World Series 2019: Highs And Lows

I'm always a little sad when the final out of the last World Series game is recorded.  Baseball is, after all, the best team sport.  This year I watched many baseball games from late March until the end of October, and not once did an umpire throw a penalty flag on the field.  Contrast that with your typical football game, where it is not uncommon to have several flags thrown on every possession and most special teams plays.  Nor does baseball suffer from an endless succession of time outs in the last three minutes, a la your standard basketball game.  I won't bother to pick on hockey, except to say that it's a lot easier for a fan, especially one watching on television, to see a baseball than a puck.

The 2019 baseball season ended last night, with the Washington Nationals defying the odds and taking down the favored Houston Astros in the seventh and deciding game.  While the Fall Classic remains fresh in my little brain, I must memorialize some of the things which stood out in the Series.

1. The Astros' Assistant GM.  Except for those fans living in the Houston or Washington metropolitan areas, it's probably accurate to say that most baseball viewers were neutral, or at least would not be too upset if the team they preferred ended up losing the Series.  That neutrality ended October 21 when it was revealed by Sports Illustrated that two days before, during the Astros' pennant-clinching victory celebration over the Yankees, Astros Assistant General Manager Brandon Taubman went on a crude rant directed at three female reporters in the clubhouse .  "Thank God we got Osuna,  I'm so [expletive] glad we got Osuna."  Taubman was referring to Roberto Osuna, a relief pitcher who played a prominent role in the playoffs.  Osuna had recently come off an MLB-mandated seventy-five game suspension for his part in a domestic battery case.  The Astros front office at first said nothing, then defended the thirty-four year old executive's behavior, claiming his comments were misconstrued, and even going so far as to claim one of the three women fabricated the story.  It was only after news of Taubman's boorish behavior went viral that the team finally fired him and the team owner publicly apologized.  In the meantime, fans who previously cared little became Nats fans.

2.  Bat Transport.  I can't think of any sport which has more unwritten rules than baseball.  Many if not most of those rules pertain to sportsmanship, particularly taking care not to show up an opponent or an umpire.  For example, it is poor form to attempt base stealing if your team is ahead by seven or more runs in the last two innings.  It is also a no no for a catcher to turn around to face a home plate ump if the catcher feels an obvious strike was called a ball.  A third example: when you hit a home run, don't stand in the batters' box to admire your feat; start trotting around the bases.

Game # 6 of the World Series featured another taboo.  When 'Stros third baseman Alex Bregman hit a first inning home run (his third of the Series and second off Nats starter Stephen Strasburg), he carried his bat to first base!  He made a half-hearted attempt to hand the stick to first base coach Don Kelly, but the handoff failed.  Baseball purists, including old fogies like me, simply shook their heads.  Not only was Bregman showing up Strasburg, he was disrespecting the game.  Then along came the Nats' rookie phenom, twenty year old Juan Soto, in the fifth inning.  Perhaps in an effort to show he and his mates would not be intimidated by the Stros' brashness, he, too, carried his bat down the first base line as he watched his blast sail over the outfield wall.  I can't believe antics such as those displayed by Bregman and Soto would have been chanced if someone from the old days like the Cardinals' Bob Gibson or the Dodgers' Don Drysdale was the opposing pitcher.  (Yep, I am dating myself!)  Those two fireballers, and other pitchers from that era, would have thrown a beanball at the offender the next time he came up to bat.  But nowadays, in this era of ejection warnings, suspensions and heavy fines, batters who break an unwritten rule need not fear retaliation.

3. Base Path Transgression.  The Series’ most controversial play between the lines took place in Game 6.  But first, let me ask you a question.  Did you ever notice that the entire first base bag is in fair territory?  (By the way, the same is true for second base, third base and home plate.)  This means, by virtue of the laws of physics, that at some point, a batter running toward first base is required to glide into fair territory in order to step on the bag.

In the top of the seventh inning of the game in question, the Nationals' Trea Turner weakly nubbed a ball toward third base.  The Astros' pitcher, Brad Peacock, sprang off the mound to field the ball and wildly threw to first baseman Yuli Gurriel.  A good throw would have been aimed to the second base side of Gurriel, but instead Gurriel had to stretch toward foul territory in an attempt to catch Peacock's throw to complete the play.  The ball and Turner arrived at the same time.  Turner inadvertently knocked Gurriel's mitt off his left hand, enabling Turner to reach second and his teammate Yan Gomes to advance from first to third as the ball rolled down the right field line.  Home plate umpire Sam Hollbrook called Turner out for running inside the first base line.  Thus, instead of having runners at second and third with nobody out, the Nationals now had only their slow-footed catcher, Gomes, at first with one out.

The entire Nationals' bench went apoplectic.  Most concerning to the viewing audience was enraged manager Dave Martinez, a heart patient whose cardiologist probably couldn't believe his eyes, envisioning his celebrity patient being dashed to the nearest hospital emergency room.  Martinez had to be restrained by two of his coaches from assaulting Holbrook.

The purpose of the rule requiring the batter to run outside the first base foul line as he nears the bag was intended to provide a fielder (usually the catcher, sometimes the pitcher) a clear shot at throwing a batter out when the ball is hit either in front of the plate or near the first base line.  The rule is not intended to be applied when the ball is fielded to the third base side of the infield, as was the case here.  The Nationals played the rest of the game under protest, which was never adjudicated thanks to all-star hitter Anthony Rendon smacking a game-breaking home run two batters later.

4. Hinch's Hunch.  The manager of the Astros is A.J. Hinch.  He ain't no dummy, either on or off the field.  He led the Astros to the 2017 World Series championship over the favored Dodgers, and he holds a psychology degree from Stanford University.  Hinch, like many managers, leans more toward following a script than going with their gut instinct.  With this background, let's review the fateful move A.J. made in Game 7 of the World Series, the outcome of which would determine the championship.

Going into the top of the seventh inning, the Astros were leading the Nationals 2-0.  The 'Stros were just nine outs away from claiming their second world championship in three years, what some might call the beginning of a dynasty.  On the mound was starter Zach Greinke, one of the best pitchers in Major League Baseball, as evidenced by his current six year contract, signed before the 2016 season, which pays him over $206 million.  Greinke had used only seventy pitches to shut out the Nats over the first six innings, and he got Adam Eaton to tap out to shortstop to start the seventh.  Then, trouble.  The Nats' number 3 hitter, Anthony Rendon, walloped Greinke's next offering over the left field wall to trim the Nationals' deficit to a single run at 2-1.  Next up was the Nats' phenomenal clean-up hitter, Juan Soto, who drew a five pitch walk.  To this point, some managers would have stuck with Greinke, counting on his sixteen years of MLB experience as a starting pitcher and the fact that he still had only thrown eighty pitches.  A.J. is not one of those managers.  His script and cyber stats called for him to go to his bullpen and get a fresh arm to face the bottom half of the Nationals' order.  Out went Greinke, in came reliever Will Harris.  The rest is history.

Howie Kendrick, the Nats' designated hitter and the hero of his team's NLCS victory over the Dodgers, hit the very first pitch he saw from Harris over the right field wall.  Soto scored in front of him and quicker than you can say "gimme a mulligan," the Nationals had a lead they'd never relinquish.  The Nats went on to score three more runs in the last two innings while the Nats' bullpen shut out the Astros, giving up only one single as they protected the lead.  Final score: Washington 6, Houston 2.  The city of Washington gets its first World Series championship since 1924.  That team was the old Washington Senators, which in 1961 moved to Minnesota to become the Twins.

5. Former Twins.  I always watch the World Series but am seldom emotionally tied to either team.  All other things being equal, I'll usually pull for the American League squad for no reason other than that's where the Twins reside.  I have made exceptions over the years, such as rooting for my two favorite NL teams, the Brewers and the Cubs, on the rare occasions (1982 and 2016, respectively) they got that far.  I also find it hard to ever pull for the Yankees or the Red Sox, simply because MLB's "soft" salary cap allows those two franchises to attempt to buy their way to the brass ring.  A notable deviation for me was in 1996, when the Yanks played the Atlanta Braves.  I was not about to cheer for the Braves whose owner, Ted Turner, was married to Hanoi Jane.

The 2019 Series featured two teams, the Astros and Nationals, which I had not paid much attention to this summer.  As stated above, ordinarily I would have hoped the 'Stros would prevail, as they were representing the American League, but this time I just had to pull for the Nats.  It was a question of simple math: the Nats had four former Twins on their twenty-five man roster, while the Astros had but one, relief pitcher Ryan Pressly.  What's more, two of those Nationals players, catcher Kurt Suzuki and second baseman Brian Dozier, are players I've always admired.  (The other two former Twins were the tilted cap-wearing Fernando Rodney, a relief pitcher, and Anibal Sanchez, who was on the Twins spring training roster last year.)  I have been a fan of Suzuki since he made his MLB debut in 2007.  He impressed me as a solid asset to his team, and one who was underrated.  His career batting average of .259 is higher than most teams' catchers are able to achieve.  In their interviews, both he and Dozier are well-spoken and seem like normal, stand-up guys.  Congratulations to them on their first world championship.

6. Bits And Pieces.  Here are a few other nuggets and moments which made an impression from this year's World Series.  a. It is the first time in a seven game series that the home team failed to win a single game.  b. Howie Kendrick and teammate Adam Eaton sitting next to each other in the dugout, pretending to be shifting gears at high speed in a race car and grinning from ear to ear following the most recent big play.  c. The many times throughout the seven games when the home plate ump's strike zone was well off the FOX network's rectangular graphic.  How far away are we from a new era of robots making those calls?  d.  Juan Soto, the Nats' left fielder and clean-up hitter, had his 21st birthday during the Series.  He is well on his way toward being one of the best players in MLB.  He has a plan every time he steps in the batter's box, and never gives the opposition an easy out.  Soto's approach reminds me a lot of the Twins' rookie second baseman, twenty-two year old Luis Arraez.   e. Game 7 of the World Series ended on October 30.  Thirty-one year old Stephen Strasburg, a key starter in the Nationals' rotation and the Series MVP, had until November 2 to decide whether to opt out of the final four years of his seven year $175 million contract.  He was faced with two choices, opt in for the $100 million which he would be paid over those next four years, or leave the $100 million on the table and become a free agent.  Most of the baseball gurus opined that he could make at least twice as much money by opting out of his current contract and signing a new one.                

Quarterly Cinema Scan - Volume XXXVII

Once Hollywood is blessed with what it sees as a potential blockbuster franchise, it is loath to let go.  Since the turn of the twenty-first century, we can count on the arrival every year of at least a few sequels of original mega-hits at our favorite theater.  Some of those franchises include Toy Story, Harry Potter, X-Men, Pirates Of The Caribbean, Batman and other Marvel Comic characters.  Each of those films has reaped multi-million dollar profits at the box office.  Even the Rocky franchise, which began forty-three years ago, is still making its presence felt with two sequels in the last four years.  Life has been good for the now-seventy-three year old Rocky creator, Sylvester Stallone.  With some production budgets exceeding hundreds of millions of dollars, studios turning to a previously successful franchise is a prudent gamble compared to taking a chance on new, untested fictional characters.

The movie business didn't always take this conservative approach.  It is generally accepted that the James Bond movies, which began in 1962 with Dr. No, comprised the first modern era franchise.  Those films were based on the exploits of the suave secret agent 007 featured in English author Ian Fleming's spy novels.  Just before the American movie-going public was being introduced to Bond, American readers were gobbling up copies of Mario Puzo's crime syndicate novel, The Godfather.  In a two year span in the early seventies, over nine million copies were sold.  Paramount Studios had been fortunate enough to buy the rights for a mere $80,000 to convert the novel into a full length feature film of the same name.  The Godfather, released in 1972, became one of the most important and highest grossing films of all time.  In my July 26, 2019 post I detailed many of the reasons for its success.

Following the strategy adopted by Eon Productions, the English studio behind the Bond films, Paramount decided to back another film project which would continue the saga of the Corleone family.  That film became The Godfather Part II.  Wisely, Paramount once again joined forces with Francis Ford Coppola, who had directed The Godfather.  This time Coppola was given more latitude, a stewardship rightfully earned by the overwhelming success of the 1972 film.

Of the many challenges facing the production of The Godfather Part II, two merit special mention.  Coppola and Puzo worked together to develop the screenplay for the new film.  When the story shown in the first Godfather movie ended, Michael (Al Pacino) had taken over as the successor to the late Vito Corleone, the character played by Marlon Brando.  Naturally, the sequel would continue the saga of the family under this new leadership.  It was mostly Coppola's idea to combine the sequel with a prequel.  How did Vito Corleone, a poor orphan in a remote Italian village, get to be the powerful New York mob figure shown in the first Godfather?  There are many films which resort to flashbacks and fractured chronologies, with the result being a product that is too gimmicky.  In The Godfather Part II, just the opposite is true.  Coppola masterfully blends the past (the first twenty or so years of the 1900's) and present (roughly 1945-1958) in a fascinating, easy-to-follow story.  It does not hurt that the young Vito Corleone is played by Robert DeNiro, one of the greatest actors of his era.  He was only thirty years old when The Godfather Part II was filmed.

The second major challenge to making The Godfather Part II is the casting of the principal characters.  A studio can advertise a film as a sequel, but unless most if not all of the actors from the prior film reprise their role in the second, the public will probably have a hard time buying into the concept of the latter film being a bona fide sequel.  Coppola had to deal with more than the typical amount of egos to get this accomplished.  Brando refused to work on the project because he felt mistreated by Paramount.  Pacino was in a foul mood because, unlike Brando, his Oscar nomination for the first film was in the "Best Supporting Actor" category, notwithstanding the fact that Pacino had more on-screen time than Brando, who was nominated for, and won, Best Actor.  For his participation in one flashback scene which took only a single day to shoot, James Caan insisted on being paid the same amount he had been paid for playing Sonny in the first film.  (Paramount caved to this request.)  Richard Castellano would not reprise his role of Clemenza unless he could write his own dialogue.  (Paramount did not cave to this request, so Clemenza does not make an appearance in The Godfather Part II.)  What headaches!  It is a small wonder The Godfather Part II was ever produced.

But, produced it was, and the result was a tremendous film which, even to this day, is often labeled the greatest sequel of all time.

****

Here is the handful of films I watched on the tube during the third quarter of 2019:      

1. Death Wish (1974 drama; after his wife, Hope Lange, is brutally murdered, peace loving New York City architect Charles Bronson becomes a one man vigilante force which the cops, led by Vincent Gardenia, don't know whether to salute or stop.)  B

2. The Emmigrants (1971 drama; Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullmann, hard luck nineteenth century Swedish farmers, decide to take their growing family across the perilous Atlantic to America.)  B-

3. The Godfather Part II (1974 drama; in this dual thread narrative, (i) Robert DeNiro is young man Vito Corleone who manages to escape the mafia in 1901, fleeing from Sicily to the United States, and (ii) moving ahead to 1958, Al Pacino has taken over from his late father as the syndicate family's leader.)  A

4. Heidi (1937 drama; eight year old Shirley Temple is kidnapped by her evil aunt Mary Christians from the mountain home of her beloved grandfather Jean Hersholt, and forced to be a companion to a kind, slightly older invalid, Marcia Mae Jones.) B+

5. Laura (1944 detective drama; NYPD police detective Dana Andrews becomes obsessed with the victim as he investigates the murder of executive Gene Tierney.)  B+

6. Ninotchka (1939 comedy; Greta Garbo is a humorless Russian special envoy sent to Paris to retrieve jewelry stolen from the mother country, but she gets distracted when Parisian playboy Melvin Douglas shows her what life in a free nation has to offer.)  A-

7. Saturday Night And Sunday Morning (1961 drama; in gritty industrial Nottingham, England, angry young factory worker Albert Finney impregnates a co-worker's wife, Rachel Roberts, and dates Shirley Anne Field, with whom he's possibly met his match.)   B

8. Thunderball (1965 drama; Sean Connery needs to thwart Adolfo Celi and his evil SPECTRE cronies from holding two stolen hydrogen bombs as ransom against NATO.)  C+