Showing posts with label MLB. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MLB. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

North Miami Beach in the World Series -Steve Nicosia makes sure the first time's the charm! NMB High grad Steve Nicosia was the first Charger to play in the World Series, on the victorious Willie Stargell-led "We Are Family" Pirates team of 1979; @Pirates, #NorthMiamiBeach



With the World Series slated to start tomorrow night between the Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals, i wanted to share a little bit of information I know and have been keen to post about for quite some time, and that time is now, since it's World Series-related and a local South Florida angle.

The first North Miami Beach High School grad to ever play in baseball's major leagues was also the first former Charger to ever play in MLB's World Series, catcher Steve Nicosia 
of the victorious Willie Stargell-led "We Are Family" Pirates team of 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates in 1979, against my beloved Baltimore Orioles, whom I grew-up loving, and was a mini-season ticket holder of when I was living and working in the D.C. area 20 years later, and going to about 20-25 Oriole home games a year at Camden Yards.

I watched every pitch of those painful 7 World Series games from the packed TV room of Briscoe Quad, while I was at IU my freshman year, back when only the affluent -esp girls- had a TV in their own dorm room. Trust me, I knew exactly which of my friends had a TV and what their favorite programs were, but some things need to be watched in large groups.
Even if they're Pirate fans, as most of the people in that room were.

(Did I ever mention to you dear blog readers how many people from the greater Pittsburgh area went to beautiful Indiana University in Bloomington? 
Trust me, it's huge, in part because it's only about 410 miles east of Bloomington -a day trip. The most-famous IU grad from Pittsburgh this far is Marc Cuban, @mcuban.

Nobody I met at IU from Pittsburgh was a better advertisement for what a great school IU was or better company to be around than my friend, Laura Seitz. Laura was a freshman when I was a sophomore, and she lived on the same floor at Briscoe Quad where I already had a LOT of close female friends, and eventually we met and became friends because our personalities really meshed well. Among my male friends, Laura was renown for always turning so many heads when she combined her sporty good looks with her shiny red adidas IU Swimming sweat jacket whenever we went to see a movie or met in-between classes over at the Student Union, or went to an IU soccer game at the-then new Armstrong Stadium, two blocks away from Briscoe. Laura was such a charmer and so honest and level-headed! The sort of friend you can confide in and trust in any kind of situation, no matter how upsetting or awkward, and genuinely feel a great weight lifted off of your shoulders after you've shared the news with her. I always thought she'd make a great psychiatrist, esp. in Left Coast Hollywood, as opposed to the one here north of Hallandale Beach. Just a great friend to have in good times and bad.)

So getting back to the main point of today's post, just to give you some helpful context, Steve Nicosia, who still lives in South Florida with his family, was about six years older than me when he was in high school at NMB, while yours truly was doing my thing over at Fulford Elementary, in 5th and 6th grade his last two years at NMB, when he was such a phenom.

This was back when NMB High School, on the north side of the street from the then-very prosperous 163rd Street Shopping Center, was spanking brand new and had absorbed kids whose older siblings (and parents) had gone to either North Miami or Norland,
depending upon where in Northeast/Northwest Dade their families lived.

So in a rapidly developing area with lots of well-established family and school loyalties and traditions comes a new school into the mix in NMB with neither, and located in an area of the city that was hard by the side of a huge retail complex and on another side, apartments for mostly senior citizens, a demographic which seemed almost of the city at the time.
Not exactly a target-rich environment to develop school tradition!  

What made it controversial from the start, as if that wasn't enough, was its in-vogue educational approach that most parents weren't so crazy about -no letter grades, just passing and failing.
It's hard to get into really good schools with that siort of subjective thing, obviously, regardless of tests scores, so parents and high-achieving kids were not down with the way things were being done

It's hard to imagine now in 2013, but there was no high school in Dade County north of N.E. 135th Street and east of I-95 -or Aventurauntil NMB showed-up in 1971 and shattered that longstanding reality of life.

Yes, that's the sort of reality I can still recall, since I walked with my mother and two younger sisters on our way to 163rd Street Shopping Center thru the future NMBHS when it was merely a willowy field, from the nice apt on NE 170th Street I lived in while going to Sabal Palm Elementary for 2nd grade.

When it opened and while Nicosia was there, NMBHS was an "experimental" school, a bit of a fad that the Dade County School Board decided to try out with kids from NE Dade as guinea pigs, as if the fact that it was a gigantic two-story building with no windows wasn't enough of a tip that it wasn't a regular high school, though with cool air conditioning and carpeting everywhere.

(I wrote a fact-filled description of NMBHS in the early years about 6-7 years ago on Wikipedia, an entry that really put some meat on what was then present there, which I regarded as a paltry and unappealing description of the school.
Unfortunately, over the years, the "helper bees" at Wikipedia have taken a knife to the facts I added and turned it into a bland stew last time I checked it two years ago, removing about 75% of what I'd posted, though some scraps remain.
I'll try to remember to re-post that Wiki description I wrote here in the future, which you still sometimes find on the Internet when looking for NMB-related news of the 1970's, esp. re the 163rd Street Shopping Center.)

By almost any reasonable measure, Steve Nicosia was South Florida's most-celebrated HS baseball player between 1972 and 1974.
A result of that was that he was regularly featured on the front pages of the Herald and Miami News sports section, back before there was a Heat, Panthers and Marlins to easily distract everyone from the primacy of high school sports, and people actually going to games to support the kids even if they didn't have kids at the school, because that's what you did.
Just as is true in so many communities outside of South Florida right now.

I know about all those newspaper articles because I cut out every article on him that made it into print, since I was already a news junkie then, reading both papers every day, even when in elementary school at Fulford(Cutting out newspaper articles -how very old-school!)

Here's a more recent piece on him, from 13 years ago, though the article greatly undersells how big a deal he was down here.

The first thing about him that jumped out at you when you looked at him was that he was very un-NMB-like in appearance, in that he resembled nothing so much as a miniature Joe Mauer, a catcher who was just more naturally athletic than anyone else on the field, something that was readily-apparent the moment he was in a position to affect the flow of the game.

He was, as I recall it, a "Natural" in every sense of the word, smooth and completely in-charge on the field and quick with a bat in his hands.
To my mind at least, he was the progenitor for everything that happened later with A-Rod in HS many years later in Miami, with the constant media attention.
If the Internet or USA Today or ESPN had existed back when Nicosia played...

Allen Park, the same City of NMB baseball field next to Fulford Elementary that I played Optimist football, soccer, Little League and Pony League on, was also the field where Nicosia played American Legion ball for NMB Post 257, back when that was really huge down here.
The stands would routinely have a half-dozen MLB scouts taking notes, stop-watches at the ready.

Me being me, I'd naturally try to size up the crowd and figure out who the scouts were and then try to matter-of-factly sit near them and eavesdrop on any baseball scuttlebutt, hoping
that one might be with the Orioles. If only...
It never was on the nights I was there.

I dug up this article on the Internet which was THE best article on him for the longest time.

Miami News
May 25, 1973
The scouts can't stay away
All eyes are on NMB's Steve Nicosia
By Jeff Klinkenberg

Make sure you see the great photos above the article!

I must've stared at those photos for 5-6 years in the manilla folder I kept with all his clippings,
plus the one I cut from the extra copy of the paper I bought and then taped on my bedroom wall. 
To me, what made that black and white photo of him awesome was that because in the original that appeared in the Miami News, you could see all the sweat on his forehead and on the tops of his right shoulder coming out thru the jersey.
That was really something and people always commented on what a great photo it was

Back then, because of the novelty of the whole thing, people who didn't even live in NMB, esp. knowledgeable middle-age baseball fans, would routinely come from all over the area to the games at Allen Park.

They'd come over-and-over and even recognize me, because they'd come to gawk at him because of what they'd read, and then seen for themselves, because he was, literally, like a man-among-boys.
Trust me, that was the one-and-only time something like that EVER happened in NMB!

Chaz Stevens at his popular must-read blog, M.A.O.S. recently mentioned me in relation to my knowledge and love of baseball, which was nice of him, but the truth is that I had to reveal to Chaz recently that I was actually able to go the whole 2013 baseball season without watching a single inning of Miami Marlins baseball on TV, or listen to an inning on radio, even though I really do like their announcers.
Yes, my personal boycott of David Samson & Jeffrey Loria has remained in place since last year's team break-up, and I do hereby declare victory.

As I told many people in my original email about Nicosia, my pre-playoffs pick was the Pirates playing the Red Sox in the World Series, a rematch of the 1903 World Series, Pittsburgh vs. Boston, Cy Young over Honus Wagnerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1903_World_Series

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Other NMB grads whom you may have heard of who came after I graduated in 1979 and my sister Linda graduated in 1982, include Facebook COO and recent author Sheryl Sandberg, actress Garcelle Beauvais and best-selling author Brad Meltzer.

Sunday, August 11, 2013

Without a Shadow of a Doubt (or a Shadow of a Stadium) in MLB, it's Location, Location, Location and that's bad news for Tampa Rays. In my opinion, no stadium location in that area will ever suffice because the fundamental problem is there simply aren't ENOUGH middle-class baseball fans there to make it worthwhile. That area will always be the dog-chasing-its-tail when it comes to a new baseball stadium; @StadiumShadow, @fieldofschemes, @darrenrovell














Predicate reading for this subject is Noah Pransky's Shadow of the Stadium blog
http://shadowofthestadium.blogspot.com/ and Neil de Mause's Field of Schemes blog: http://www.fieldofschemes.com/





Much as I try to follow the Tampa Rays new stadium and attendance saga, in the end, it usually makes me think of the dog-chasing-its-tail, and the dog thinking that its making progress when actually it's doing nothing of the sort.

In following this story it's hard not to notice that of all the many criticisms of the Rays attendance problems over the years, many rather predictable, it's hard not to notice that many in the Tampa Bay area media are reluctant to say what I've always thought, perhaps because they really don't want to think about how truly insignificant the Tampa Bay area is in the whole national scheme
of things, baseball or otherwise. 

(And that's in NOT adding southern Orlando or certain Polk County residents to Tampa Bay's overall population to make it seem larger, as I have seen some places, as if to justify the current situation.)

The problem with the Rays isn't with the location of the stadium, it's the location of the team.
(Just like with the NFL's Jacksonville Jaguars.)
I don't think it matters where the Rays stadium is, the team won't draw enough fans regardless of where you place the stadium.

This is completely unlike the situation with the Orioles and their shift from Memorial Stadium to Camden Yards, making it much more attractive and reasonable to Washington area fans to go during the week.

Along with two friends, we controlled four seats for an Oriole 17-game mini-season ticket plan for the first 8-9 years of them playing near the Inner Harbor, and I personally went to 20-25 home games a year (out of 81) despite living in Arlington County, though those long weeknight games and the drive home to Northern Virginia often made me useless at work the next
morning until I'd had enough coffee with hazelnut cream to mellow me out, i.e. around 10:45.

In my opinion, Charlotte, Nashville and San Antonio would all do a better job of consistently drawing baseball fans on a yearly basis simply because there are MORE middle-class income people living within 45 minutes of wherever they put the stadium, because there are more middle- management jobs there to begin with. Period.

Those cities have a more diversified economy than the St.Pete/Tampa area and greatly benefit from that.
Tampa Bay is what it is, but diversified it is not, just like South Florida over-dependence on tourism and real estate.


 @fieldofschemes  https://twitter.com/fieldofschemes  

Thursday, November 15, 2012

After latest Marlins' salary dump, South Florida's amateur screenwriters will be busy devising plot twists that involve a murder-suicide element or body dumps in The Everglades with Marlins' Loria and Sampson; To quote Ben Diamond: “Dictators come and go like the weather down here.”


http://www.starz.com/extras#/magic-city-new-trailer

“Dictators come and go like the weather down here.” 
-Ben Diamond

Hmm-m... how would our fictional friend and hotelier Ike Evans (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, pictured above) or for that matter, even our fictional enemy Ben Diamond (Danny Huston), over at Starz' addictive "Magic City" -about Miami Beach in 1959- have handled things after getting double-crossed but good by Marlins owner and president Jeffrey Loria and David Samson to spend real money and field a competitive team, after City of Miami and Miami-dade taxpayers were forced to pay for a new stadium that they never got the chance to vote on via a referendum. 


You know, the salary dump that everyone in South Florida is talking about but which the Marlins are refusing to even hint at on their official Twitter page? https://twitter.com/Marlins
And you saw that fact reported where in local Miami media? 

If you ever needed more proof of how completely imaginary so much of the world of Twitter is, how it's often nothing but sheer chicanery, not facts, the Marlins have answered that question adn are Exhibit One in their typical pathetic way.

Yes, definitely a body dump in the Everglades.
But body dumps in the swamp are so last year!
(The body dump in The Everglades comes at 0:55 in the trailer above.)

Tossed overboard from a prop plane on the way to The Bahamas is this year's LBD.


After this week's latest salary dump and multi-player trade with the Toronto Blue Jays, I strongly suspect that South Florida's amateur screenwriters (and creative writing classes) are going to be busy devising novel plot twists that involve a murder-suicide element or body dump in Everglades with Marlins' Loria and Sampson.


More soon on the predictable Loria move that did not surprise me a whit.

http://www.starz.com/originals/MagicCity

http://www.starz.com/originals/magiccity

http://twitter.com/magiccity_starz

Magic City: The Complete First Season (2012) is only $24.99 at Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Magic-City-Complete-First-Season/dp/B007PTCP7K/ref=tmm_dvd_title_0

Friday, August 10, 2012

"This is what I've dreamed about my whole life" -Miami connection of Baltimore Orioles' future arrives early as Oriole's 20-year old star prospect and Miami-area native Manny Machado gets called-up from Double-A Bowie to start at third base in Thursday's Royals-O's ballgame, and 2010 First Round pick impresses with two hits in O's loss at Oriole Park at Camden Yards; #MannyMachado

"This is what I've dreamed about my whole life" -Miami connection of Baltimore Orioles' future arrives early as Oriole's 20-year old star prospect and Miami-area native Manny Machado gets called-up from Double-A Bowie to start at third base in Thursday's Royals-O's ballgame, and 2010 First Round pick impresses with two hits in O's loss at Oriole Park at Camden Yards 
The Baltimore Sun
Manny Machado makes his major league debut — even sooner than he expected
By Eduardo A. Encina
11:57 p.m. EDT, August 9, 2012
He had replayed the moment in his mind many times before growing up, but Manny Machado didn't know exactly what playing in his first major league game would feel like. One thing was certain: Knowing it was a once-in-a-lifetime event, he wanted to make sure he was able to make Thursday night memorable.
Less than 24 hours earlier, he came off the Double-A Bowie team bus after Wednesday night's game in Altoona and be told by manager Gary Kendall that he was about to become a big leaguer the next day.
Read the rest of the story at:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/orioles/bs-sp-orioles-manny-machado-debut-0810-20120809,0,6084272.story

See the Baltimore Sun video of Manny Machado at: http://www.baltimoresun.com/videogallery/71742592/Sports/VIDEO-Machado-This-is-what-I-ve-dreamed-about-my-whole-life

Great photo of Manny Machado at  http://network.yardbarker.com/mlb/article_external/manny_machado_arrives/11417719

See also:
Baseball America
Prospects Blog
Orioles Calling Up Manny Machado
Posted Aug. 8, 2012 11:56 pm by Ben Badler
http://www.baseballamerica.com/blog/prospects/2012/08/orioles-calling-up-manny-machado/



Above, some of my tickets from the last few Baltimore Oriole games I saw in-person at Oriole Park at Camden Yards in 2002, before I moved back to South Florida in 2003.

The Orioles are in it to win it!
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http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/

Saturday, April 28, 2012

WaPo's Tom Boswell sounds the Bryce Harper alarm: Davey Johnson will soon write out a lineup card "and, on it, two names appear together for the first time: Strasburg and Harper, too. Ready or not, here he comes." Tonight!



MASNsportscom video: Davey Johnson speaks with the media about Bryce Harper's call up. April 27, 2012. http://youtu.be/DMwTM650Jrk


WaPo's Tom Boswell sounds the Bryce Harper alarm: Davey Johnson will soon write out a lineup card "and, on it, two names appear together for the first time: Strasburg and Harper, too. Ready or not, here he comes." Tonight!
Looks like I'll have to record "Nats Talk" on MASN at 10 a.m. before going out to run some errands before the heavy downpours hit this area later in the afternoon.


The Washington Post
Bryce Harper call-up is leap off the ledge: thrilling and dangerous
By Thomas Boswell
Posted Friday, April 27, 9:34 PM
They’re going to make a movie about this someday — maybe a happy one, maybe not. It’ll be incredibly corny, and you’ll love it. Or you’ll cry, maybe, if the happy ending gets screwed up. But you’ll watch because this is absolutely not the modern way.
What we’ve got now is authentic sports theater. Oh, it’s much, much cooler that Bryce Harper is coming to the big leagues Saturday just the way it has been happening in real baseball for 125 years: with everybody scared to death, worried they’re about to screw up big time, but doing it anyway.
Read the rest of the column at:

Bryce Harper's first Triple-A Home Run

What a beautiful swing!
Get ready to see lots of that.

Meanwhile, over at the MASN website, Dan Kolo at Nationals Pastime reveals what's at stake financially for the ballclub by bringing the 19-year old phenom up from Tripe-A Syracuse to the majors for a game against the Dodgers in LA, to replace third baseman Ryan Zimmerman who's now on the DL... millions and millions of dollars.
And just to remind you again, Strasburg will be pitching Saturday night, too.

See also: Bryce Harper's MLB Promotion All About The Phillies Series
By Kevin Jones

Saturday night's game will be aired on MASN2, DirecTV Channel 641 at 9 p.m.
MLB Network at Channel 213 will also be airing the game, too.
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Friday, April 27, 2012

Weekend Warriors Alert- Recreating Striped patterns from Major League Baseball fields on your own lawn is easier than you think -but you have to have a strategy and stick with it




WSJDigitalNetwork video: Stripe Your Lawn Like the Major Leagues. 
WSJ Digital correspondent Wendy Bounds goes to Boston's Fenway Park to speak with ballpark field manager David Mellor to get some inside advice about about how they make some of those amazing "striping" patterns in the grass and how you can learn the tricks of the trade. April 27, 2012. http://youtu.be/xXQDP5IqowQ







John Deere video: How to Pattern Mow Your Lawn. May 4, 2011. 
http://youtu.be/PU--zduP_IY


I was planning on running a lot of my photos from Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore, where for most of the time between 1992-2003, I had a mini-season ticket plan and probably attended over 20 ballgames a year, despite living in Arlington County.


Unfortunately, for my purposes today, most of the photos are of my friends and the ballpark itself, and the ones showing the grass parts of the field weren't at the right angle so that you could see the patterns in the outfield, hence my use of these photos from photobucket.


Camden Yards Pictures, Images and Photos




Camden Yards Pictures, Images and Photos




Scott's Lawn Care, who is the official Lawn Care company of MLB, and which actually sells the same grass seed mix as used at five MLB ballparks -Cardinals, Cubs, Phillies,  Red Sox and Reds- has a number of clever examples of various designs that you can check out on their website and consider for your own lawn
http://www.scotts.com/smg/search/gSrchResults.jsp?newsearch=baseball


http://www.youtube.com/user/ScottsMiracleGro 


Here's the link to their Scotts Lawn Care's MLB Snap Perks National Launch Sweepstakes on Facebook, which includes trips to the 2012 All-Star Game in Kansas City and the 2012 World Series: https://www.facebook.com/scottslawn?sk=app_329168310455200





John Deere - 175 Years
http://www.youtube.com/johndeere

Friday, October 21, 2011

Yet another Miami Herald WTF moment re the World Series -their unintentional dig at themselves reveals a shallow, poorly-edited, second-rate newspaper

Yet another Miami Herald WTF moment re the World Series -their unintentional dig at themselves reveals a shallow, poorly-edited, second-rate newspaper.

"History repeats itself."
How many times have we all found ourselves saying that aloud or thinking that thought silently when we've come across a situation that makes us shake our heads and discern a certain circularity in our part of the universe?

Well, at the Miami Herald -just as is true at Hallandale Beach City Hall for HB's beleaguered taxpayers, who are plagued by sleep-walking elected officials with little concern for public scrutiny of tax dollars going out to cronies- history seems to repeat itself quite frequently, often more than seems either logical or even possible.

At One Herald Plaza as is true at 400 S. Federal Highway, the preponderance of the facts tend to show that when it happens, it's almost always a bad experience for Herald readers wanting to be well-informed, and this past week was no exception.

History repeated itself a few times at the Herald this past week, and this was true despite the fact that I didn't even read Thursday's paper until late today -Friday afternoon, due to an unexpected trip to a local emergency room Thursday night due to a family medical situation.

So, where to start?
Well, first, the predicate.

Last year I shared with you a few stories about the Herald's perfectly dreadful sports coverage in general, and in particular, their half-assed coverage of the 2010 World Series between the Texas Rangers and the San Francisco Giants in a November 3rd, 2010 post titled, quite accurately, The Miami Herald's dismal Pony Express-style coverage of The World Series -compared to the New York Times- is a bad omen for readers

Well, would you believe that they even topped themselves on Wednesday, even before the First Pitch?

First, you'll notice that they don't mention anything about the World Series above the masthead to lure readers to the sports section.
The sort of thing that in the past would've been a no-brainer.
Check.


Then when you get to the sports section, under the decidedly non-genius editorial leadership of Jorge Rojas, you notice that there is absolutely nothing about that night's Opening Game on the front page.
Check.

This, even while there is something about the Dolphins, Hurricanes and Panther and... oh yeah, a wire story about the Michigan State football team.
Really.

The first three are not so unusual being local teams and all, but seriously, a story on the front page about Spartan football but not the World Series?
Why?
We don't live in East Lansing.

As if to throw salt into the the open-wound that is the Herald sports section, they run a photo of FIU running back Kendrick Rhodes from Tuesday night's nationally-televised football game at Arkansas State.
But they have nothing about the game itself.
Nothing as in nada!

Just like they had nothing in the newspaper weeks ago -the next day- following FIU's biggest football victory ever, against the U of L Cards (Louisville), another game that was nationally-televised.
How f-ing embarrassing!!!

Oh, so you think it's just because the Herald's geniuses make the Broward edition the same as the Keys edition, as above?
Hmm-m... so doesn't that seem like a dis-service to the 40-45% of their readers who want accurate and timely information?

Especially given that the Herald has a printing press in Broward County on Pembroke Road less than four miles from me, where I'm also less than a mile north of the Miami-Dade County line?

Today, as if to show they are beyond redemption -they are, I was being rhetorical- today's sports section had a smarmy so-called "Web Poll" on its second page -at top of this post- with the following question, and I swear they really wrote this, apparently unaware of the irony of a crummy newspaper sports section like theirs that doesn't mention the World Series on its own front page asking its readers: Are you interested in the World Series?

The answers you could respond with are:

With the Marlins and Yankees at home I'm not interested

Very interested

Lost interest with the strikes

The World Series is going on?

When did we inherit the Yankees?
The next time you hear someone from a TV network or a national-known sports writer opine on the sorry state of South Florida sports fans, while it's clearly got grains of truth, what they always forget to mention is the dreadful state of their brethren in local South Florida radio/TV/newspaper sports Depts: they are largely awful and yet strangely verbose and testy, an awful combination for readers, listeners and viewers alike.

And full of people from New York who never made the successful transition to making this area "home" even after 20 or more years.

For those of you who live far from South Florida, understand this point and you will understand a lot of why Florida in general and South Florida in particular have so many intractable problems:
The states of California, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia absorbed the vast majority of the genuinely creative/talented or business-savvy New Yorkers who chose to flee that state since the early '80's, due to high taxes and the decreasing Quality of Life, while South Florida absorbed what was left of the emigres.

And it shows itself everyday in all aspects of life here, including the low aptitudes and smug attitudes of the South Florida news media.
We got stuck with all the Misfit Toys from New York.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

"'Moneyball' hits it out of the park" says NY Post and Brad Pitt draws raves from critics, but is too much of Lewis book dumbed-down for moviegoers?


Sony Pictures video: Moneyball trailer


New York Post video: 'Moneyball' hits it out of the park
http://youtu.be/BPPiM0Tn2nE

CBS Sunday Morning video: David Edelstein reviews Brad Pitt in Moneyball movie 9-18-11 CBS Sunday Morning

Since the Hurricanes play Kansas State on Saturday afternoon and the Dolphins play in Cleveland on Sunday afternoon against the Browns, I'll necessarily be seeing this film I've been waiting for for years -since first reading the Michael Lewis book "Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game" in hardback- later today at the AMC Aventura 24 down the street at the Aventura Mall.

See also:
The Washington Post
Celebritology blog
‘Moneyball’: Why it’s this year’s ‘Social Network’
Posted at 09:08 PM ET, 09/22/2011
By Jen Chaney

and a VERY dissenting review:

Baseball America
Movie Review: Moneyball
By Conor Glassey
September 21, 2011

Moneyball is being billed as a sports drama, but really it's a mystery.

The first question I couldn't figure out is: Why was it even made in the first place? When the book was released in 2003 it was polarizing but it was interesting and helped casual baseball fans gain acceptance and understanding of advanced statistics.

Through no fault of its own, the book (written by Michael Lewis and published in 2003) hasn't aged well and the story just doesn't translate to the screen. The Moneyball concept has become trite and misunderstood over the years and this movie will only continue to make things worse.
Read the rest of the review with lots of good points about the finer points being dummied down for movie-goers:

FYI: In my opinion, actress Tammy Blanchard, who plays Scott Hatteberg's (Chris Pratt's) wife in the film, is an amazing mega-talent who ought to be starring in a a lot more big films than she is. Ten years ago, she won an Emmy Award for playing a young Judy Garland in a TV film titled "A Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows," which was only one of the best things I've ever seen on American TV. It was stupendous.
If you have never seen it and see it advertised on cable, watch it -you won't be disappointed!

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Given the media contretemps that has surrounded Brad Pitt the past ten days since his comments to the Parade magazine Sunday newspaper supplement about ex-wife Jennifer Anniston, and his subsequent attempts to clarify them and undo any misperceptions, I wish that someone could explain to me just when and why it was decided that one of the unwritten job responsibilities of the American news media in the 21st century was being a suck-up for Anniston, and defending her from any and all criticism, no matter how valid.

It's unprofessional, and seems to especially be an epidemic among female journalists.
And it's equally true of their treatment of Julia Roberts.

Anniston is NOT Katharine Hepurn or Audrey Hepburn or Ingrid Bergman or Elizabeth Taylor.
She's NOT even Faye Dunaway, Jennifer Connelly or Natalie Portman.
Not be any stretch of the imagination.

Jennifer Anniston is famous for what she looks like, what she's wearing -or barely wearing- and whom she's dating.
There's room for that in an entertainment-consumed society, of course, but is her life in particular really so fascinating that it's deserving of the out-of-proportione attention she nets among the non-entertainment media?
That's just it -she's NOT that interesting.

And while no serious well-informed person who closely follows contemporary entertainment or the real inner working of 'Show Biz' harbors any illusions about what Entertainment Tonight is now compared to what it once was or at least aspired to be, with serious reporting in the 1980's on what was happening behind-the-scenes at the Hollywood studios, their over-the-top coverage of Pitt's comments seem very sexist and parochial in a way that is hard to fathom in the year 2011.

As he stated himself to NBC-TV's Matt Lauer, can't he just be happy he is with Angelina Jolie?
Does everyone immediately have to jump to Zero Sum theory and say that it's a reflection on Anniston?
He was unhappy, unfulfilled and didn't want to be married to Anniston anymore.
Can't you cut the guy some slack?

Besides, it's always been clear to me that he wanted to have a family sooner than Anniston and that cleavage created the same sorts of difficulties for them that it does for millions and millions of married couples with a lot less resources than Pitt and Anniston.

As I've stated her previously, Sharon Waxman's TheWrap has made a name for itself in Hollywood in part because it refuses to play the role of talent-friendly, hand-holding media stooge.
Months ago, she wrote a great blog column about actor Rupert Everett attacking the liberal Hollywood studios for their politically naivete and for defending and promoting stars like Anniston no matter how poorly her films do at the box office.
(You could throw-in Sarah Jessica Parker to that mix as well.)

I strongly suggest you read it.

TheWrap
Rupert Everett Lashes Hollywood as Homophobic, Jennifer Aniston as Protected
Published: January 01, 2011 @ 10:42 pm
By Sharon Waxman

Rupert Everett has given scorched earth interviews before, but none like the one he gave the BBC this week, criticizing Hollywood and its “powers that be” for shutting out homosexuals like himself and protecting favored movie stars like Jennifer Aniston.

Read the rest of the article at:

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Thursday, June 2, 2011

Robert Redford will play Branch Rickey in Jackie Robinson film written/directed by LA Confidential Oscar-winner Brian Helgeland; but who plays Jackie?

Jackie Robinson Pictures, Images and Photos

This is among the best bits of news that I have heard all year.
Really!

Forget the hesitation mentioned below, for many reasons, Robert Redford will definitely play the role of Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey.

For the non-baseball/People Magazine crowd it will also seem very logical -the matching bookend to 'The Natural.'
But the casting question remains: who will play Jackie Robinson and his wife Rachel?

Until I hear a better suggestion, I'm rooting for Michael B. Jordan, late of Friday Night Lights and Parenthood, both of which I love. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0430107/


Los Angeles Times
24 Frames film blog
Robert Redford will play Branch Rickey -- or Bill Bryson
By Steven Zeitchik
June 1, 2011 | 5:17 pm

In April, Robert Redford tipped 24 Frames that he’d star in a movie about the relationship between Brooklyn Dodgers executive Branch Rickey and second baseman Jackie Robinson. The film would be written and directed by “L.A. Confidential” writer Brian Helgeland, and produced and financed by Legendary Pictures, we wrote. The company squirmed at our posting on the subject, saying it was early days to talk about the film.

Read the rest of the story at:


Entertainment Weekly
Robert Redford is Branch Rickey, but who should play Jackie Robinson?
by Jeff Labrecque
April 7, 2011
Robert Redford has been talking about making a Jackie Robinson movie for seven years, and according to the Los Angeles Times, it’s finally in motion. Brian Helgeland (A Knight’s Tale) will write and direct, focusing on the special relationship between the Hall of Fame player who broke baseball’s color barrier and Brooklyn Dodgers executive Branch Rickey, who orchestrated the historic move with both pragmatic and noble intentions.
Read the rest of the article at:



What's my Line? Jackie Robinson




What's my Line? Branch Rickey



You can watch the original 1950 film in which he played himself, The Jackie Robinson Story with Minor Watson as Branch Rickey here on YouTube:


Meanwhile, the woes continue at Chavez Ravine

Los Angeles Times
Dodgers Blog
Attendance at Dodger Stadium continues to plunge
By Steve Dilbeck and The Times’ Dodgers reporters



I've been receiving the Ebbetts Field Flannels catalog for years and a customer since my days up in D.C., so check out their website for something that fits your style.