Beyond Designated Hitters

When the Minnesota Vikings host the San Diego Chargers in Week # 3 of the NFL season this September and then travel to Denver to face the Broncos in Week # 4, they will play by exactly the same rules that will be in effect for Weeks # 1 and # 2, when the Purple Gang takes on the San Francisco 49ers and the Detroit Lions.  The Vikes, Niners and Motor City Kitties are in the National Football Conference of the NFL, while the Bolts (SD) and the Orange Crush (DEN) are in the American Football Conference.  Don't matter none!  All sixteen NFC teams and all sixteen AFC teams use a uniform set of rules, regardless of where or when the game is being played.

The same principle holds true for the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League.  When each opponent comes from a different conference, there are no special rules of order for that game.
 

Not so baseball.

Even the most casual fan knows that in Major League Baseball, games played in American League parks use a designated hitter ("DH"), whereas games played in which the home team is from the National League do not.  Recently there has been some discussion about whether that discrepancy might change in the near future when the current Collective Bargaining Agreement expires.  So far this season the Twins have played every game under AL rules, but that will change one week from today, May 19, when they visit the Pittsburgh Pirates.  In honor of our home town heroes' lofty achievement of playing over .500 ball at this point of the young season, let's consider what some of the DH/no DH ramifications are.

Automatic Outs.  The most obvious difference pertaining to the American League incorporating the DH is that you don't have what usually amounts to an automatic out.  In other words, pitchers don't bat; the DH bats for them.  With the exception of a half dozen hurlers like the San Francisco Giants' Madison Baumgardner, pitchers are notoriously poor batters.  They make their living with their arms, not their bats.  Consequently, many pitchers give, at best, a half-hearted effort to become good hitters.  If they can lay down a good bunt once in awhile, they feel they've done their job at the plate.  If you check the box scores from NL home games, you'll see that managers almost always relegate pitchers to the "9 hole" in the batting order.  The Cubs' manager Joe Maddon and retired Hall Of Fame manager Tony LaRussa are the two skippers most likely to deviate from that tradition.  Imagine the ignominy of being a position player who bats behind a pitcher slotted into the 8 hole!
 

Double Switches.  Former Twins manager Tom Kelly used to make fun of his NL counterparts by telling the press that he wasn't sure he understood "the complexity" of making the maneuver known as the "double switch."  Of course TK was kidding because, first of all, he has a sharp baseball mind, and secondly, it really isn't all that complicated, even though some elitist NL fans look upon the double switch as rocket science.  A double switch, which you'll see only in National League games, occurs simultaneously with a pitching change, when a manager removes not only his pitcher but also one of the eight other fielders (aka position players), and replaces them with a different pitcher and a new fielder who swap spots in the batting order.
 

Let's say that the Twins are playing in an NL park, and the last three places in the Twins batting order are:
 

7. CF Jordan Schafer

8. SS Danny Santana

9. P  Brian "The Dunce" Duensing
 

In the top of the 7th inning, Schafer makes the third out.  Now in the bottom of the 7th with two outs, manager Paul Molitor decides to bring in Casey Fien to pitch to the next batter.  If Fien gets the third out, he is due to bat second in the top of the 8th.  Assuming Molitor feels that Fien is not a good hitter, Molitor pulls the ol' double switch by (i) removing Schafer at the same time he pulls Duensing, (ii) replacing Schafer with Eddie Rosario in center field, and (iii) inserting Fien in the "7-hole" and Rosario in the "9-hole."  It's important to note that Schafer is the most likely position player to be removed as part of the double switch because he made the last out.
 

Following the double switch, the last three places in the Twins batting order look like this:
 

7. P Casey Fien

8. SS Danny Santana

9. CF Eddie Rosario
 

Thus, the first two batters in the top of the 8th will be Santana and Rosario instead of Santana and Fien.  Fien's spot in the lineup won't come up for awhile, if at all.  This saves Molitor from having to use a pinch hitter for Fien in the 8th inning, which has the double benefit of (i) preserving the bench strength strength for possible future pinch hitting scenarios, and (ii) allowing Fien to pitch in the bottom of the 8th, thus preserving the bullpen.
 

One thing to keep in mind about double switches:  The manager has to tell the home plate umpire that he's using the double switch before the manager crosses the foul line and goes to the mound.  Once the manager crosses the line, it's too late to pull off the double dipper.
 

Using a double switch isn't always a good move.  For one thing, a manager won't use it unless the pitcher is one of the first three batters scheduled to hit in the next half-inning.  Also, a manager is hesitant to remove a good fielder late in the game.  In the example above, if manager Molitor deems Schafer a much better center fielder than Rosario, he might not remove Schafer as part of a double switch when he takes out Duensing.  Instead, he might choose a different position player to remove, or he might opt not to use the double switch at all.
 

Roster Ramifications.  Because National League games call for the pitcher to be in the batting order, it follows that you need more than just a couple of worthy pinch hitters on your bench.  Put another way, you need more potential pinch hitters on your bench in an NL game than you do in an AL game.  The result of having more potential pinch hitters on your team means that a team will probably restructure its pitching staff.  The pitchers who are trimmed from the twenty-five man roster are typically # 5 starters and long relievers.  Thus, a team might go from having five starting pitchers, two long relievers and five short relievers to four starters, one long reliever and seven short relievers.
 

Pitcher vs. Batter Strategy.  In a National League game you are much more likely to see pitchers "pitching around" certain batters, or even issuing more intentional walks.  If the # 7 or # 8 batter comes up, especially with two outs, a pitcher might be more conscious of avoiding throwing the ball over the heart of the plate, because even if that batter draws a walk (i.e., "pitching around" the batter), the next one or two batters following in the order are usually weak sticks, one of whom will produce the third out.  You don't see that as much in the AL, which typically has bona fide hitters throughout the batting order.
 

In the later innings of a close game, many managers like to employ a "lefty against lefty" or "righty against righty" matchup to increase the odds of getting an out.  Let's call those desired matchups "LRMs."  The theory, easily provable through statistics, is that left handed pitchers have a better success rate against left handed batters, and right handed pitchers fare better against right handed batters.  The main reason is that curve balls and sliders break away from (instead of into) a batter of the same "handedness" as the pitcher.  Former Twins manager Ron Gardenhire was notorious for using up his bullpen for the purpose of getting his desired LRMs.   In an effort to make it tougher for the opposing manager to use LRMs, Gardy would also arrange his batting order to avoid two batters in a row swinging from the same side of the plate.  (Exception: when Justin Morneau played for the Twins, he and Joe Mauer, both lefties, often batted in the 3 and 4 holes.)  In National League games, however, you don't see managers pulling their pitchers as often as their AL counterparts do in order to get a LRM.  The reason, as alluded to above, is that the manager in an NL game always has to be aware of when his pitcher is due to bat in subsequent innings.  Whenever a pitcher is due to bat (except very early in a low scoring game), the opportunity to lift him for a pinch hitter trumps the desired LRM.  The manager only has so many pitching substitutions he can make before he'll run out of pitchers.  Contrast this with managers in AL games.  They don't have to worry about pinch hitting for the pitcher, so they are more likely to execute the LRM.
 

Bean Balls.  Thankfully, modern baseball does not have as many bean ball wars as the old days, when the majority of squads seemed to have headhunters on their pitching staff.  You will hardly ever see it in the NL, because the pitcher who launches a bean ball is probably going to have to bat at some point.  In the AL, retaliation to a bean ball is usually executed against the first batter in the next half-inning, whom you might call "an innocent bystander."
 

The Overriding Consideration.  Probably the most important thing to remember is that the strategic philosophies for NL play vs. AL play are, generally, quite different.  If you have an extra five minutes, I recommend to you a rereading of my April 22, 2013 post, Manufacturing Runs.  Your assignment is to git'r done before the Twins take on the Buccos one week from today in beautiful PNC Park.     

Movie Review: "The Wrecking Crew"

"The Wrecking Crew": A-.  There are two key sound bites, both from the lips of the "Eternal Teen Ager," Dick Clark, which get to the crux of the fascinating documentary, The Wrecking Crew.  Clark's first quote is, "I had no idea that people didn't play [on] their own records until the Monkees came along."  He just assumed that the music artists whose songs were getting radio air time were playing their own music.

As you well know, the British Invasion reached US airwaves in very early 1964.  By the time the Monkees' television comedy series was broadcast in September 1966, the Brits were well established stars on both sides of the pond, and the Monkees, a band formed in LA after four hundred-plus applicants auditioned, were trying to catch the same wave of popularity.  Their television show was an undisguised, fairly successful attempt to capture the same type of madcap zaniness which the Beatles had brought to the big screen in 1964 with A Hard Days' Night.  The Monkees' first two single records, Last Train To Clarksville and I'm A Believer, both hit # 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart concurrently with their show in the last half of '66.  Was this America's answer to England?  It didn't quite work out that way.

Even the Monkees' most ardent fans eventually realized that, except for Davy Jones' lead singing, the music the band was putting out was not a result of the foursome's musicianship.  They were ad-libbers and, at least to a degree, lip synchers.  Holy Milli Vanilli!  The Monkees might be called a "faux band"; comedic actors, sure, but not a real band whose members played their own instruments like their British competition.  It's hard to blame the fans for being fooled; they were in good company, as revealed by Dick Clark's above-referenced quote.  After all, no one knew the music scene like Clark, who for thirty-three years produced and hosted the longest running music performance television shows of all time, American Bandstand.

All of this begs the question: If not the Monkees themselves, who, then, was playing on the Monkees' records?  The answer is the title of the film reviewed in this post: The Wrecking Crew.  The Wrecking Crew was a dynamic group of approximately twenty LA session musicians who supplied the music to a number of Top 40 hits, yet rarely getting credit on the liner notes or record labels.

Even if the listening public had correctly pegged the Monkees early on for being a "make believe" band, who would have ever guessed that bands such as the Beach Boys, the Byrds, Gary Lewis & The Playboys and the Association, all mega stars on Top 40 radio, were outsourcing their work to the Wrecking Crew?  The Beach Boys (along with the Four Seasons) were the biggest American pop band of the sixties.  Their lineup was comprised of the three Wilson brothers (Brian, Carl and Dennis), a cousin (Mike Love) and a close friend (Al Jardine).  But for all intents and purposes, Brian Wilson was the Beach Boys, and he was the quintessential perfectionist.  He knew the exact sound he desired for the music he wrote, and the best way to achieve it in the studio was to use not the guys in his band but, instead, the greatest musicians in the business, i.e., the Wrecking Crew.  Likewise, Columbia Records, the Byrds' label, insisted that the Wrecking Crew be used for that group's first album, Mr. Tambourine Man, not only to take advantage of the Crew's superior musicianship, but also to expedite the production of the product in terms of requiring less time in the expensive recording studio.  As for The Playboys, their leader, Gary Lewis, pretty much throws his fellow band members under the bus while comparing their inferior talent to that of the Crew.  (Not surprisingly, Lewis does not mention his own merits as the drummer in the band.)  The film portrays the Association as a bunch of choir boys wearing silly costumes, without a lick of talent as musicians.

The second of Dick Clark's illuminating quotes (paraphrased) was, "The record labels and producers were afraid to let the public know that most of the American songs they were listening to and buying featured the exact same musicians" (referring, of course, to the Wrecking Crew).  In effect, there was a conspiracy to keep the fans in the dark regarding the true source of what they heard on the radio.  The Righteous Brothers, Sonny & Cher, the Fifth Dimension, Frank and Nancy Sinatra, the Ronettes, Simon & Garfunkle, Captain & Tenille, Ike & Tina Turner, and Dean Martin, just to name a few, all had top ten hits, and all of those hits were backed -- if not totally arranged -- by the Wrecking Crew.  None of those artists was billed as a "band," per se, so perhaps it is not that surprising that they took advantage of the consummate talent of the Wrecking Crew.

A standard operating procedure orchestrated by the prominent record labels would be for a songwriter and a producer to hire the Wrecking Crew for a recording session, release a few select songs, and then wait to see how they fared on the charts.  If a particular song turned out to be a hit, a band would be put together for a promotional tour.  The fans attending the concerts would not have a clue that the musicians they saw on stage were not the same ones they heard on the record.

Filmmaker Denny Tedesco is the son of the Crew's star guitarist, the late Tommy Tedesco.  Much of the documentary consists of footage of interviews and round table discussions among many of the mainstays of the group, including drummers Hal Blaine and Earl Palmer, bassist extraordinaire Carol Kaye, saxophonist Plas Johnson, keyboard player Leon Russell (yes, that Leon Russel), guitarists Glen Campbell (yes, that Glen Campbell) and Tedesco.  We also get to hear from Dick Clark, Brian Wilson, prolific songwriter Jimmy Webb, and master record producer Lew Adler, among others.

I do have a couple of nits.  There is a small degree of repetition, hammering home points that have already been made.  I also wish there was more concert footage, especially of the Ronettes and other acts that made Phil Spector's "wall of sound" famous.  Nevertheless, you will not see a movie with a better soundtrack.  If you are a senior, an oldies station listener, or simply a person who enjoys viewing a ground-breaking documentary, you have to put this film on your Must See List.    

Movie Review: "The Longest Ride"

"The Longest Ride": B.  The Longest Ride treats us to two love stories for the price of one.  Sophia and Luke is the main event.  Sophia Danko (Britt Robertson) is a senior art major at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  All set to graduate in a couple of months, she has lined up a coveted internship with an art gallery in Manhattan.  Against her better judgment, she lets herself be dragged by a sorority sister to a bull riding event, where admiring the hunkiness of the young cowpokes trying to stay on a raging bull for eight seconds is the drawing card for the females in attendance.  One of those hunks is Luke Collins (Scott Eastwood, son of Clint), who a year ago sustained a near-fatal head injury compliments of a bull which had thrown, and then gored, him.  Tonight is his first time back in the competition.  Not only does he manage to stay on his mount for the required eight seconds, but (of course) he and Sophia meet very briefly when she retrieves his cowboy hat from the pen's dirt floor.  He tells her to keep it, as he saunters back to the holding area.

The undercard is the romance of Ruth and Ira.  On their way back to campus from their first date, Luke and Sophia spot a vehicle which has smashed through a bridge guard rail and plunged down a ravine. They rescue an older man trapped behind the wheel, along with a box of letters off his front seat, just before the car bursts into flames.  Luke and Sophia rush the man to an emergency room, and Sophia decides to stay there until he is stabilized.  On subsequent hospital visits by Sophia, we learn that the older man is Ira Levinson (Alan Alda), and the box he had been transporting contained letters which he had written over a span of decades to a woman named Ruth.  Each time Sophia visits Ira, he asks her to read some of the letters aloud, and as she does so, the movie transcends temporarily to a flashback detailing the Ira-Ruth relationship.

Each of the two couples faces hurdles.  Luke lives on a huge ranch with his widowed mother.  He is her only child, and her dream is for him to take over the operation from her some day.  But her biggest concern is his health, which is put at risk every time he competes as a bull rider.  He is one hard fall away from paralysis, yet his love for the sport makes it impossible to tear himself away.  Even though Sophia is attending college in North Carolina, she is not a country girl, and is not about to trade her dreams of an art-centric career in the big city for a life as the wife of a daredevil Carolina cowboy.  Similarly, they both realize there's not much of a calling for broncin' bull riders in the Big Apple.  Will the twain ever meet?

Ira (Jack Huston) and Ruth (Oona Chaplin) also connect while in their twenties.  He keeps sneaking peeks at her in the synagogue, not realizing she is aware of his gaze.  She finally makes the first approach, the flowers bloom, the birds sing, and love is in the air.  They become engaged right before he goes off to fight in World War II.  Ruth's parting words are an admonishment to stay safe.  More than anything, she looks forward to the day when the two of them can start that big family she's always dreamed about.  Will the Ira who returns from the battlefields be the same man she fell in love with? 

The Longest Ride has many of the accoutrements we've seen before in Nicholas Sparks stories.  Every girl in Sophia's sorority house is drop-dead gorgeous.  Luke has the highest cheekbones ever captured on film since Lauren Bacall.  He's like the Marlboro Man, only twenty-five years younger.  On their first date, Luke has picked out a picture postcard shoreline for a picnic, complete with table cloth, and naturally there is absolutely no one around to bother him and Sophia.  In the heat of battle, with bullets flying all around, Ira risks life and limb to rescue a fallen buddy as the Germans have them both in their sights.  (The script does not call for Ira winning the Congressional Medal Of Honor, however.)  In case you didn't think the two love stories were intertwined enough with Sophia's visits to old Ira's bedside, a preposterous ending -- not entirely unforeseen -- cements the connection.  We, the moviegoers, don't mind.  This is what we've come to expect from Sparks, and we're cool with it.

Getting An Earful In The Sunshine State

Isn't it New Yorkers who have the reputation of being brash and opinionated?  I was somewhat taken aback by a small sample of Floridians who seem to fit the bill as well.

 

Momma Cuan and I recently spent nineteen days in Florida, a place where some strangers aren't bashful about sharing their societal and political philosophies, even while making first impressions.  Three such encounters stand out.

 

We saved over $700 by renting a car at a remote Hertz location in Tampa, rather than at TPA.  This required a $20 cab ride to pick up our vehicle.  The white cabbie was a talker, whether we wished to engage him or not.  What was to be our first Florida conversation started like this.

 

"Where you guys from?"

 

"Minneapolis."

 

"Oh, boy, you'd better be careful up there.  That's where a lot of the Somali terrorists live."

 

Momma Cuan: "I teach Somali adults on my volunteer job.  I find them to be very nice."

 

"Yeah, well, I suppose there are a few exceptions.  You should be glad you're not from Dearborn, Michigan.  That place is crawling with them."

 

The next day, after attending a spring training game in Lakeland and spending the night there, we headed south to our rented condo in Fort Myers.  About half-way en route, just outside of Cleveland, Florida, we stopped for lunch at an inviting roadside diner called Peace River Seafood & Crab Shack.  Outdoor seating, in short supply, was provided at picnic tables, where another, younger couple joined us shortly after we sat down.

 

Momma Cuan and I were discussing how some people are prone to excusing themselves from doing certain things, such as family functions, because they are "too busy" or they "have a job."

 

Me: "I am always puzzled when people use having a job as an excuse.  After all, most people work five days a week and have just two days off."

 

At this point, the woman sitting to my left, who we thought was having her own conversation with her companion sitting to Momma Cuan's right, chimed in:

 

"I think most people have seven days off, especially since 2009.  You know what they say about Obama: He likes poor people so much he decided to make more of them."

 

Momma Cuan and I silently read each other's minds: Who said anything about Obama?

 

We didn't complete the trifecta until our final day when we were in another cab, this one taking us from the rental car drop off location back to the Tampa airport for our return flight.  As we were caught in rush hour traffic, the conversation turned to road construction and how many huge projects never seem to get done.  I commented that in Minnesota, one hurdle we encounter is the plethora of government layers (city, county, metro, state), all of which need to be in synch for public works.  The immediate reply, out of the blue, from our Hispanic driver was, "Obama has managed to accomplish one thing.  He has made it almost impossible for another black man to become president for the next twenty-five years."  That was the first (and only) time the president's name had come up.  I quickly turned the topic to something more neutral, like the weather.  (I have to save my energy for those times I discuss presidential politics with Michael T.)

 

I was surprised that people with strong opinions are apparently chomping at the bit to share them without prompting, especially in the case of the two cabbies.  I would think someone whose income relied to a large extent on customer tips would be a little more measured in expressing themselves.

 

When I wrote my introductory post to this blog on December 6, 2011, I referred to the title of David Brinkley's best seller, Everyone Is Entitled To My Opinion.  Apparently the three Floridians I described herein subscribe to that theory as well.  

Quarterly Cinema Scan - Volume XIX

To the literary world, Harper Lee was known as one of the greatest one hit wonders of all time.  At the young age of thirty-four, Lee won the Pulitzer Prize for To Kill A Mockingbird, which was published in 1960.  Mockingbird is a coming-of-age story, set in the mid-thirties in fictional small town Maycomb, Alabama.  The story, to a large extent autobiographical, is comprised of narrated recollections of Scout Finch, looking back on her childhood.  As a six year old she idolized her father, Atticus, a well respected country lawyer called upon by the town's judge to defend a black man charged with the rape of a white woman.  Of course, the jury which will decide the defendant's fate is all white.

 

By the time I was a high school upperclassman in the mid-sixties, there were very few of my contemporaries who had not read Lee's book.  It was required reading in many schools, and word-of-mouth recommendations also led to its popularity.  People eagerly awaited Lee's next book, which undoubtedly would have debuted at # 1 on the New York Times Best Seller List.  Only one problem with that prognostication:  Lee chose not to write again, preferring instead to live most of her life as far out of the spotlight as possible in the tiny burg where she was born, Monroeville, Alabama.

 

Two months ago, an astonishing secret was revealed, much to the delight of fiction readers and book sellers everywhere.  Lee announced that she had, after all, written another novel, which will be published in July 2015.  The new book, Go Set A Watchman, was penned a few years before Mockingbird.  The Watchman plot occurs while Scout is a young adult who travels back to Maycomb to visit Atticus. Her then-editor reviewed Lee's draft of Watchman, and asked for a rewrite focusing on Scout as a little girl.  That rewrite became Mockingbird.  The manuscript for Watchman was purportedly misplaced, remaining undiscovered until late last year, when it was found attached to some of Lee's writing worksheets in a cabinet.

 

In 1962, when Mockingbird was the hottest book on the shelves, Universal Studios produced a movie of the same title, enrolling Gregory Peck, a Hollywood heartthrob, to play Atticus.  (Universal originally intended the role for Rock Hudson, but production delays caused Hudson to bow out.)  Harper Lee revealed in an interview that she modeled the character, Atticus, after her own father, Amasa Lee, who was a country lawyer too.  Sadly, Amasa died during the filming of the movie.  Lee was so impressed with Peck's work that she gave him Amasa's gold watch, which he had worn to court during his forty year legal career.  Peck wore that watch when he accepted the Best Actor Oscar at the 1963 Academy Awards.  It was the only Oscar Peck ever won in his brilliant acting career which included over sixty films.

 

***

 

Here are the movies I saw at The Quentin Estates during the first quarter of 2015:

 

1. Airport (1970 drama; Burt Lancaster is a married Chicago airport manager who juggles an affair with airline rep Jean Seberg with his main duty of getting Runway Two-Niner cleared for co-pilot Dean Martin's bomb-damaged plane's landing.) B+

 

2. Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (1958 drama; Elizabeth Taylor is married to Paul Newman, an alcoholic who's the only one in his family not interested in the wealth of his terminally ill father, Burl Ives.) B+

 

3. Foxcatcher (2014 drama; Steve Carell is a mysterious tycoon who recruits Olympic gold medal winning wrestler Channing Tatum and his brother, Mark Ruffalo, to live and train on his estate.) C-

 

4. A Hard Day's Night (1964 comedy; the Beatles have a big televised show to perform in London, but, to the consternation of their manager, their prep time is up for grabs because they're too busy frolicking in the big city and trying to keep grandfather Wilfrid Brambell out of jail.) A

 

5. Nevada Smith (1966 western; Steve McQueen crosses the western US to track down the three killers of his father and Ciowa mother.) B+

 

6. Patton (1970 war biopic; George C. Scott is General Patton, an egotistical, driven combat leader whose often outlandish, boorish behavior and big mouth get him into trouble with his superiors and DC big whigs.) A-

 

7. To Kill A Mockingbird (1962 drama; Gregory Peck, a widowed father of two grade school age kids, is a small town Alabama lawyer called upon to defend a black man on a charge of raping a white woman.) A

 

8. The Verdict (1982 courtroom drama; Paul Newman is an ambulance-chasing Boston lawyer who takes on smooth opposing counsel James Mason in a medical malpractice suit.) B+

Marquette Hotel Bar, 10:30 a.m.

One week ago today came the sad news that Target Corporation was terminating the employment of hundreds of people.  There was no advance warning.  The local television news showed fired employees carting boxes of their personal belongings out of the headquarters building, into the street.  The Star Tribune's glaring front page headline the next day read, "1700 Target Jobs Lost In Day Of Pain, Drama."  Another day later, Target released a statement saying that "this would be the first [wave of] several thousand" job cuts.

From its inception this constituted more than a business news item, but a human interest story as well.  My first reaction was genuine heartfelt sympathy for the people who lost their jobs.  For some, it might turn out to be a blessing, if they manage to attain a more rewarding job somewhere else.  But even for those lucky few, and for all the others, especially those with families, it is a major upheaval to their lives.

My second reaction, to coin a phrase, was this: There, but for the grace of God, go I.  Memories of another, distant bleak Monday morning came back to me.

Although it happened seventeen years ago, the morning of June 8, 1998 is one I will never forget.  When I got my usual case of the Monday Morning Blues on the preceding Sunday evening, June 7, I had no inkling of what was about to transpire the next day.  My customary morning routine before leaving for work would be to fetch the paper from the front porch, unfold it to check the front page headlines, and then swig down a cup of coffee before racing out the door.  That routine was cast asunder when I saw the headline, "Norwest To Merge With Wells Fargo."  The coffee would have to wait; I had to sit down.  This was my life's future I was about to read.

In my capacity as an in-house commercial attorney with Norwest, I was quite familiar with how bank mergers and acquisitions worked.  I had been on several "due diligence" missions in which Norwest, as a potential buyer, would descend upon the "target" bank holding company to examine its books and records.  With the exception of a handful of people, the employees of the target company were unaware of our presence or that their employer was likely on the verge of being sold.  This clandestine approach was necessary not only to keep our competitors from catching wind of our interest -- with a bidding war a possible undesired outcome -- but also to comply with SEC regulations against stock price manipulations.  There was also the concern of the target's employees jumping ship before Norwest could consummate the deal.

Notwithstanding this personal experience and familiarity with corporate deals seemingly coming out of nowhere, the June 8th merger news really blind-sided me and my colleagues.  Now we were the ones taken by surprise, and it was not a good feeling, to say the least.  Did the merger with Wells mean we'd be out of a job?  If we didn't lose our jobs immediately, would we have to move to San Francisco, Wells Fargo's corporate headquarters, to keep them?  If so, that might mean having to study for, not to mention pass, the infamous California Bar Exam.  Who would run the Commercial Section of the Law Department if, in fact, the Commercial Section survived?  (Some banks "farm out" most of their commercial work to outside counsel.  Was this how Wells operated?)  How would our daily responsibilities change?  These were just some of the questions going through our collective minds.  What made our predicament worse was that the impending shakeup was out of our control.  It is futile to attempt to control the things you can't control, and we all knew it.

Attempts to work that Monday morning were pointless.  Who could concentrate?  Meetings were postponed, calls were left unanswered and deadlines were missed.  Why pretend to be productive when our days on the job might be numbered?  Then, one of my colleagues had a brilliant idea.  What we really needed was a drink!  So what if it was only 10:30 in the morning?

About twenty of us traipsed across Seventh Street to the Marquette Hotel Bar, the most proximate watering hole to our office.  This wasn't a Bloody Mary party.  Bourbon, scotch and vodka were the most popular drinks of choice.  I opted for J & B on the rocks, the only time I've ever had the hard stuff that early in the day.  We carried on a round table discussion of sorts, with predictions on how the merger would shake out, and what we knew about Wells Fargo.  We were all in the dark regarding our futures, although a couple of the lawyers from the Corporate Section of our Law Department had more insight on Wells than the rest of us.  One of the disquieting things about Wells Fargo was that when they merged with First Interstate in 1996, Wells allegedly totally botched the transition, and many First Interstate customers bailed out in a huff.  That did not portend well for the future of Norwest.  Between that session at the hotel bar and the consummation of the merger several months later, dozens of rumors -- some which turned out to be accurate, some ludicrous -- flew around our department.

This story had a happy ending for me and almost all of the other Norwest lawyers.  The merger was structured with Norwest being the acquiring company, and Wells Fargo being the target/acquired company.  Thus, Wells was merged into Norwest, which then changed its name to "Wells Fargo."  (The marketing people could hardly wait to get the Wells stagecoach logo onto its billboards, print advertisements, media commercials, etc.)  The big question for us remained:  Who was going to be the General Counsel (aka top dog) of the merged Law Department?  Would it be Guy Rounsaville, the GC from pre-merger Wells, or Stanley Stroup, the GC from pre-merger Norwest.  (You might recall my writing about Stan in my May 23, 2014 post, Daniel Martin Thwarts A Score Of Lawyers.  I called him "the most brilliant lawyer I have ever known.")   After weeks of suspense, the Board Of Directors of the merged company, much to the relief and delight of the Norwest lawyers, chose Stan.  You probably couldn't get Stan to admit it, but the consensus of the Minneapolis lawyers was that Stan watched out for his people, just as we anticipated he would on that Monday morning in the hotel bar.

In June 1998 I was fifty years old.  Momma Cuan and I still had one kid in college, one in high school and one in junior high.  Mary's whole family and my mother lived in the Twin Cities.  We had already decided back in 1983 that we did not want to leave Minnesota.  The prospects of uprooting our family fifteen years later was something we did not even want to think about.  But what if the Board Of Directors had chosen Rounsaville, a man I'd never met, for General Counsel?  My personal career story might not have had as happy an ending.  Those are the things that have crossed my mind over the past week when I've read about the dismissals at Target.  As I wrote above, there, but for the grace of God, go I.

Movie Review: "Red Army"

"Red Army": A-.  One of the most famous games in any sport was the 1980 medal round meeting of the US and Soviet Union hockey teams in the Lake Placid Olympics.  The Soviets were often referred to as the "Red Army," because many of their players were, in fact, active duty soldiers.  Their veteran team was considered the best in the world, and had been so for several years leading up to the Lake Placid games.  The Soviet style of offense, with its weaving and unconscious passing, was a thing of beauty, bearing the earmarks of precision ballet.  That was no accident, as their former coach, Anatoli Tarasov, used ballet and other non-traditional drills like tumbling to develop the skills his players would utilize on the ice.

By contrast, the twenty man American squad was comprised of amateurs and college kids, twelve of whom were from Minnesota.  The Yanks were given no chance to get past the Soviets, based on a number of factors, youth and inexperience being two at the forefront.  Having the world's best goalie, Vladislav Tretiak, didn't hurt the Red Army team either.  A noteworthy component of empirical evidence to support that dire prediction of a mismatch was the 10-2 shellacking the Soviets administered to the US team in an exhibition game three days before the commencement of the Games.  Despite the overwhelming odds in the Olympics, the Americans pulled the upset, 4-3, in what has been universally called the "Miracle On Ice."

There have been many movies, books and articles about the Miracle On Ice, including a 1981 film bearing that title.  (I remember what head coach Herb Brooks had to say when asked how he and his wife enjoyed the film.  Herbie's reply was that his wife was a little disappointed that the producers hadn't chosen an actor more handsome than Karl Malden to play his character.)  Almost all of those films and stories focused on the American perspective, such as how the US team was chosen, the grueling preparations, the in-game strategy and how winning the Gold Medal (after defeating Finland two days after the Soviet match) affected their lives.  But, what about the Soviet players?  Their story had not been documented well at all, at least not for American consumption, until the making of Red Army, a documentary by film maker Gabe Polsky.

It is impossible to separate the Cold War from the world of hockey as it existed at that time in history.  The rivalry between Russia and the US went far beyond what could be settled on a sheet of ice.  They were decades-long enemies, each with nuclear capabilities.  The Russians, including the politicians, looked upon their hockey supremacy as a validation of communism.  But before we scoff at such a preposterous notion, Polsky shows Brooks after his squad's Olympics success, pontificating that the Americans' gold medals were proof that our way of life was best.

The Lake Placid showdown is only a small part of Polsky's film, and that is a distinguishing feature separating Red Army from any other movie built around that backdrop.  The focal point of the documentary are his interviews with Soviet star defenseman Slava Fetisov, a mainstay of the Red Army team for many years before and after 1980.  The pairing of Polsky and Fetisov is, at times, (unintentionally?) hilarious.  On camera Fetisov seems like he can't be bothered, or that Polsky is not worth his undivided attention.  As he's answering questions, Fetisov is chomping on gum, scanning a computer screen while sitting behind a desk, or conversing on his cell phone.  Sometimes he stares at the camera, as if internally debating whether Polsky's question is worthy of an answer.  Still, there is something endearing about the Russian.  Polsky, who stammers through many of his questions and is not very eloquent, plays along.  (If you have ever seen the SNL skit where Chris Farley plays an awestruck reporter who interviews his hero, Paul McCartney, with a series of almost juvenile questions, you might sense deja vu.)    To say that this documentary is unpolished would be an understatement.  But somehow it works in the end, as we get behind the scenes looks at what life was like for Fetisov and his teammates.

Although the Soviet defeat in Lake Placid was tantamount to a national disaster back in the homeland, in the long run it proved to be merely a blip on the Red Army's resume.  The team continued to be astonishingly brilliant for years thereafter.  Many of those players would most likely have hit an extraordinary financial jackpot had they been able to play in the West.  But of course, they were not free to do so;  army desertion is not favorably looked upon!   Following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, many of the Red Army stars at last went on to successful careers in the NHL, which at all times remained the highest caliber professional league in the world.  Fetisov and four of his Russian teammates (collective sometimes called the "Russian Five") helped the Detroit Red Wings capture the Stanley Cup in 1997 and 1998.  Kudos to Wings coach Scotty Bowman, the winningest coach in NHL history, for admitting on camera that he pretty much got out of his stars' way and let them do their thing.  The story behind Fetisov bringing the Cup to display at the Kremlin is particularly memorable.
  

Just like the perpetual, almost dance-like weave of the Russian hockey forwards, Red Army mixes observations of teamwork, patriotism, capitalism, friendship, politics and forgiveness into a quick-paced eighty-five minute documentary.  It makes one wonder, with the benefit of hindsight, whether protracting the Cold War for decades was a very smart thing for either side to do.