The Books of 2016

Yes, it is that time for my eagerly awaited summary of the books that I have read in the recently completed year.  2016 saw me read 45 books.  Mostly fiction.  Mostly for relaxation.  Mostly the kind of stuff that I enjoy when I am reading it, but usually forget what it's all about once I am done.  However, some books do stay in your mind long after reading, so allow me to share them with you one final time.  If you want to know more about them, just type the name of either the book or the author into the search box in the upper left corner of this page.

So, in no special order of significance.....

Non-Fiction

"American Pharoah" by Joe Drape.  The story of the thoroughbred race horse that won the Triple Crown in 2015, from the moment of his conception (yep, that's exactly what I mean) to his retirement to a Kentucky stud farm.  Great study, not only of American Pharoah himself, but of his owner, trainer, jockey, and all of the characters that populate the Sport of Kings.

"I'd Know That Voice Anywhere: My Favorite NPR Commentaries" by Frank Deford.  The title of this one should be self-explanatory.  A collection of commentaries over several years by perhaps America's best and most literate sportswriter.

"The Arm" by Jeff Passan.  A study of arm injuries to pitchers, primarily in Major League Baseball, but extending all the way down into amateur baseball played by young teenagers. Why are there so many serious injuries to baseball's most precious commodity, and what can be done to prevent them?  Interesting and disturbing at the same time.

"Hamilton the Revolution" by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter.  A series of essays surrounding the creation and presentation of the transformative Broadway show, "Hamilton", that also includes the complete libretto of the musical with footnotes from Lin-Manuel Miranda.  Read the essays, and then read the lyrics on a printed page while listening to the music.  It gives you an entirely deeper appreciation of this epic work.

"American Heiress" by Jeffrey Toobin.  The story of the kidnapping, search for, and the arrest and trial of newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst.  It was one the biggest ongoing news stories of the 1970's, and it is pretty much forgotten about today.  Thoroughly researched and wonderfully written by the author.  

Fiction


"The Maltese Falcon" by Dashiell Hammett.  I reread this classic 1928 detective story, and make no mistake, it is a classic.  If you've only seen the movie and never read the book, do yourself a favor and read it.  Hammett is considered the father of the classic hard-boiled American detective story, and "The Maltese Falcon" shows you just why that is.

"Miller's Valley" by Anna Quindlan.  Not the sort of novel I usually read, but this was truly a terrific story about a young girl's life and dreams while growing up on a small farm in a central Pennsylvania valley, and twists, turns, and breaks, both good and bad, that are dealt to her on her journey to adulthood.  Great book.

"Better Dead" by Max Allan Collins.  Collins delivered to us a new novel in his series of Nathan Heller "memoirs".  This one involved, among others, Joe McCarthy, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,, and Dashiell Hammett.  Collins and Heller never disappoint.

"The Last Days of Night" by Graham Moore.  A novelization of the real life battle between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse over "who invented the light bulb".  Sounds simple, but it wasn't.  Truth really can be stranger, and more interesting, than fiction.

I also discovered a series of police novel by an author named James Hayman.  They feature Portland, Maine police detectives Michael McCabe and Maggie Savage.  There are four of them out there, and I believe that a new one is scheduled to be released this month.  Can't wait for it.  See http://grandstander.blogspot.com/search?q=James+Hayman

The past year also saw the following novels published by some of my favorite authors:

"Breakdown" by Jonathan Kellerman
"Extreme Prey" by John Sandford (a Lucas Davenport story)
"Escape Clause" by John Sandford (a Virgil Flowers story)
"Razor Girl" by Carl Hiaasen

There you are. If you are looking for something to pass the time in the cold winter months ahead, you could do a lot worse that reading any one of the books listed above. 

Welcome, 2017

Welcome one and all to the brand new year of 2017.  Yesterday, my pal, Tim Baker, shared on Facebook the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip that you see above.  I could think of no better way to welcome in this brand new year than to place it in the first Grandstander post of 2017.

This, incidentally, was the final original strip of this classic Comic by Bill Watterson. It ran on December 31, 1995.

Happy New Year, one and all!

To The Absent Friends of 2016

I am not the first person to note what a depressingly sad year 2016 has been in terms of the many famous and prominent people that the world has lost in these twelve months...and there are still three days left in it!

As readers know, I make it a regular feature of this blog to note whenever a prominent person in the world of politics, sports, show business, pop culture, or people who may not be well known or prominent but whose life accomplishments strike me as fascinating dies.  I call them "Absent Friends", and, as I do every year, I credit the late, great sports writer Red Smith, who always used the term Absent Friends when writing of someone no longer with us.

In 2016, I have noted thirty-nine such Absent Friends. There are a lot of famous people who left us this year that are not on my list, but The Grandstander's list is not intended to be all encompassing.  As I said, these are the people whose lives and deaths struck a particular chord to me.  If you care to do so, you can type the names in the search box in the upper left corner of the screen to see what I wrote about them at the time of their deaths.

Herewith, a final A Final Salute to the Absent Friends of 2016.

David Bowie
Glen Frey
Abe Vigoda
Bob Elliott
Edgar Mitchell
Wesley A. Clark
George Kennedy
Nancy Reagan
Al Wistert
George Martin
Joe Garagiola
Ken Howard
Earl Hamner Jr.
Patty Duke
Father Daniel Berrigan
William Schallert
Madeleine LeBeau
Muhammad Ali
Pat Summitt
Scotty Moore
John McMartin
Garry Marshall
Bill Cardille
Marni Nixon
B.E. Taylor
Arnold Palmer
Sally O'Leary
Robert "Keith" Manherz
Ralph Branca
Florence Henderson
Ann Rule
Ron Glass
Al Caiola
John Glenn
Alan Thicke
Craig Sager
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Carrie Fisher
Debbie Reynolds

RIP to All.

Two Absent Friends - Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds

In an almost unbelievable turn of events, death claimed two show biz luminaries from the same family on two consecutive days this past week in the persons of Debbie Reynolds and her daughter, Carrie Fisher. 

Carrie Fisher

1956-2016

Over the weekend it was learned that Carrie Fisher had suffered a "cardiac incident" while on an airplane.  Upon landing, she was hospitalized and her condition was listed as "stable", which does not necessarily mean "good", and she died on Tuesday at the age of sixty.  To most of the general public, Miss Fisher will forever be remembered  as Princess Leia in the many Star Wars films in which she appeared.  To me, I will remember her many movies and episodic television shows in which she was usually cast as the "best friend".  Two of these that immediately spring to mind are "When Harry Met Sally" wherein she played the best friend to Meg Ryan, and "Hannah and Her Sisters" wherein she was the best friend of Dianne Wiest.  IMDB lists 90 acting credits for her, as well and credits as a writer and producer. 

Fisher was the child of a famous Hollywood marriage between Miss Reynolds and singer Eddie Fisher.  Her life was not always easy.  She suffered from addiction issues and depression, but she seemed to emerge from those years in decent shape, enough so as to have had a solid show biz career of her own.  Her novel, "Postcards From the Edge", was a best seller that depicted the problems of growing up with prominent parents, and was loosely based on her own life.  It became a hit movie that starred Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine.  Fisher wrote the screenplay.

Debbie Reynolds

1932-2016

The day after Fisher's death, the news came that Fisher's mother, Debbie Reynolds, had suffered a severe stroke, and she died later that same day.  It is perhaps the oldest cliche in the book to say in such circumstance that someone died from a broken heart, but what else can one conclude in this instance?  Her son and Fisher's brother, Todd Fisher, was quoted as saying that "She said she wanted to be with Carrie, and she was gone."

Reynolds had a solid career as a leading lady in the movies, and she was an Academy Award nominee.  She also appeared on TV, Broadway, and a touring performer in night clubs and Las Vegas.  She pretty much worked up until the very end of her life.  IMDB lists 82 acting credits for her, which were actually fewer credits than her daughter had (and, yes, I'd have lost if you had bet me on that).  After few bit parts in one or two movies, she was plucked from obscurity when studio boss Louis B. Mayer cast her in the lead of the 1952 movie, "Singin' In The Rain".  She would be paired with two of the most seasoned and best dancers in all of show business, Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor, and she was only nineteen years old.  The movie is now considered the best movie musical ever made, and many critics and historians consider it among the Top Ten American movies of all time.

For all her on screen success, though, she was, as often happens, unlucky in love.  Eddie Fisher left her and their children to take up with and marry Elizabeth Taylor.  It was one of the great scandals of Hollywood back in the 1950's.  Two subsequent marriages ended when both of those husbands bilked Reynolds of all of her money.  She was forced to hit the road with her night club act in order to pay off creditors and debts rolled up by those two guys.

The Associated Press obituary for Reynolds makes some fascinating reading and it concludes with a delightful story about her and Elizabeth Taylor.  At some point in time long after the Fisher-Taylor scandal (Taylor herself had long since been divorced from Fisher), the two actress found out that they were coincidentally sailing together on the ship, Queen Elizabeth. The two actresses exchanged notes and agreed to meet for dinner on the ship.  As Reynolds then told it, "She was married to Richard Burton by then.  I had remarried at that point, and we just said 'Let's just call it a day', and we got smashed and had a great evening and stayed friends ever since."   In fact, both Reynolds and Taylor appeared together in a 2001 TV movie called "These Old Broads".  One of the co-writers of the script for that movie was....Carrie Fisher!

That's a great story!

I can think of no better way to end this post than by including this terrific clip from "Singin' in the Rain".  

RIP Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher.

Steelers 31 - Ravens 27

I watched the Steelers' big Christmas Day match-up with Ravens amidst the bustle of a house filled with family following a superb Christmas dinner, so it was festive atmosphere in the household, and the two teams sure gave us a whale of a contest as a Christmas gift.

By now, you all know what happened.  A 31 point fourth quarter that was an inverse of the Dallas game of a few weeks.  This time, it was the Ravens who lost a late lead, only to gain it back in the closing minutes, only to cough it up again in the closing seconds of the game on the spectacular play at the goal line by Antonio Brown pictured above.  This was the culmination of a 75 yard drive led by Ben Roethlisberger that took fifty-nine seconds to complete.  

In a game wherein Big Ben threw two almost soul-crushing interceptions, he came back in the fourth quarter to lead the Steelers on not one, not two, but THREE fourth quarter touchdown drives to pull out this come-from-behind win that clinched the AFC North for the Steelers and the third seed in the AFC playoffs.  Let's pull out all the cliches for this one...when the chips are down, when you're back is to the wall, when the cold wind blows,  when hope is gone, and your team is down, and facing long, if now impossible odds, to pull out a victory, is there any quarterback you would rather have leading your team than Ben Roethlisberger?  As great as Terry Bradshaw was, and he WAS great, if he started a game poorly, or threw a couple of critical interceptions (as Ben did yesterday), chances were that that was the Bradshaw you would have seen for the rest of the game.  Not so with Roethlisberger. As long as he is manning the controls and the game is within reach, the Steelers will have a chance to win the game.  He has done it time and again over the course of his career.

********

So, here is what I had to say back on September 9 when the Steelers were about to begin the season:

In 2016, the Pittsburgh Steelers are going to win twelve games, win the AFC North Division and gain first round playoff bye, win the AFC Championship, and win the Super Bowl.  I'm not going to make a prediction as to who they will play in the Super Bowl, because, who cares?  The Steelers are going to take home that seventh Lombardi Trophy.  

If you count them up, there are five predictions in that paragraph:

1. The Steelers will win twelve games.  Okay, so the best they can do is eleven wins.  I'll take it.
2. The Steelers will win the AFC North Division.  I believe I had that.
3. The Steelers will gain a first round playoff bye.  Didn't happen, but they will be at Heinz Field in the first round against the #6 seed. Again, I'll take it.
4. The Steelers will win the AFC Championship.
5. The Steelers will win the Super Bowl.

I am standing by Numbers 4 and 5.

********

Speaking of Terry Bradshaw, he was in the news again last week for his comments about Mike Tomlin who, according the Bradshaw, is just "not a very good head coach".  Is he kidding us?  Bradshaw has spent most of his post playing career making outrageous comments about Steelers coaches, and this is just the latest.  He is quite good in his role as a Fox studio analyst/talking head, but he has been at it for so long that he as become, as someone has noted, a caricature of himself, and this comment seems to support that theory.

My buddy Jim Haller has urged be to bestow one of these upon Old Number 12:

However, for all that Bradshaw has done for the Steelers as a player - there are those four Lombardi Trophies, after all - I just can't bring myself to bestow an official Grandstander  H.A. Citation upon him.  He deserves better than that, but he also deserves NOT to be taken seriously when he makes such ridiculous comments as the ones he made about Tomlin last week.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Lots going on that are begging for comments from The Grandstander....the Pirates sign a couple of pitchers and reports are that they STILL may be in the market to dump Andrew McCutchen's salary trade Andrew McCutchen.....huge game for the Steelers against the Ravens on Sunday....Pitt in the Pinstripe Bowl....Pitt loses an Athletic Director....lots of new movies opening....the Annual Summary of Absent Friends....the Annual Summary of Books Read....college football players skipping bowl games .....

Yep, lots to wrIte and comment upon, but the next few days are shaping up to be very busy ones in this section of the Grandstand, so it may be awhile until I get to these hot topics.  In the meantime, however, The Grandstander has one very important message to deliver:

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL LOYAL READERS, HOWEVER YOU MAY CELEBRATE THIS SEASON.

PEACE, LOVE, AND JOY TO YOU ALL.

To Absent Friends - Zsa Zsa Gabor

Zsa Zsa Gabor

1917-2016

The headline that streamed across the Internet announcing the death of 99 year old Zsa Zsa Gabor yesterday said it all:

"Zsa Zsa Gabor, Famously Famous, Dies at 99."

Yes, sixty years before the Kardashian sisters turned Being Famous for Being Famous into a multi-million dollar industry, Zsa Zsa Gabor beat them to it.  Of course, being a C-list actress with an exotic first name and an intriguing Hungarian accent in the 1950's and -60's didn't earn you millions in an era before there were Social Media and TV Reality shows, so Zsa Zsa made her bones by getting mentioned in Earl Wilson columns, appearing endlessly on the Merv Griffin Show, and marrying and divorcing with astonishing frequency.

Whenever I think of Zsa Zsa Gabor, which I admit isn't often, I recall a television commercial from the late Sixties or early Seventies (and I regret to say that I could not find it on YouTube, dammit!) for Midas Muffler, wherein Zsa Zsa gets a new muffler on her car, looks into the camera and lasciviously says "If you need and new muffler, dahling, go to Midas and tell them Zsa Zsa sends you."

Get it?

RIP Zsa Zsa Gabor.