve games are three games apiece against the Nationals and Rockies.  The Bucs swept Colorado in a three game series in Denver last week, and the Nats are well on their way to contending for the worst record in MLB this year, so it behooves the Pirates to take care of business in those six games as they battle against the Big Boys in the league over the next three weeks.

 

To Absent Friends - Two Great Satirists

I do not want to let the month of April pass without noting the deaths of two of the All-Time great satirists of our era, Mark Russell and Al Jaffee.

Mark Russell

1932 - 2023

Mark Russell, born in Buffalo, NY, began his career as an Inside-the-Beltway guy, performing regularly in the lounge of Washington DC's Shoreham Hotel.  He parodied popular and well-known songs with his own lyrics that made comments on the news of the day out of Washington, and he was an equal opportunity guy:  no politician, regardless of which side of the aisle they sat, was safe from Russell's barbs.

He soon began to appear on the television talk show and variety show circuits which took his act to the rest of the country, and from 1975 to 2004, he did regular live programs on PBS where he performed in the round before a live audience while working at a stand up piano.  No one, dating from JFK and LBJ, Tricky Dick, the  Clintons, the Bushes, and Barack Obama, was a sacred cow to Russell, and if the truth were known, I am guessing that the subjects of his parodies were probably among his biggest fans (with the possible exception of the Trickster).

Russell was once asked if he had any writers, and he replied that, "yes, he had 535 of them, 100 in the Senate and 435 in the House of Representatives."  He effectively retired in 2010, making very rare public appearances beyond that.  When I heard of his passing, I wondered what his act would have been like during the administration of the 45th President.  I am not going to post it here so as not to stir up any controversies, but if you search YouTube, you can find a video of Russell sitting a piano at a birthday party in 2016 and doing a song about then Candidate Trump, and it was amazingly accurate in predicting what was to befall us.

Al Jaffee

1921-2023

When MAD Magazine was unleashed upon an unsuspecting nation in the early 1950's, Al Jaffee was one of the original artists for the publication, and there he remained until his retirement in 2019 at the age of 98.

The subversive and crazy humor that MAD had on generations of comedians and regular teenaged (mostly) boys, including Yours Truly, cannot be measured (to this day I still think of actors Fred Astaire and Roddy McDowell as "Fred Upstairs" and "Roddy McTowel"), and Jaffee was foremost among the editorial staff that made this giant imprint on our popular culture.  Among Jaffee's regular features was "Crazy Inventions" (some of which, like the multi-bladed razor, actually came about) and "MAD's Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions."  He may be best known, however for the inside back cover of the magazine, the MAD Fold-In.  Conceived as a one time gag as a riff on the fold-outs of magazines like Playboy, the fold-in became so popular that it became a regular feature of the Magazine, and Jaffe ended up doing over 400 of them.  Here is one of them which, based on he subject matter, no doubt dates from 1964:

RIP Mark Russell and Al Jaffee.

The Pirates - 20 Games In

I usually wait for more than twenty games to be played before commenting on how the Pirates are shaping up in any given season, but the start of the 2023 season has been so surprising, so above expectations, and so downright fun, that I couldn't wait any longer to opine on the subject.

The team now stands at 13-7, in second place in the NL Central, 1.5 goes behind the Brewers, and they are tied for the second best record in the National League.  Who besides Pirates Chief Propaganda Minister Greg Brown saw that coming?  They are playing good and winning baseball, and they are doing so with a  joie de vivre that is so infectious, that you can't wait to watch the next game.  From the drawing of an imaginary sword when someone gets a hit, to the rubber sword that they wield in the dugout after someone hits a home run, to the outfielders doing jumping chest bumps and the infielders doing that goofy dance after every win, you just see a spirit there that you haven't seen for a number of years with the Bucs.

Then there was the McCutchen-like leap from Ji Hwan Bae after his walk-off three run home run against the Astros earlier in the month.

There has been excellent starting pitching led by Mitch Keller, Roansy Contreras, and Juan Oviedo (the team has had a dozen consecutive games from pitchers going at least six innings), some excellent relief work from guys like Dauri Moreta, Robert Stephenson, Colin "H.R." Holderman, and Duane Underwood, leading to All-Star closer David Bender.

The hitting was led by Brian Reynolds who has cooled off a bit from a first week of the season where he had 5 HR's and 14 RBI's, but his cooling off has been accompanied by Jack Suwinski heating up and hitting 5 HR's is recent games.  Perhaps the most amazing performance thus far, however, has been that of Andrew McCutchen.

McCutchen's signing in the off-season was seen by many, including The Grandstander, as a cynical attempt by Cheapskate Bob Nutting to sell tickets and spread a coat of whitewash over the generally lousy performance of the team over the past three seasons.   Through the first 12.3% of the season, however, the signing of McCutchen may prove to be one of the best moves that the Pirates have made since, well, drafting Andrew McCutchen back in 2005.  He has seemed to eagerly adopt the "elder statesman/leader in the clubhouse" role on a team that for the most part is comprised of younger players.   And he has shown that he can still play.   While playing right field and DH'ing, he has hit .290 with 5 HR, 9 RBI, 10 Runs scored, and carrying OPS of .943, and you could make the case that he has been the best player on the team.

Of course, it hasn't all been sweetness and light, and the one event of the year casting an early shadow was the fractured ankle of Oniel Cruz during the first week of the season.  The most optimistic outlook mentioned thus far is that Cruz will be out for four months, which would get him back in the lineup in mid to late August.  The team has weathered his absence thus far, but it is almost impossible not to think that the long term effects of that injury will be disastrous for the Bucs.  To their credit, no one connected with the team has taken a "woe is us" attitude.  Rather, it has been, "we'll get guys to pick up the slack and move on."

The team still is a flawed one, and no one expects pennant or even post season contention for the Pirates, but they have shown improvement, and they have been, as I said at the outset, a blast to watch.  It would be nice to think that they could maintain this level of performance through, say June, and then, well, who in the Hell knows what might happen.  So in the meantime, we'll just keep raising the Jolly Roger.

Beat 'em Bucs!

 

Movie Review: "Everything, Everywhere, All AT Once"

I will concede that the acting was was quite good.

I will concede that the writers and directors, "the Daniels", were trying to make some sort of statement and send some sort of message, although spreading it over two and half hours muddled it up quite a bit.

In the end, though, I only have one thing to say about this movie:

THAT was the Best Picture of 2022?

One Star from The Grandstander.

Oh, Linda had this observation:  "Well, I didn't hate it as much as I thought I would."  How's that for bringing endorsement?

A Beer Can Story

Facebook is telling me that today is National Beer Day.  The fact that this coincides with the Pirates Home Opener is either a perfect example of  serendipity or a recipe for disaster, but no mind.  This important day of observance does give me an opportunity to tell a beer, or rather a Can of Beer, related story.

About a month ago I was rummaging through our "downstairs refrigerator" when I found buried deep in the back of it this can of beer:

This is a sixteen ounce of Iron City Beer in a special commemorative can issued on the occasion of Bill Mazeroski's election to Baseball's Hall of Fame....in 2001!!!!  Yes, you are looking at a twenty-two year old can of Iron City Beer ("Iron City, Iron City, That's the beer for me, People love it, Drink more of it, That's the one for me.")  I imagine that way back at the beginning of this century, I bought myself a six pack of these babies, drank five of them, but just couldn't bring myself to crack open that last one, and then I forgot that I had it.  This can of beer actually moved with us from Field Club Drive to Village Drive back in 2010.  It's kind of astonishing when you think about it.

So what do I do now?  

I could, of course, drink it, but does beer age well?  Does it still taste like beer when it's 22 years old?

I could punch holes in the bottom of the can and then drink it, thus preserving the can as a "collectable", but I am not a collector, so an empty beer can, to me is just another piece of trash.

I could put it on eBay and see if there is a market for it.  I am guessing that there is.

I could just keep it.  Take it out of the fridge, and display it on a shelf in my office.  The thing has more value to me if it's filled, rather than just an empty can.   

Yep, I'm going to hang on to it.  Maybe I'll drink it on the day some doctor tells me I have twenty-four hours to live.  Or maybe I'll just look down from heaven (being an optimist here) and watch my various nephews and nieces fight over which one of them gets the "Maz Can".  Or maybe, like John Foster Kane's Rosebud, it will end up in a dumpster one day.

I heard Bill Cowher tell a story this past year that when he retired from the Steelers, he left a six pack of Iron City in his office fridge for "the next guy."  Someone then asked Mike Tomlin about it, and he said "It's still in there waiting for the next 'next guy.'"

Maybe that will be the case with this one single can.

Happy National Beer Day, one and all.

March Madness Concludes; Thoughts on UCONN, LSU, Reese v. Clark, and Kim Mulkey

March Madness came to a conclusion on this first weekend in April with an overload of hoops in the staging of both the Men's and Women's NCAA Basketball Championships.

The men's semi-finals featured a 72-71 buzzer beater win by San Diego State over Florida Atlantic, and an easy 72-59 win by UCONN over Miami.  (Those 2 and 9 digits, by the way, were worth $125 to me in a complex pool run by pal Fred Shugars, so good on that!)  

After those games were concluded, my comment to Linda was that Connecticut was going to roll over San Diego State in the championship game, and that is exactly what happened.  During an eleven minute stretch in the first half, the Aztecs failed to make a shot from the field, UCONN built a 12 point lead and despite San Diego St. closing to within four points at one point in the second half, which made it uncomfortable for anyone who bet the Huskies and gave the 7.5 points, UCONN quickly regained control and cruised to a 76-59 victory.

This marks UCONN's fifth national title in a span of twenty-five seasons, which puts them in the rarified air of the college basketball blue bloods.  It also should make those who still yearn for the glory days of the Big East of Looie Carneseca, Big John Thompson and others bathe in some sort of nostalgic glory.

Then there was the Women's Final Four, which featured two terrific games, LSU 79 - Virginia Tech 72 and Iowa 77 - South Carolina 73.  I wrote Iowa's win and the dazzling performance of Iowa's Caitlin Clark IN THIS SPACE two days ago.  In that piece what I didn't say was that while Clark was probably the best player in the tournament, LSU seemed to me to be the better team, led by a pretty good player herself in Angel Reese, and that it would take all of Clark's considerable skills to beat LSU.  

What it made for was one of the most highly anticipated match-ups, men or women, in recent memory for the Championship.  The 102-85 dismantling by LSU over Iowa will be remembered, regretfully, for a couple of things other than the basketball itself.

One was the officiating.  The refs in this game felt that the nation was tuning in to watch them and not LSU and Iowa, and they effectively ruined the game.  Key players from both teams, including Clark and Reese, got into early foul trouble which no doubt played a key role in how the game was played, and was highlighted by an absurd bullshit technical foul called against Clark in the fourth quarter.  I'm not saying that it effected the outcome of the game, I think LSU would have won regardless, but it took away the possibility of what could have been a magnificent game.

Then there was this scene, which has dominated conversation about the game ever since it ended.

This is Reese taunting Clark with her "you can't see me" gesture (which, until yesterday, seventy-one year old me didn't even know was a thing) and pointing to her ring finger.  Of course, social media has been ablaze ever since with people condemning Reese for graceless poor sportsmanship, followed by equally vociferous rantings of those defending her.  And, of course, given the society in which we live, this is all coming down on racial, Black vs White lines.  Clark, who has been known to showboat, taunt opponents, and play to the crowds herself, was probably a lot less bothered by it than those who are screaming about it on Twitter and Facebook.  Me, I'm an old guy, and think that there should be enough sportsmanship in college sports so as to preclude such gestures, but I'm going to chalk it up to "let the kids play."

I am also betting that even as we speak, ESPN is pulling strings to arrange an early season game between Iowa and LSU next season in prime time.  It'll kill in the ratings.

Finally, there is LSU Coach Kim Mulkey.

Mulkey's greatness cannot be denied.  She has played on a national championship team at Louisiana Tech and on an Olympic Gold Medal winning team.  She coached Baylor to three national titles, and now has added a fourth title to her resume at LSU.  She is a great coach.

She also is a coach who, like so many of her counterparts in the men's game with whom we are more familiar, is a horse's ass on the sidelines during a game.  Screaming at and intimidating officials, screaming at players, and, in what really bothered me, actually standing on the court while the ball is in play on the end of the court where her bench is located.  What does she not get T'ed up for that?  She obviously comes from the Bobby Knight School of Coaching Assholery.  Can you imagine her acting that way in the performance of her job if she worked in, say, a bank, and accounting firm, or an insurance agency?

A Tough Step in The Grief Journey

I took another step on the Grief Journey yesterday.  Eleven days short of the 18 month anniversary of Marilyn's death, I disabled and deleted her email account.   Everyday, I would go into her email box, see 15 to 20 ads and pieces of junk email, and I would delete it.  She hadn't received a piece of meaningful email since 2021, and yesterday, I decided it was time for that to end. msproule@verizon.net is no more.

Seems like a tiny little detail that should be no big deal, but if that was the case, why did it take me 18 months to do it, and why can I not stop thinking about doing it?

It just seems that the smallest steps are sometimes the hardest ones to take.

Caitlin Clark

I hope that you all stayed up late last night to watch the NCAA Women's Basketball Championship Semi-Final match-up between the University of South Carolina and the University of Iowa.  This game had the build up, to me at least, of any game thus far in the Men's tournament.  On one side was South Carolina, undefeated, defending champion, riding a forty-two game winning streak, and featuring Aliyah Boston, the 2021-22 Player of the Year.  On the other side was Iowa, champions of the Big Ten and featuring 2022-23 Player of the Year, Caitlin Clark, who over the course of the season became the incandescent star for women's college basketball and who was coming off of a 40 point triple double in the Regional Finals game.

The game and Clark delivered.  Iowa led for much of the first half, but SC stayed with them, despite Boston being on the bench for the last five minutes of the first quarter and all of the second quarter due to early foul trouble, and Iowa took a one point lead into the locker room at half-time.  They held the led throughout the third quarter, leading b as many as nine points at one time, and held a four point lead at the end of the third.  Fifty seconds into the fourth, Carolina took a 60-59 lead.  Clark responded with a three pointer fifteen seconds later, and Iowa never lost the lead from that point on.  Like Ali and Frazier in Manilla, Carolina never let the Hawkeyes get away from them, closing to within one point with 4:01 remaining, but in the end, Iowa held on to win 77-73.

"Terrific" doesn't even begin to describe this game.  To reuse the metaphor from the previous paragraph, it was like a classic heavyweight championship fight, or maybe it was like Ohtani vs. Trout from the World Baseball Classic.  This game was, as I say time and again, the reason why you follow sports, and the overwhelming star of the game was Caitlin Clark.   If you have never seen her play, make Sunday afternoon's championship game between Iowa and LSU appointment viewing.  She is incredible to watch.  She can shoot and score, she had 41 points last night, and her passing is remarkable.  It was like watching John Stockton dish the ball and she hit her teammates.  She had eight assists last night, and she either scored or assisted on all 18 of Iowa's fourth quarter points.   (And in an oddball but fun statistic, Clark has scored mored points in these five NCAA tourney games than Iowa's football team did in the entire 2022 season.)  South Carolina, a great defensive team, threw everything they could to stop her, but in the words of the Washington Post's Sally Jenkins, "Clark cut through that defense like scissors shearing fabric."

Sally Jenkins is, of course, a far more elegant writer than I, so I would suggest you read her piece from today's Post HERE.

As I said earlier, do yourself a favor and tune into the Championship game between Iowa and LSU at 3:30 tomorrow, Sunday, afternoon.