As Roger Miller sang in 1964, dang me! It’s the beginning of May and the Red Sox are playing better baseball than the Rays and Astros, despite a list of injuries that’s as long as the trip from Boston to Providence (I won’t complain that manager Alex Cora often puts up a AAA lineup, since those are the fractured ribs and bum obliques that every team suffers; although I wouldn’t mind if the Yankees’ indestructible Juan Soto comes up a bothersome “hammy” this week) and when I slip into delusional mode I think maybe the team competes for a wild card spot in October. Slap me crazy, Rutherford, since that’s unlikely. Anyway, I expected little from the team, and as noted in this space before the season began, I’m watching most Sox games because it’s still a thrill to see potential stars like Ceddanne Rafaela, Wilyer Abreu and new ace Tanner Houck.
As someone who doesn’t tire of trading Godfather quotes with my fellow senior citizen Rick—and if that tags me as a narcissistic Boomer, bite me—I felt like Hyman Roth last Sunday when I settled in front of the BIG TV and switched between the Yankees/Brewers and Orioles/A’s in the afternoon. Blogger/sportswriter Craig Calcaterra had a good line about the Yanks result: “Anyway, the Yankees scored 15 runs in back-to-back games. Which I’m gonna consider to be an homage to the Steroid Era, during which my 23rd birthday took place.”
No stress, since the Sox were televised that night on the horrific ESPN, a game that became so tense in the later innings that my facial tics worked overtime. Roth told Michael Corleone that he enjoyed watching sports on TV, saying, “I’ve loved baseball ever since Arnold Rothstein fixed the World Series in 1919.” My own instantaneous love for the game came in the early-1960s (pre-JFK rubout and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” topping the charts) when my parents, two brothers and I were spending a few days on a historical tour in Boston—after the obligatory visit to a cranky grandfather in New Hampshire—and one morning I was transfixed reading the local papers, which were exultant over a pair of Sox victories, rare in that dead period for the team, several years before the “Impossible Dream” of 1967.
On the topic of ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball,” a broadcast that’s never recovered from the jettisoning of Jon Miller and Joe Morgan, it was distracting to see the gambling odds on the left side of the screen. (The Sox’s NESN has a similar feature.) MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred is an exorbitantly-paid laughingstock, and his claim that the game’s demographics are starting to reach coveted young adults is absurd. “MLB says the efforts are working: Ticket-buyers are younger, more teens are watching the game (yes, on old-fashioned TV), social media accounts such as Jomboy Media generate big-traffic numbers with kids looking for snappy highlight breakdowns, and an education on the game's greats comes on a deep dive from a few hours playing MLB: The Show.” I like the pitch clock and shorter games, but shaving a half hour off a given contest isn’t driving the young to baseball. It’s gambling, period, and that’s going to blow up in Manfred’s face sooner rather than later, once it’s clear that this growing addiction is bankrupting people.
Intermission: while watching the Orioles game on Sunday, during a commercial I came across a Hoboken, New Jersey Patch article that was an apt example of how far journalism has fallen. It’s bad enough that showboat actor Timothee Chalamet is playing Bob Dylan in the upcoming A Complete Unknown, but the writer of the snippet wrote: “The streets and a local bar [in Hoboken] were made to look like the East Village in 1965, at the start of Dylan’s career.” It’s not my intention to belittle a Patch writer (probably paid peanuts), but really, as anyone even vaguely familiar with Dylan’s career knows that he wasn’t hanging out, playing for two bits in the hat in ’65, but was an international star who transcended pop music. And in this case, author Caren Lissner isn’t 21: she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania “in the 1990s,” according to her profile, and has written two novels. I won’t hazard a look-see at those books, but maybe her editor was more skilled.
The photo above was taken at Camden Yards at a family outing (when the Orioles were so-so instead of a lock in this year’s post-season). My in-laws Rudy and Daisy are featured.
Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: California bans “revenge porn”; the New England Patriots are accused of cheating; RadioShack files for bankruptcy; Chantal Akerman dies; NBC news anchorman Brian Williams is suspended for six months for “embellishment” on a story; Mad Max: Fury Road is released after years of planning; Joey Logano wins the Indy 500; “posh” British actor Eddie Redmayne hadn’t yet been forgotten; Oneohtrix Point Never releases Garden of Delete; Billy Joe Royal and Blaze Starr die; John Boehner resigns as House Speaker; Anne Enright’s The Green Road and Anne Tyler’s A Spool of Blue Thread are released; and Gregory Pardlo wins Poetry Pulitzer.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023