To Absent Friends - Teri Garr

 

Teri Garr

1944-2024

Sad news arrives this week of the death of actress Teri Garr at the age of 79.  

My memory of Miss Garr is somewhat strange.  I was living in the Cleveland, OH area in the mid-1970's at the same time that Teri Garr became well known upon the release of Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein" in 1974.  It happened that Garr was born and raised in the Cleveland suburb of Lakewood, and every newspaper or on the air mention of the movie stated that is starred "Lakewood's Teri Garr."  Much like Pittsburgh media goes overboard with mentions of folks like Michael Keaton, Fred Rodgers, Gene Kelly, or Wiz Kahilifa.  Strange memory to have of someone, but there you are.

IMDB list 159 credits for Teri Garr, the last one being in 2011.  Later in life, Garr was stricken with MS, whereupon she became a spokesperson in fighting for research  into this terrible affliction. 

In addition to the aformentioned "Young Frankenstein" perhaps Garr's best known roles came in movies like "Tootsie", "Mr. Mom" (wherein Lakewood's Teri Garr co-starred with Robinson Township's Michael Keaton), and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."  It was a highly successful acting career which was cut short way too soon due to her illness.

Most of the news stories of her death led with her part as Inga in "Young Frankenstein" (above) where many of her lines were double entendres as only Mel Brooks could serve up.  Like THIS ONE.  Or THIS ONE.  Funny stuff from a lovely and talented actress who was dealt a bad hand later in life.

RIP Teri Garr.

To Absent Friends - Fernando Valenzuela

 

If you were around in 1981 and were a close follower of Major League Baseball, or even just a casual follower, you most certainly remember the astonishing debut season of Los Angeles Dodgers rookie pitcher Fernando Valenzuela, and the wave of "Fernando-mania" that swept across the sports world that summer.  A few months ago, I heard LA sportswriter Bill Plaschke on Around the Horn asking people to keep Valenzuela, who for many years served as a commentator on the Dodger's Spanish language broadcasts and telecasts, in their thoughts as he was suffering some "health issues", so the news of his death this week at the way-too-young age of 63 didn't come as total shock, but it still shakes you up anyway.

Valenzuela became a starting pitcher at the beginning of the 1981 season only because Jerry Ruess was injured.  In his first game, he pitched a complete game shoutout, and he just took off from there.  In his first eight starts that year, he was 8-0, pitched five shutouts, gave up four earned runs (0.50 ERA), and here's the best part, HE COMPLETED ALL EIGHT GAMES.  Unfathomable in the Major League game as it has come to be in 2024.

These numbers stand out in stark relief as today's Dodgers prepare to start the World Series against the New York Yankees tomorrow night.  If you have been following the Playoffs, you know that "bullpen games" have become the thing during this biggest stage that MLB gives us.  The Dodgers did two of them in the NLCS, and they will not doubt continue to do so in the coming World Series.  The Dodgers will be starting guys who haven't pitched 72 innings all season, something that Valenzuela did in his first eight starts as a rookie.

He played with six teams over 17 seasons, eleven of them with the Dodgers, and compiled a 173-153 W-L record with a career ERA of 3.54.  In six post season starts, he was 5-1 with 1.98 ERA.  In his lone World Series appearance in 1981, he turned in a complete game victory over the Yankees.   I can remember reading once, and I can't remember who the sportswriter was, who, when writing about a Playoff series game, wrote something like "The lump that kept growing on Valenzuela's buttock throughout the game was the Montreal Expos, whom Fernando was shoving into his hip pocket all night."  What a great line.

Valenzuela's career numbers, good, but not Hall of Fame great, don't even begin to summarize the effect that he had on baseball during that strike-marred season of 1981, and his cultural impact among the Latino community of Southern California. 

RIP Fernando Valenzuela.

 

Russ Cooks. and Other Sporting Thoughts

The talk all last week among the sporting cognoscenti here in The Burgh was Mike Tomlin's not so secret decision to start Russell Wilson at quarterback over Justin Fields.  You could make an argument in favor of fields, who had led the Steelers to a 4-2 record and seemed to be improving each week.  Personally, I was not totally sold on Fields, for whatever my opinion might be worth, and I figured that Tomlin gets paid big money to make these decisions, and if he goes with Wilson, well, then let's just see how it will all play out.

After a first half in which Wilson's performance could be charitably described as "shaky", Tomlin apparently spray coated Russ down with a can of Rustoleum to remove whatever rust had accumulated on him, and both Wilson and the Steelers proceeded to kick the collective asses of the New York J-E-T-S Jets Jets Jets. 

 As I usually do, I stayed off of social media as I watched the game last night, so it was with a wry sense of delight that I looked at my Facebook feed after the game and saw all of the posts that were made throughout the first half of the game (New York led 15-6 at halftime).  Tomlin was being crucified by all the armchair GM's out there.  My favorite was some one who stated that by starting an obviously over-the-hill Wilson in place of Fields, "the Steelers have become the Pirates."  It was quite amusing, actually.   I haven't checked yet today to see if any of those experts retracted any of their statements.

Under Wilson's hand, the Steelers scored four touchdowns in a game for the first time since November of 2022.  They sit at 5-2 and should be considered in the second tier of teams, behind Kansas City and Baltimore, in the AFC.  We will see how it goes with Wilson as the season wears on, but he was throwing the kinds of passes last night that we haven't seen from Fields so far this year, and certainly unlike anything we saw all of last season.

One other Steelers note.  The team had its "Alumni Weekend" where they honored the 1974 team on the fiftieth anniversary of their first Super Bowl Championship team.  

Nice team picture, ain't it?  To observe the occasion, the team wore "throwback" jerseys that featured the block numerals that they wore throughout the 1970's and into the 1990's.    This begs the question:  When will they return to the block numerals permanently?  I don't know of a single Steelers fan anywhere who would not be in favor of that.

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In other sports news....

In the fifth and final game of the WNBA Championship Series, the New York Liberty defeated the Minnesota Lynx to claim their first ever WNBA title.  The final game went into overtime, the second OT of the series, and was a thrilling game right until the final buzzer.  In fact , four of the five games were all decided by razor thin margins.  The competition was thrilling and terrific sports theater.  If you are a basketball fan, but chose not to watch the Playoffs, you deprived yourself of some damn exciting hoops watching.

If it had not attained such status prior to 2024, this year marked the occasion when, I believe, the WNBA has arrived as a full fledged "major league" sport in America.  Many people came to the sport because of Caitlin Clark, but once they arrived, I think that eyes were opened as to just how good and enjoyable the women's game is.  I, for one, will be looking forward to next season.

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In one other event of significance last night, the Dodgers defeated the Mets 10-4 in the sixth and final game of the NLCS, thus setting up a "traditional" World Series between the Dodgers and the Yankees.  That is, if you consider something that hasn't happened in forty-three years a tradition.  

In that deciding game last night, both teams used seven pitchers, continuing a trend that I lamented in my most recent Grandstander post.  As friend Dave Glass noted on social media this morning, a Dodgers win 

"..will be the first time recent memory (and I'd bet ever) that a team won with basically zero starting pitching. Call me an old man but I think baseball is better when the starters matter at least a little.  I don't need Bob Gibson, but 6 or 7 innings maybe?"

Couldn't have said it better, Dave.

One intriguing thing that this World Series does give us it a head to head matchup of the two best hitters in the game today, Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge, and I most certainly do look forward to that.

I'll predict a Yankees victory and hope that it goes seven games.

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I know that many of you are probably asking, "But, Bob, the Jets-Steelers, Lynx- Liberty, and Mets-Dodgers were all on at the same time. How could possibly have taken all of that in last night?"

Well, when your various television sets are no longer tethered to cable boxes, a little unplugging and moving around can turn any living room into your personal Sports Bar.

This solved the problem of the 8:00 PM conflicts, but also came in handy when watching the Penguins in the afternoon up against the 1:00 NFL games, and I even caught some of the Liverpool-Chelsea EPL match game in the late morning.

You may say that you feel sorry for my wife for putting up with this, but actually, movies the two other sets into the living room was her idea.  Those other two sets were returned to the bedroom and the office earlier this morning.

Shouting At Clouds During Baseball's Post-Season

This post is supposed to be my views on the Steelers after six games, but the "action" from Game 2 of the ALCS on Tuesday night is causing me to take a detour into Old Man Shouting At Clouds territory.

Here is a  segment of the box score from that game between the Yankees and the Guardians:

As you can see, Cleveland used eight - EIGHT! - pitchers in that game, the longest stint of any one pitcher was one and two-thirds of an inning.  This was not a spring training exhibition game, nor was it some throwaway game in the dog days of August between two teams playing out the string.  This was Game Two of a best-of-seven series to decide the winner of the American League pennant.  When Cleveland manager Stephen Vogt came out in the six to seventh inning to make a second mid-inning pitching change, I turned off the TV and went to bed, but hey, at least he didn't use a position player to pitch like Derek Shelton might have.  

The Yankees won that game 6-3.  I am grudgingly willing to accept the fact the day of work horse starting pitchers who will start thirty games a season and complete twenty-five of them now reside in the dustbins of baseball history.  Bob Gibson, Warren Spahn, and Bob Friend aren't walking thorough the clubhouse doors anymore.  We'll never see another Jack Morris-John Smoltz Game Seven match-up ever again.  However, has the role of the starting pitcher in baseball now been so marginalized that we see something like the Guardians gave us on Tuesday become the norm in games of such magnitude?   

The next night in New York, Walker Buehler went four strong, shutout innings for the Dodgers against the Mets. He was mowing them down, but he was pulled after the fourth inning, and LA then used four more pitchers to complete an 8-0 shutout over the Mets.  In commenting on that, my pal Brian O'Neill said at breakfast yesterday, "Well, it worked, didn't it?"  I don't have a comeback for that one, other than the fact that I don't have to like the trend just because it works (sometimes).

In Cleveland's 7-5 win over the Yankees last night, the Guardians once again used eight pitchers, but at least starter Matthew Boyd went five innings (hope that won't put him on the disabled list) and the game did go into extra innings.  The Yanks used seven pitchers.  Only seven. 

At least we can still enjoy majestic home runs like the two that Shohei Ohtani has put out of the yard these last two games.

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.