Reviews - And I'll Try To Be Quick About It

Ever since I heard about Francis Ford Coppola's new movie "Megalopolis", I knew that I wanted to see it, and from what I had read about it, I also knew that there was a good chance that I wouldn't like it.  And I was right.

The movie is striking visually, and Coppola used everything in his Auteur Bag of Tricks, so that is kind of fun, but what exactly is this movie about?  A guy wants to design, build, and control a futuristic city?  The evils of big money men when it comes to who exactly controls whom when someone wants to achieve something?  An allegory on the 45th President and all that he has wrought over the last ten years?  

"Megalopolis" also has in supporting roles Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, together again fifty-five years after "Midnight Cowboy".  If only Coppola could have thrown in an Easter egg of Hoffman yelling "I'm walking' here."

The most fun part of the movie was Aubrey Plaza chewing the scenery in her role as, and what terrific name for a character, Wow Platinum.

I figure that guy like Francis Ford Coppola has earned the right to do just about anything he wants to do when making  a movie, but "Megalopolis" ain't the second coming of "The Godfather " trilogy.  Trust me on that.

Word is that Coppola financed this movie himself using proceeds from his wine business.  I enjoy and buy Coppola's wines, so I guess that I am partially responsible for this one.

One and one-half Stars from The Grandstander.

British mystery novelist Richard Osman decided to take a break from his Thursday Murder Club series, which I wrote about HERE a few months back, and introduce a new series starring two new central characters, father-in-law and daughter-in-law Steve and Amy Wheeler.

Steve is a retired police detective and widower and, much like Osman's Thursday Murder Club characters, he likes to relax in his retirement, hang with his mates at the local pub, and play pub trivia every Wednesday night.

Amy is a "private security/protection specialist" who travels all over the world and is somewhat of a killing machine.  

In this one, clients of Amy's firm keep getting killed, and Amy is being framed for the murders.  To get out of this mess, Amy recruits a reluctant Steve to help her out.  There is also  horny female best selling mystery novelist (a sex-crazed Agatha Christie?) who is involved here and helps out Amy and Steve.  There are professional high level hit men involved, an elaborate money laundering scheme, and travels all over the world (in addition to England, action takes place in South Carolina, St Lucia, Dublin, Hawaii, and Dubai).  I found the whole thing to me a big mish-mash of a story, I practically forced myself to slog through it until the end.  Had I not enjoyed the author's other books, I would probably have given up on it at the hundred page mark.

I might - might - give the next installment of the Steve and Amy series a chance now that Osman has established the characters, but, mostly, I will anxiously await his return to the fictional community of Cooper's Chase and his Thursday Murder Club folks.

One and three-quarters Stars from The Grandstander.

The 2024 Pittsburgh Pirates - Requiem For A Season

I made the following post on Facebook last week.  I thought that it was a perfect encapsulation of the Pirates season, and I saw no reason to reinvent the wheel when writing this post, so here goes.

"So we took ourselves down to PNC Park on Thursday to catch the Pirates final home game of the season, a 5-2 loss to the Brewers (for the record, the Pirates were 5-5 in the ten games that I attended this year). The really sad part was that when the Bucs fell behind 3-0 in the fourth inning, you just knew that there was no chance, zero, that they would be able to overcome that deficit and win the game. In his always riveting post game presser, Sheltie said of his team that "we just have to get better." Sheltie has been saying that for five years now , and the team has not gotten better.

"In a perfect symbol of the season, the bottom of the eighth inning ended when the Brewers recorded the third out as a result of an Oneil Cruz boneheaded base running blunder.

"The hot dogs were good though."

Since I wrote those words, the Pirates have ensured further enmity from their fan base by announcing that both GM Ben Cherington and field manager Derek "Sheltie" Shelton will be back in those same roles in 2025.  Over the five years of this regime, the team has finished last in the NL Central four times, and next to last once.  Their record in 2024 was 76-86, the exact same as in 2023.

So what else can you say about the Pirates and this recently completed season?  I think I will defer to a discussion that took place at our Cranky Old Guys breakfast a few weeks ago.   What were three positive things, and what were three negative things (only three?) about the Pirates in 2024?

Not sure if I'll limit it to three, but here are some thoughts from this seat in the Grandstand.

Positive  

• Number One on the positive side was the arrival, less than a year after he was taken as the first pick in the first round of the Draft, of pitcher Paul Skenes.  He started in the All-Star Game, finished 11-3 with a 1.96 ERA, and 170 strike outs (11.5 per 9 IP) in 23 starts and 133 IP.  When he pitched, he was must see, and he attracted huge crowds, not only at PNC Park, but on the road as well.   He was taken out of games (got to watch those innings limits) not once, but twice, after pitching no hitters through six innings.  He received a standing ovation in a game he pitched against the Cardinals in St. Louis.  He had a dominating presence on the mound, and he appears to be a genuine Ace #1 starter for years and years to come.  We in Pittsburgh will fully enjoy watching and cheering for him for the next four to six seasons before he becomes unaffordable for our penny pinching home team.
• Before the arrival of Skenes in June, another rookie, Jared Jones, showed the signs of being an ace pitchers.  He can throw 99 mph routinely and accumulates strike outs in bunches.  A mid-season trip to the injured list slowed him down a bit, but he did have some strong appearances in September.  Then throw in flashes of greatness from Mitch Keller, and positive seasons for Luis Ortiz and Bailey Falter.  The Pirates problems are many going forward, but starting pitching does not appear to be among them.
• Brian Reynolds had another good season.  .275 BA, 24 HR, 88 RBI, leading the team in all three categories.
• Andrew McCutchen had 20 HR and 50 RBI as a 37 year old DH, and he's, well, ANDREW MCCUTCHEN.
• Joey Bart hit .265 with 13 HR and 45 RBI and established himself as the guy to beat out at Catcher come 2025.
• Former first round pick Nick Gonzalez hit .265 with 49 RBI in 94 games while playing well in the field at 2B, SS, and 3B.  He appears to be a solid player.
• Oneil Cruz has 21 HR and 76 RBIand was moved from SS to CF in mid-August.  He has a lot of raw talent, but continues to make some head scratching mental errors, as well as the physical ones.  

Negative

Where to begin?   And I'm not going to give any details here; it'll be too painful.

• The Bullpen, led by two time All-Star David Bednar, that crashed and burned as the summer wore on.
• Henry Davis.
• Jack Suwinski
• Ke'Bryan Hayes
• Too many games with starting line-ups with multiple guys hitting below .200
• Knowing that when the team fell behind by three runs or more, there was a seemingly 99% probability that the game was effectively over.
• Blown leads (see Bullpen).  How many leads did the Pirates have and then give up during that horrid stretch after the trade deadline, including that infamous ten game losing streak that effective ended the season?
• Using Rowdy Tellez as a relief pitcher three times in eleven games during blow out losses.  Using a position player once to mop up in a blow out loss is funny.  Doing it three times in eleven games is an embarrassment.  I would have fired Shelton on the spot after that.

The cherry on the sundae, though, was the Pirates decision to DFA Tellez with four games remaining in the season when he was four plate appearances short of earning a $250,000 performance bonus.   I shed no tears for Tellez, who made $3.2 million this season, and was, for the most part, not very good, but he seemed to be a decent guy and the proverbial "good guy to have in the locker room."  The Pirates were within their right to screw him out of those 250 G's, I suppose, but it was a cheesy and chintzy move, and when GMBC compounded the issue by saying that the bonus played "no role, zero" in the decision to DFA Tellez, well, that represented an new low for Bob Nutting and the front office minions who do his bidding.

We are now into the second week of the MLB Post-Season.  I haven't watched a much thus far, although I did enjoy seeing Shohei Ohtani blast one into outer space against the Padres last night.   I am sure that my viewing will pick up as teams advance to the LCS's and World Series, even though I know that the team for which I root, have rooted for since 1959, has slipped so deep into irrelevancy in the great scheme of things in Major League Baseball.

What a shame.

To Absent _________ - Pete Rose

If you follow sports in America, and even if you don't, you are undoubtedly aware that Pete Rose, baseball's all-time hits leader, died this past Monday at the age of 83.  News of his death was front page news all across the country.  There was probably no more polarizing figure in all of professional sports than Pete Rose.  So much so that you will notice that I left a blank spot in the headline of the post.  Is Rose an Absent Friend or an Absent Scoundrel?

A great ballplayer - and there is no other adjective to use to describe Rose the player - he played in more games, had more plate appearances, more at bats, and the Crown Jewel of his achievements, more hits, 4,256, than any other player in history. He was a 17 time All-Star, an MVP, a World Series MVP, a three time batting champion, a two time Gold Glove winner, and the owner of the NL record hitting streak of 44 games.  If you were around during that 1978 season, following Rose during that streak was positively riveting.   He played on six pennant winners and three World Series champions.  He was the driving force of one on baseball's most colorful and great teams ever, The Big Red Machine Cincinnati Reds of the 1970's.

He was one of the greatest ballplayers ever and a surefire first ballot Hall of Famer, if not a unanimous choice to make the HOF.  However, it all came crashing down around him in 1989 when a thorough investigation by MLB showed that not only was Pete an inveterate gambler, he was guilty of violating Baseball's cardinal rule: he gambled on Major League Baseball, be bet on games in which he played and on games of a team that he managed, the Reds.  That brought a lifetime ban from baseball that included him being deemed ineligible to enter the Baseball Hall of Fame.  

Thus began the polarization.  

The argument began that should or should not Rose be allowed to enter the Hall of Fame?  First off, let me state that Rose is not a "non-person" as far as the National Baseball Museum and Hall of Fame goes.  If you have ever visited this fabulous place in Cooperstown, NY, as I have on many occasions, you will find Pete Rose all over the place.  There are numerous statistical exhibits where Rose's accomplishments are duly recognized, including his place at the top of the Hits List.  The last time that I was there on the mid-2010's, there was an exhibit on Baseball's Greatest Teams that included The Big Red Machine, and Pete's recognizable mug was front and center in all of the pictures commemorating that team.   It is the "Hall" part of that institution, the place where all the plaques are, that Rose cannot be found.  My own position on this, and hey, I'm just an ordinary baseball fan, is that Rose should not be allowed as a member of the HOF.  Yes, I know that the Hall is populated by its share of womanizers, drunks, druggies, and other assorted bad guys, but betting on baseball?  Like I said earlier, that is the one thing that you simply cannot do, and Rose did it.

Over the years, as these arguments raged on, Pete Rose became his own worst enemy.  In the early 2000's commissioner Bud Selig offered him a lifeline.  He would fully reinstate him, but there were conditions.  Admit that he gambled on baseball (it wasn't until a few years after that that that Rose finally admitted this, and that was in a book where he could make money off of the admission), cease gambling, and cease all relationships with casinos.  Rose wouldn't, or couldn't, do it.

There were other transgressions.  He did time in a federal penitentiary for tax evasion.  A lawsuit revealed that he once had a sexual relationship with in underage girl.  He became estranged from his kids.  And there were the numerous stories about Pete willing to do anything for money.  I mentioned the book that he wrote.  (A former teammate said that Pete was the only guy who ever wrote a book who had never actually read one.)  Once, the Reds obtained permission from MLB to allow Rose to appear at a Reds game where members of the Big Red Machine teams were being honored.  Rose almost didn't show up because he wanted to be paid to be there.  And there were always the distasteful appearances in Cooperstown during HOF induction weekend where Rose would set up shop down the street to sell autographs and his schlocky "Hit King" merchandise.  

Still, I loved reading stories about Rose the ballplayer.  He knew everything about the game.  Not only his stats, but the stats of all the other players, too.  In a book  about Joe DiMaggio's 56 game hitting streak in 1941 that I read several years ago, Rose was frequently quoted throughout.  As I said when I read it, I may dislike Pete Rose the person, but when it comes to talking about the game and hitting, I will sure as hell listen to him.

Speculation now looms that Rose will finally be admitted to the Hall of Fame posthumously, a final way for MLB to screw him over when he's not alive to realize his greatest ambition.  MLB has stated that such bans continue after a person's death (see Jackson, Shoeless Joe).  We shall see how all of that unfolds, but it assures us that Pete Rose, both his glorious on-field accomplishments and his personal habits that led to his ignominy, will always be with us, and somehow, I think that will be exactly how Pete Rose would want it to play out.  

RIP Pete Rose.