Opening Day 2023

Today is Opening Day.  For the last six weeks, I have pretty much ignored watching Spring Training games or caring about which players are doing well and which are failing miserably, but today?  Today the games marked indifference felt during Spring Training will be replaced by actually caring (to the extent that one actually "cares" about sporting events) about the games being played, and for the next six months, we will pretty much have games to watch, listen to, read about, wager on, and enjoy, and that is a good thing.

Yes, I know all about the inequities of the the game as practiced by Major League Baseball, and how the shitty ownership by Bob "Mr. Dithers" Nutting has turned the Pittsburgh Pirates, a team that I have loved for sixty-four years now, into an irrelevant joke, but I still love the Pirates, still root for them, still will watch.  Maybe that makes me part of the problem, but there you go.

The Pirates have lost 100 games for the last two years - and would have been last three years had not COVID made for a sixty game season in 2020 - so what possible reason for hope can there be that it will be any better in 2023?   

How about this?

• The addition of Old Guys Andrew McCutchen, Ji-Man Choi, Carlos Santana, Rich Hill, and Vincent Velasquez to provide leadership and, we hope, some actual quality baseball ability.
• The continued development of Young Guys Oneil Cruz, Ke'Bryan Hayes, Jack Suwinski, Rudolpho Castro, Mitch Keller, Johan Oviedo, and Roansy Contrras.  Plus, a couple of new names like Canaan Smith-Njigba, and the hopes of seeing guys like Quinn Priester and Endy Rodriguez at PNC Park sometime this summer.

On the other hand, there is the concern as to whether or not the team's best player, Brian Reynolds will sign a long term contract (fat chance of that, given the team's well known modus operandi) and whether or not he will be here for the entire season.  Oh, and the bullpen consists of David Bednar and a bunch of other guys.  And the two catchers will combine for a sub-.200 batting average, but boy, can they frame pitches.  

I bet the OVER on 67.5 wins for the team this year, which means a minimum of a six game improvement over 2021's 62-100 record.  We won't know until the last week of the season whether they will be able to pull that off, but it will give us a reason to watch right down to the wire.

On a broader sense, I am very much looking forward to watching baseball with the pitch clock.   As I said, I watched very little spring training baseball, maybe six or eight innings, tops, but it was immediately apparent to me that the pace of the game had improved dramatically as a result of this change, and time of game stats that MLB has been bombarding us with all Spring bears this out.  It will be a real joy to know that games you attend or watch on TV that start at 7:00 will be over, for the most part, well before 10:00.

Enjoy the season, everyone.

 

Mitch Keller gets the ball for the Pirates this Opening Day

High School Musical Edition: "Les Miserables"

 

Due to COVID restrictions and other life events,  it had been several years since I had taken part in one of my favorite activities: attending a high school musical.  That was remedied this past Saturday night when Linda and I attended the production of one of my favorite shows, Les Miserables, at my alma mater, Central Catholic.  This was joint production of Central, an all boys school, and Oakland Catholic, an all girls school two blocks up the street.   

At the risk of sounding corny and trite, this production fulfilled a long held dictum of mine:  If you want to feel good about today's youth and the future, attend a high school musical.   The talent, the energy, and the sheer enthusiasm of the kids on stage was positively amazing.   Usually, I attend the musicals staged by my home school district, North Allegheny.  The enrollment at NA is over 2,700 students, and it's budget for such things is, shall we say, generous (let me show you my school tax bill).  The combined enrollment at Central and Oakland Catholic is less than half of North Allegheny's, and my guess is that the budget for a musical at Central/Oakland would reflect that.  For those reasons, my expectations for this production were tempered, but I have to say that those expectations were far exceeded.  

The sheer talent of the kids, and there were probably at least fifty kids in total performing in the show, was off the charts, the sets were beautiful, and the costumes were amazing.   As for the show, well, as I said, it has long been one of my favorites (see HERE), and the emotional wallop of this show was not lost just because it was a group of teenagers presenting it.   One number that I was especially looking forward to seeing was "Master of the House."  If you know the show, you know that it is the one somewhat comic number in it, and that it has its share of, shall we say, bawdy elements.   How would this number be sanitized by the two Catholic schools presenting it, or would it be left out of the show entirely?  Well, I am happy to say that the number was presented and staged as it was written, so BRAVO to the administrations of CC and OC for this.  I cannot imagine that this would have been the case back in my late 1960's student days, and I am sure that schools in Florida won't be doing it anytime soon.

On a more personal note, it was very cool to go back to Central for this one night.  I have not revisited Central all that often in the fifty-four years since I graduated, and Linda had never been there, and seeing it through her eyes was revaluation to me.  The Auditorium where the play was presented was not a big deal to me, although the hard wooden seats have since been replaced by cushioned theater style seats. It was just a place where I went to some classes and attended school assemblies.  Linda, however, took in the amazing architecture of the place.  The brick walls and the wooden ceilings with the painted crests upon them, and saw something much different.  "This is a beautiful place" she said.  And indeed it is.  I even got to show her my Dad's picture as a part if the first graduating class, 1931, that hangs in the center stairwell.

In closing, go see a high school  musical!  The season for these is coming to a close, so if you can't get to one this year, put it on your Things To Do List for 2024.

To Absent Friends - Willis Reed

Willis Reed

1942-2023

Famed New York Knicks center Willis Reed died this past week at the age of 80.  Reed had a ten year NBA career, all with the Knicks.  He was the undisputed leader and bulwark of the team in those years, and led the Knicks to NBA Championships in 1970 and 1973, the only titles in the franchise's history.  He was 6'10" out of Grambling University, and in his career, he was a seven time all-star, a five time All-NBA selection, a league MVP once, and a Finals MVP twice.

Like many of my age, I can remember the dramatic moment just prior to Game Seven of the 1970 NBA Finals against the Lakers.  Reed had been injured and it was uncertain if he would be able to play in that critical game.  Just as the line-ups were about to be introduced, Reed hobbled out of the locker room in his warm-up suit, and was announced as the starter.  It was an ovation that shook the Garden and produced an ovation unlike any seen in the World's Most Famous Arena before or since.  (In fact, in a poll taken upon the 50th Anniversary of the current Garden, the "Willis Reed Entrance" was voted the Most Famous Event in the history of the building.)    Reed took the Knicks first two shots of the game that night and made them both.  They were the only four points he had in that game, but, in retrospect, they set the stage for the game and, effectively, decided it.  What I didn't realize until I heard it this week was that in the three Playoffs Series that the Knicks won to achieve that Championship, Reed went up against and outplayed Wes Unseld of the Bullets, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of the Bucks, and Wilt Chamberlain the Lakers. I'm sure you've heard of those guys.  No wonder Reed is a hero in New York.

For all of that, I probably wasn't going to do an Absent Friends post on Reed until I listened to the Tony Kornheiser Show podcast from Wednesday, March 22.

A 22 year old Kornheiser was in attendance at the Garden for that Game Seven as a fan (long time listeners know that TK refers to the Knicks as "the team of my youth.").  This was well before he became a sportswriter.  On Wednesday's podcast Kornheiser gave THIS VERBAL TRIBUTE/EULOGY TO WILLIS REED, and it was simply terrific.  If you don't care to listen to the entire show from the link above, I will tell you that the segment on Reed begins at the 5:40 mark and runs to the 17:05 mark of the broadcast.   However you may feel about Kornheiser, he is a master craftsman when it comes to words and framing a story, and this segment is well worth eleven and a half minutes of your time.

RIP Willis Reed.

Baseball, A Podcast, A Musical, and An Absent Friend

Here you go, a blog post smack dab in the middle of March Madness, and the only mention that I will make of the Madness is to say that I made 18 wagers on games over the course of the first two rounds and posted a 10-8 record.  Making money, but barely.

On to other topics.....

World Baseball Classic

While fiddling with the remote control on Saturday night, I happened upon the quarter-final game between the USA and Venezuela.  It was the bottom of the fifth inning, the USA was up 5-2, but was in the process of giving up four runs and falling behind 6-5, and I decided to stick with this game.  (Full disclosure:  my TV provider does not give me the Turner networks so my access to NCAA basketball was limited.)  Two innings later, Venezuela tacked on another run and led 7-5.  The top of the eighth featured a monstrous grand slam home run by Trae Turner, that put the USA up 9-7, the eventual final score, and set off the celebration pictured above.

That led to me watching the semi-final game between the USA and Cuba on Sunday night, won handily by the USA, 14-2, and featuring two more home runs by Trea Turner, who has become the WBC version of Reggie Jackson.  The other semi-final was played last night between Mexico and Japan.  Japan won 6-5 with a bottom of the ninth two run walk off double.  Japan trailed the entire game until that moment, and it was an absolutely terrific game.  This sets up tonight's championship game between the USA and Japan.  Seven o'clock on FS1.   I'll be watching and so should you if you are a baseball fan.  Oh, and if you think that these games are "meaningless", watch the emotions and reactions of the players (see photo above).  It isn't meaningless to them.

It is interesting that these WBC games are being played under the "old" rules.  No pitch clock.  Infield shifts allowed.  I have watched very little spring training baseball, but I have seen enough to know that these rules will create a tremendous improvement in the viewing experience of ball games.  Watching the WBC games, where the pitchers pace around the mound between pitches, and the batters step out of the box between every pitch, only reinforces that observation.

The "Footbahlin with Ben Roethlisberger" Podcast

Prompted by Ron Cook's column earlier in the week, I downloaded and listened to Episode 23 of the podcast.  It featured an interview between Roethlisberger and his long time head coach, Mike Tomlin.  

I was aware that Big Ben had started a podcast last fall, but I hadn't sampled it until this week.  The Podcast website describes the show thusly:

"After years of sampling unique beers and talking football with friends, we've decided to make it a show! Get ready for uneducated craft beer reviews, over-educated football insight, and a list of special guests that is guaranteed not to disappoint!"

The interview with Tomlin was excellent.  Very informal, very entertaining, and very informative,  as the Coach and the QB had an excellent bull session about coaching, football, and their relationship in general.  When I look AT THE GUESTS THAT BEN HAS HAD ON HIS SHOW since it began, it makes me look forward to some long car rides in the future when I can replay these old shows.

Check it out.

"Six"

We took in the musical "Six" at the Broadway in Pittsburgh series this past weekend, and what a great show it was.  It is the story of the six wives of King Henry VIII.  It is framed as a show during which "the Queens" meet to decide which of them should go down as the "Lead Queen" in the the story of Henry VIII.  Each states their case through song and dance.  The songs range from rock & roll, to semi-rhyming hip hop, to soulful ballads.  The costumes are colorful and funky, and the staging and lighting is positively amazing, a real sensory overload in the best sense.  I would see this show again in a heartbeat if given the opportunity.

Four Stars from The Grandstander.

To Absent Friends - Bud Grant

Bud Grant

1927-2023

Former Minnesota Vikings head coach and Pro Football Hall of Fame member Bud Grant died last week at the age of 95.  After a successful stint as a HC in the Canadian Football League, which followed a successful career as a football player and a pro basketball  player with the Minneapolis Lakers, Grant became the Vikings head coach in 1967, and coached the team for 18 seasons.   During Grant's tenure, the Vikes reached the Super Bowl four times, and while he and his teams never managed to win a Lombardi Trophy, the accomplishment of reaching that game four times is not diminished.  (On a personal note, I am quite happy that Grant was the losing coach in Super Bowl IX, Steelers 16 - Vikings 7.)

Grant was known as a hard-ass coach.  One who never allowed his players to have heaters on the sidelines in the coldest of cold weather games in Minnesota winters.  Famously, at a playoff game in Minnesota a few years back, a 90-something year old Bud Grant was an honorary captain of the Vikings that day, and came out for the coin toss in single digit temperatures wearing only a short sleeve Vikings golf shirt.

And on an off beat note, fans of the Tony Kornheiser Podcast, we Loyal Littles, all know the special place that Grant had on the podcast in his relationship with Nigel and Reginald the monkey when Reginald would pick games for the upcoming Sunday.  

RIP Bud Grant.

"All Quiet On The Western Front"

I watched this movie yesterday.  In case you missed it, it won an Oscar this past Sunday for Best International Picture, and three other Oscars as well.  It surely deserved all of them.  The opening sequence of a skyline, a forest, foxes sleeping in their den, and an overhead shot of what looks like a snow covered field, but you soon realize is a pile of dead bodies makes you realize quickly that you are watching a piece of cinematic art, but after that, well, this harrowing look at warfare and Man's Inhumanity To Man is a tough watch.

Based on the classic 1929 novel by Erich Maria Remarque follows an idealistic young man, Paul Baumer, as he enlists in the German Army in 1917, gets sent to the Western Front, and is immediately both terrified and disillusioned of all of his idealistic ideas of warfare.  (Didn't everyone have to read this book in high school? I wonder if it's been banned in Florida schools yet?)  This movie is a German production, which made it all the more interesting in my mind.

The movie can be seen on Netflix in both German language with subtitles, or dubbed into English.  I chose to watch the former version.  It is a movie well worth seeing, but, as I said, it's a hard watch.

Three and One-half Stars from The Grandstander.

Title cards at the end of the film noted that the "western front" in the first World War was established early in 1914, and over the next four years, the positions of either side in the War on that Front never changed by more than a few hundred meters, one way or the other.  

Over 17 million people were killed in World War I.

My Oscars Post-Mortem - All At Once

To the surprise of no one, the movie "Everything Everywhere All At Once"  (hereafter to be referred to as EEAAO), swept the Oscars last night, winning seven Oscars overall, including Awards for picture, director, screenplay, and three of the four acting categories.  A historic sweep by any measure.  While it is a movie that had no appeal to me on the face of it, I am now determined to see it, if for no other reason than sheer curiosity.  The big question for this movie is, as it is for any Best Picture winner, Will it endure?  Come 2033, will people still be popping it into their DVD players (or whatever the equivalent technology will be in ten years time), to watch EEAAO, or, for that matter, any of the other nine nominees?  Or will they just decide to watch "Casablanca", "Vertigo", "Citizen Kane", "Caddyshack". or "Groundhog Day" one more time?

Some other quick thoughts on the Oscars and last night's show.

The Winning Actors

Ke Huy Quan, Michelle Yeoh, 

Brendan Fraser, and Jamie Lee Curtis

• In regard to the four winning actors, can anyone NOT be excited for Jamie Lee Curtis win as Best Supporting Actress?   Her acceptance speech, wherein she talked about her career in "genre movies" and paid tributes to her parents, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, was a pure delight and perhaps the highlight of the evening.
• Host Jimmy Kimmel was quite prescient when his opening monologue included the line "Just think, two actors from 1992's "Encino Man" could possibly win Oscars tonight."  They, Ke Huy Quan and Brendan Fraser, actually pulled it off!
• Speaking of Kimmel, I thought he, once again, did a good job as host.  He referenced last year's Will Smith Debacle without actually mentioning either Smith or Chris Rock's names.  He was funny without being over the line, and he kept the traffic moving.  The only bad part of his shtick was the "questions from viewers" and trying to include Malala in the bit.  God bless Malala for the work she does, but she obviously has no sense of humor, at least not for stuff like this.
• One movie that I am definitely prompted to see after last night was the other big winner of the night, "All Quiet On The Western Front."  That viewing via Netflix could come as soon as tomorrow.
• I have said for years that one way to shorten the length of the Oscars telecast would be to remove the performance of the five nominated Original Songs, and last night's show did nothing to change my mind.  Twenty minutes of the show could be chopped off just like that!
• As for the winning Song, "Naatu Naatu" from "RRR", well, I will plead a general lack of knowledge of Indian culture, so I hope that I am not being too critical or ignorant when I say that nobody will be humming that one like they do past winners like Moon River or Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head.  My own thought was that the song was actually a terrific dance number and a great piece of choreography, and would it have won if it was just a song without the accompanying dancing?
• Having said that, I loved the acceptance speech from the two songwriters when the one gentleman said he grew up listening The Carpenters and then did a riff on Top of The World.
• The onstage-and-part-of-the-program commercials for Disney's "Little Mermaid" and Warner Bros. 100th Anniversary. What was that all about?
• The only shock of the In Memoriam segment was seeing that Kirstie Alley had died.  I had either forgotten that or missed it completely.  I looked it up today and saw that she died on December 5, two days after our wedding.  That explains that.
• In THIS POST from yesterday,  I gave you seven predictions for the Oscars, and I was correct on four of them, missing on three of the four acting categories.  I hope that by next year, I will have seen more of the nominated films and will thus be able to give some better and more informed predictions.
• One last thing, my award for Best Gown of the Evening goes to Eva Longoria. (Runner Up: Halle Berry)

Best Gown of the Evening

Eva Longoria

 

Tonight's Oscars

The Academy Awards will be handed out tonight, and it has been many, many years since I have seen so few of the nominated Pictures and performers.  Not so sure exactly why that was the case in 2022.  Maybe being involved, if only peripherally, in the planning of a couple of weddings can do that to you.

I have seen four of the nine Best Picture nominees, two of the Best Directors, one Best Actress, two Best Actors, three Best Supporting Actors, and one of the Best Supporting Actress nominees.  These are hardly the bona fides  of someone to make Oscar predictions, but let me start with who I would vote for among those that I HAVE seen.

Best Picture: I have seen Banshees of Inisherin, Elvis, and The Fabelmans.  I give a slight edge here to Elvis over The Fabelmans.  As for Banshees - gorgeous to look at, wonderful acting, but as a story?  I'll pass on that one.

My thoughts on the other seven nominees:  Top Gun: Maverick was a fun movie and a very good one by all accounts, but for some reason, it just didn't appeal to me so I never made the effort to see it.  If it wins, at least Hollywood will be awarding a popcorn movie that was popular, and that people actually went to see.  I would like to see All Quiet On The Western Front.  Everything Everywhere All At Once in and of itself has no appeal to me, but if it wins, and it seems like it will, I will probably seek it out just out of curiosity.  Maybe, maybe Women Talking is something that I will seek out at some point, but it is not a priority.  As for Avatar, Tar, and Triangle of Sadness?  No chance in Hell will I see those.

Best Actor:  Have seen Austin Butler in Elvis and Colin Farrell in Banshees.  Farrell was very good, but my vote goes to Butler, who was absolutely terrific as Elvis Presley.  At time, you could hardly tell the difference between him and the real thing.

Austin Butler and the Genuine Elvis

One of the trendy favorites to win this one is Brendan Fraser for The Whale, a movie that I would see if you gave me a hundred dollar bill and forced me into the theater at gunpoint.  Maybe.

Best Actress:  I have only seen Michele Williams in The Fabelmans, and she was terrific.  My guess is that Cate Balnchett will win for Tar.

Best Supporting Actor:  I have seen Judd Hirsch in The Fabelmans and Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan in Banshees of Inisherin.  Would love to give it to Judd Hirsch, but if I'm honest, my vote goes to Gleeson.

Best Supporting Actress:  I only saw Kerry Condon in Banshees so she gets my vote.  She was great in that one.  One of the other nominees in this category is Jamie Lee Curtis for Everything Everywhere All At Once.  I be delighted if she ended up winning, because, really, who doesn't just love Jamie Lee Curtis?

Best Director:  I have seen The Fabelmans and Banshees, directed by, respectively, Stephen Spielberg and Martin McDonough.  My vote goes to Spielberg because, well, he's STEPHEN SPIELBERG!!

Okay, that is my 

,

but if it's predictions you want, I'll give you these, based upon what I have been reading and hearing on movie themed podcasts:

Picture: Everything Everywhere All At Once

Actor: Brendan Fraser, The Whale

Actress: Cate Blanchett, Tar

Supporting Actor: Brendan Gleeson, Banshees of Inisherin

Supporting Actress: Angela Bassett, Black Panther: Wakened Forever (this is purely a S.W.A.G. prediction)

Director: Dan Kwan an Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All At Once

Movie To Win The Most Oscars: Everything Everything All At Once

There you go.  Seven predictions for you.  As always, Watch but don't bet.

Despite my lack of seeing so many of the movies, I will be watching to the end tonight.  This is the one Awards show that I continue ti watch.  Oh, and something to look forward to tomorrow:  The Grandstander will be offering his opinion on who wore the best gown of the evening.  The Grandstander has his own subjective metrics as to how "Best" is defined in this category.