Oh, What A Night (and Not in a Good Way)

A mere eleven days ago, the Pirates completed a four game sweep of the Brewers in their personal graveyard, Miller Park, to climb within a half-game of the Cardinals for the final National League Wild Card spot.  I made a comment on Facebook then that after such an improbable occurrence, that "anything was possible" for this team.  

Well, I sure had that right, but not in the way that I had hoped.  What followed was being swept by the Cubs in Chicago, and then being swept by those same crummy Brewers in PNC Park.  At THAT point, I stated on Facebook that anything less than a sweep of this three game set with the Cardinals, and your would be able to....

insofar as the Playoff hopes for 2016 were concerned.

Company on Labor Day prevented me from seeing the Pirates lose 12-6 to the Cards on Monday, but last night, Tuesday night, Marilyn and I were there at PNC Park to see perhaps the piece de resistance of this season.  I'm sure you know the details, but let me recount them for you anyway.

• The fifth batter of the game, Yadier Molina, hits a grand slam home run to put St. Louis up 4-0.
• This after first baseman John Jaso froze up after fielding a ground ball that could have been an inning ending double play, and got nobody out, but loaded the bases very nicely for Molina.
• An inning later, Matt Adams (who went to Slippery Rock University) hit a home run over the right field stands and over the river walk.  It was high and it was long and it was the very definition of the term "majestic home run".
• The Pirates then proceeded to score single runs in the fourth and fifth innings, and then score four runs in the sixth to take a 6-5 lead.  It was exciting and fun and it put some life into what was a moribund crowd.
• The bullpen held the lead through the eighth inning, turned it over to Tony Watson, who recorded two easy outs and then proceeded to go HR-Double-HR-HR to the next four batters.
• That batter who was one strike away from becoming the twenty-seventh and final out was pinch hitter Matt Carpenter.  When he was sent up to bat in that spot, I said to Marilyn "This is a guy who really scares me on this team."  I believe I had that.

When Watson served up his second gopher, this one a two run shot by Randall Grichuk, I abandoned my long stay-until-the-final-out policy and said "that's it, we're outta here."  And as we turned our backs to leave, Watson served up yet another meatball to Jhonny Peralta.  

We got to the car in time to hear the bottom of the ninth (wherein in Jung Ho Kang hit his second solo home run of the game to make the final score 9-7; is it just me or do the Pirates seem to hit a lot of home runs with the bases empty?).  Announcers Joe Block and Steve Blass were stunned at the turn of events that the game had taken.  Even Blass, who I often say announces like he gets paid by the word, said "I just don't know what to say about this one."

In an exchange on Facebook last night with friend Sam Reich, he said he had a hard time remembering a ninth inning collapse that included three home runs and a double.  I said that in 58 seasons of going to baseball games, I am sure that I have seen something somewhere along the lines of what happened last night, but nothing has come to mind in the twelve or so hours since that game ended last night.  It was just Awful with a capital A, and it effectively ended the season for the Pirates.

********

Some other random Pirates thoughts....

• My preseason prediction for the Pirates said that they would win 89 games but not make the playoffs.  Well, they ain't going to the playoffs, so I believe I had half of that.  
• As for 89 wins, they will have to go 22-4 over their remaining 26 games to achieve that.  Not going to happen.
• Now, even a winning season is in doubt.  To win 82 games and finish over .500, the team will have to fashion a 15-11 record the rest of the way.  The team has shown during the course of the season that they are capable of such a run, but after this eight game losing streak, I wouldn't bet on it happening at this point.

********

Finally, last night's game took three hours and thirty-six minutes to play, and it seemed a lot longer than that.  It was stultifying.  The pace of play initiatives that MLB so loudly trumpeted last year have obviously fallen by the wayside.  Just watch any typical at bat of Josh Harrison if you don't believe me.  I didn't do it on every pitch, but on several pitches I was timing Antonio Bastardo and Felipe Rivero between pitches. From the time they received the ball from the catcher, it would take between 30 and 40 seconds for them to deliver a pitch.  Too long.  A time clock begins when a coach or manager makes a visit to the mound.  It always gets to :00, and it is ignored.  The home plate ump walks out to the mound and tells them to break it up. Big deal.  Until you call a strike on Josh Harrison for hitting his cleats and taking a practice swing after every pitch, or a ball on a pitcher when he doesn't deliver a pitch within the prescribed time frame, or when the the manager takes too long on a visit to the mound, these "pace of play" rules mean less than nothing, and the proof is in games like the ones that the Pirates and Cardinals have played in the last two days.

All sports have their pace of play problems, but baseball had better figure out something about their particular problems.  Who has time for nine inning games that exceed three and one-half hours?

Book Review: "American Heiress"

I read a review of this book a few weeks ago in the paper, and the critic said something to the effect that a person would have to be at least fifty years old to remember the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst, 19 years old at the time, and the events that surrounded and followed it.  That astonished me, but when I did the math, a realized that a fifty year old person today would have been all of eight years old in February 4, 1974, the night that Hearst was abducted by members of the radical group, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and "army", by the way, that numbered all of eight people.  So, that assertion is probably just about right.

Most people, if they remember it all, view the events and Miss Hearst herself as just another relic of the 1970's, like mood rings and disco music.  Jeffrey Toobin, however, has done voluminous research using FBI documents, trial transcripts, interviews with some of the surviving players, and Hearst's own book, "Every Secret Thing", about the kidnapping and her life on the lam, but, alas, Patricia Hearst herself did not meet with or cooperate with Toobin in his writing of this book.  However, he has put together a terrific account of this remarkable truth-is-stranger-than-fiction story.

We know for a fact that Hearst was forcibly kidnapped on that February 4, 1974 night.  What happened after that, no one can really be sure, and we may never be sure.

Toobin's account of the tale paints a picture of America in the early 1970's and it wasn't pretty. Domestic terrorism was rife in America in those days, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Thousands of bombings occurred in protest of, well, you name it: Viet Nam, Watergate, government corruption, race relations, poverty, inflation, gasoline lines.  So many bombings that they barely were reported on the news any more.  As for the counter-culture groups that fomented these actions, they were rag tag and disorganized, and the SLA was a prime example.  Led by a drunken ex-con named Donald DeFreeze, aka General Cinque, the SLA consisted of eight people, that had no plans, and seemingly made things up as they went along.  

They did succeed in turning Patricia Hearst as a member of their cause, having her participate in a bank robbery and producing one of the most iconic photos of the decade:

Or did they?  Was Hearst forced into doing this or did she do so willingly?  Did she truly become the "urban guerrilla" that she claimed to be, or did she merely do what she did in order to stay alive?  That is the crux of this entire saga.

I can recall that at the time of Hearst's trial and conviction, I was in the camp that said that she was a true victim of a brutal crime and that she never should have spent a day in prison (she ended up serving 22 months in prison).  Back in 1976, I felt that she was victimized again by a political climate and a jury that bent over backwards to prove that a "rich family wasn't going to buy their way out of this".  I still feel that way, but after reading this book, I must admit that I am not so steadfast in this stance as I once was.

It took nineteen months for the FBI and police authorities to finally catch up with Patricia Hearst and her captors.  Along the way, three banks were robbed, one person was killed n one of those robberies, and six SLA members were killed in a horrific gun battle with the Los Angeles police, and event that was televised live using the then new technology of mini-cams and microwave transmissions.  If the SLA and the people who followed sometimes came across as The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, the FBI and other local authorities could also have been mistaken for the Keystone Kops.  And while the Hearst money (which was not as great as people thought, as Toobin explains in some detail) was able to hire the services of the most famous trial lawyer in the country, F. Lee Bailey, it couldn't guarantee a strong defense for Miss Hearst, as Bailey pretty much bungled the case, although he did pull off a nifty legal maneuver that avoided Hearst being tried for another SLA bank robbery, one in where a person was killed.

You will learn a good bit in this book about William Randolph Hearst and the publishing empire he launched and the fortune he made, about his five pretty much ne'er do well sons, one of whom was Patricia's father, and how the Hearst influence was still capable of pulling strings to produce a commutation of Patty's prison sentence by President Carter, a commutation, it should be noted, that as fully supported by people from across the political spectrum, including former California Governor Ronald Reagan.

As I mentioned, my own stance on Patricia Hearst (she preferred "Patricia", by the way, not "Patty") has changed since I read this book.  She probably deserved her time in prison, but I also believe that she was first and foremost a victim, and that she also fully deserved that Presidential commutation from Jimmy Carter and, later, that Presidential Pardon from Bill Clinton.

Great book.  Three and one-half stars from The Grandstander.

Oh, a post script.  When I first mentioned that I was reading this book on Facebook, a lot of "whatever happened to Steven Weed" comments arrived.  Weed was Patricia's 24 year old fiance.  When the SLA broke into their Berkeley apartment that February night, they hit Weed in the face with a gun, whereupon he yelled "Take anything that you want" and then fled the apartment.  Sir Gallahad, he was not.  As it happened, Hearst was becoming disenchanted with Weed at the time of her kidnapping.  (The Hearst Family couldn't stand him, and these feelings only intensified in the months following the kidnapping.) She never saw him nor spoke with him again after that night.  Weed left academia and became a successful real estate agent in Palo Alto.  

Pitt 28 - Villanova 7 and What Comes Next

(Photo from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

So, Year Two of the Pat Narduzzi Era at Pitt opened yesterday with a 28-7 win over Villanova.  The highlight of the day was the return to action of 2014 ACC Player of the Year James Conner, after a year rehabbing a serious knee injury and, even more important, overcoming a bout of Hodgkin's Lymphoma and the chemotherapy treatments that put him into remission and made him cancer free.  Conner's story is one of the of the more remarkable and inspirational ones in recent Pittsburgh sports history.

So, how did Conner and the Panthers do?

Well, a win is a win, and Pitt will take it, but, in all honesty, both Conner's performance (17 carries for 57 yards, albeit with two touchdowns) and Pitt's performance can best be called pedestrian efforts, at least on the offensive side of the ball, and both Narduzzi and Conner said as much in their post game comments.

Defensively, Pitt was outstanding in shutting out the Wildcats (their lone TD coming on a return of a recovered fumble), and the special teams play was highlighted by a 96 yard kickoff return for a TD by Quadree Henderson to open the second half.

(Photo from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Still, it was the first game, not everyone was totally in sync, and things will get better.  Right?

As for what lies ahead on Saturday, the return of the long departed - since 2000 - rivalry with Penn State.  This game has been greatly anticipated ever since the scheduling for the four year home-and-home series was announced back in the early years of this decade.  We all knew that the lead up to this game would be "heated" but wasn't it great that these two Pennsylvania schools would be playing each other again?

Well, we all know what transpired in the years since, and they are events that I am not going to get into here on this forum.  Some of the exchanges that can be seen on various message boards and fan sites for BOTH schools have been ugly beyond belief.  I can only hope that while the atmosphere may well be heated at Heinz Field next week, I also hope that the ugliness will not be present, but I have my doubts.  I am looking forward to seeing a packed Heinz Field, and I hope to see a terrific football game, but there is a part of me that also dreads being there and seeing the sideshow that might develop.

As for the game, I feel that Pitt's offense needs to improve and play a lot better to be able to defeat even a mid-level Big Ten team, which is what PSU is at this point.  I didn't see Penn State's win over Kent State yesterday, but my friend, and PSU supporter, Dave Glass was there and he was not impressed.  He is calling for a Pitt win in large part because he feels Narduzzi is a better coach than James Franklin.

I like Dave's logic.  He is looking at the players and the coaches who are at Pitt and Penn State now, in 2016.  Let's hope that everyone does that next week and not dwell on those who are no longer involved.

Movie Review - "Hell or High Water"

When I saw the trailer for this movie a few weeks back, and heard Jeff Bridges talking in a West Texas accent thicker than a prime t-bone steak, I knew that this was a movie that I just had to see.  The story concerns two brothers, one an ex-con, who take to robbing a string of small town west Texas banks, but perhaps their motive is a Robin Hood-esque one.  You know, take from the rich, give to the poor.  At least that what a bunch of the poor, down on their luck ranchers and town folk who have been getting screwed by the banks for all these years think.

Bridges plays Marcus Hamilton, a crusty old Texas Ranger with that aforementioned accent who is soon to retire from the force, and he's not happy about it.  The outlaw brothers are played by Ben Foster, the way over-the-top ex-con, and Chris Pine, a handsome hunk of beefcake if ever there was one, who has made his bones in all these recent Star Trek movies.  Both were quite good in it, especially Pine, but it was the sixty-six year old Bridges who was the star, the guy who makes this one worth seeing.

In some ways this movie reminded me of "Fargo" with its mood setting scenes of a desolate landscape, and a bunch of quirky characters including the wild man outlaw, and the resolute lawman who talks with a funny accent.  That's a good thing.

We liked the movie, especially the final scene of the movie between....oops, I'm not going to tell you. That might be considered a spoiler.

Two and one-half stars from The Grandstander on this one (three and one-half stars to Jeff Bridges!).

Brian Wilson and "Pet Sounds"

This much anticipated concert date finally rolled around last night and what a night it was.  An authentic musical genius, Brian Wilson, founder of The Beach Boys, performing in it's entirety, one of the greatest rock and roll albums of all time, "Pet Sounds", to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of it's release.  Throw in the accompaniment of fellow Beach Boy Al Jardine, and a terrific ten piece band, and what you got was an evening that far exceeded every expectation that I had when I walked into the Benedum last night.

Brian Wilson's story is well known.  A founder and the musical master behind The Beach Boys, Wilson withdrew from touring with the band when he had an anxiety attack when traveling on an airplane.  He then went into the studio to create the masterpiece, Pet Sounds.  No one knew it at the time that it was masterpiece.  It was only a modest, if that, commercial success when it was released, but as the years went by, it became elevated in the pantheon of rock and roll albums.  (No less than Paul McCartney has called it perhaps the greatest album of all time.)  Wilson continued to withdraw, had artistic disagreements with his band mates, became drug dependent and paranoid, fell under the influence of a Svengali-like doctor, and became pretty much of a mess.  His story did have a happy ending and was well told in the 2015 movie, "Love and Mercy", which I highly recommend.

Anyway, the concert last night was tremendous.  Can Wilson sing like he did in his Beach Boys hey-day?  No, of course he can't, what seventy-four year old singer can?  Yet his singing of the entire Pet Sounds album last night was mesmerizing.  He would sing the songs, and when it came time for the trademark Beach Boys high notes and falsettos, those portions of the song were sung by vocalist  Matt Jardine, Al's son.  These trade offs were done seamlessly, and they contributed to the magic of the performance.  It was beautiful.

The night began with a one hour set that mixed some Beach Boys standards as well as some of the "Smile" songs, and featured a number of the individual band members.  Highlights included Matt Jardine singing "Don't Worry Baby", and Wilson singing "God Only Knows", which led to a mid-set standing ovation.  

The second set was the Pet Sounds performance, which, as I have stated, was simply amazing.

(Photo courtesy of Dan Bonk)

It was the encore, featuring Wilson and Jardine, that shook the rafters of the Benedum and had the crowd on its feet the entire time.  "Good Vibrations", "Help Me, Rhonda", "Surfin' USA", "Barbara Ann", and "Fun, Fun, Fun".  I mean, how could it get much better than that?

At the risk of sounding like a total fanboy, I don't think that I can overstate what it felt like to actually see and hear Brian Wilson perform live and person.  The term "genius" is passed around too easily and too often, but I think that it is totally appropriate to use it when speaking of Brian Wilson.  He has led a tortured life, and much of that is evident in his somewhat wooden stage presence.  He shuffles when he walks, and he talks very little between songs, but when the music plays and he begins to sing, even at the age of 74, the magic is there.  I feel very fortunate that I am now able to say that "Yeah, I saw Brian Wilson."

I will close this post the same way that Wilson closed his show last night: with  a remarkable performance of "Love and Mercy".

Rio Post Mortem, Pirates, Hearst, and Other Topics

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

• The Rio Olympics ended this past Sunday amidst much pomp, ceremony, and overproduction.  Marilyn and I found ourselves watching much more of the games than we anticipated ahead of time, and we enjoyed them immensely.
• Everyone will have their own "Olympic Moments" to savor in their memories.  For me, however, the most enduring memories of these Olympics will be as follows:

• The complete domination of the sprints by Jamaica's Usain Bolt.  In particular, I will remember his anchor leg in the 4x100 event.  When he took the baton, the sprinters from Japan and the USA were almost dead even with him, and he proceeded to leave them in the dust.  Simply amazing.

• The dominance in the swimming pool, for the FOURTH OLYMPIAD, of Michael Phelps.

• The dominance in the swimming pool by Katie Ladecky, and at only 19 years of age, I suspect that she will still dominate in 2020, and quite possibly 2024.

Moving away from the Olympics....

• What do you make of the Pittsburgh Pirates?  In the month of August, they went 5-4 in a stretch against bottom feeders Atlanta, Cincinnati, and San Diego.  They then go an improbable 5-1 against the Dodgers and Giants on the West Coast, only to return home to face critical series against the Marlons and the Astros and go 1-5 and look completely impotent in doing so.  You just can't figure them out, or, as Yogi Berra once put it "In baseball, you don't know nothin'."
• The Steelers.  They are 0-2 in the practice games, have looked awful (or so I'm told; I think I've watched a total of about a half dozen plays in the two games, total).  What I think is happening is that Mike Tomlin is using these games as a coach should use them.  To look at newer and marginal players, to avoid injuries to key players (Ben Roethlisberger and Antonio Brown, to name only two key players, have not played a down), to practice.  These are PRACTICE GAMES, people.  What a concept for a coach to follow.
• Of course, this doesn't stop the Steelers and their 31 NFL lodge brothers from charging full boat for the tickets and making purchase of these tickets mandatory in all season ticket packages.  Shameful.
• I have just started reading this recently released and current best seller...

• It's hard to believe, but you pretty much have to be over fifty years old to have a first hand memory of the Patty Hearst Kidnapping and the amazing and bizarre story that followed it.  I am only about forty pages into it, but it promises to be an interesting and fascinating book.  Rest assured that The Grandstander will be providing a full review upon completion.
• My mentioning of this book on Facebook yesterday prompted some comments along the lines of "Whatever became of Steven Weed?"  Anyone under age fifty reading this know who Steven Weed is/was?  Anyway, a Google search reveals surprisingly little about him. Google will show a successful realtor in Menlo Park, CA named Steven Weed, that is about the right age, but no indication if he is THE Steven Weed.  Perhaps Toobin's book will reveal the answer.

The Happy Couple

• Speaking of Usain Bolt, look what has been turning up on various golf courses western Pennsylvania of late:

• What a legacy, huh?

Book Review - "Better Dead" by Max Allan Collins

Back in March, I touted you all to the news that Max Allan Collins would be releasing a new Nate Heller novel this spring, "Better Dead".

http://grandstander.blogspot.com/2016/03/closing-book-on-nate-heller-or-so-i.html

I just finished reading this newest Heller "memoir", and I am happy to report that Collins and Heller have teamed up for another terrific story;

As in all of the past Heller chronicles, our hero gets himself involved with real historical figures and real historical crimes.  "Better Dead" takes place in 1950, and among the people that Heller encounters in this one are Senator Joseph McCarthy, Roy Cohn, Robert Kennedy, Drew Pearson, Dashiell Hammett, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Senator Estes Kefauver, Bettie Page, and Frank Olson.

The thrust of the book concerns the case of Frank Olson, a real life person with whom I was unfamiliar.  He was a scientist who worked for the CIA back in the post-WWII era in the development of biological and chemical weapons. I the course of these events, Olson was "slipped a mickey" one night at a CIA retreat that contained LSD, a relatively new and unknown drug at the time.  Olson reacted badly to the drug, and developed paranoia and mental illness.  One night, while the CIA was attempting to get treatment for him, Olson committed suicide by leaping from the 18th floor of his hotel in New York.

Or did he?  There is a lot I could write here about the Frank Olson case, but I will not do so.  No spoilers. Better you should read "Better Dead" and other resources on this case.  It is really quite fascinating.

That is the thrust of the second half of the book, and Collins wraps things up nicely in the final chapter with a sort of "whatever became of..." segment about what happened to everyone, how each of the strands of the story worked out, and how Collins' alternate theories of  history actually could have been true.  Even the names of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfield pop up in here.

I don't know how many, if any, more Heller stories Collins has left in him, but I sure hope that there will be more.  "Better Dead" proves that Collins has not lost a thing off of his metaphorical fast ball when it comes to the Memoirs of PI Nathan Heller.

Oh, I mentioned Bettie Page.  Yes, Collins always seems to include a real life pretty dame in these stories, and yes, as with all of the others, Miss Page and Nate become an "item" in this one.

Yep, that is the famous 1950's pin-up model Bettie Page above in one of her, ahem, more inhibited poses.  Why am I including it in this post?  Well, why not!!