Greatest Song Evah 10/25/24

Suedehead

It only took a few months following the Smiths’ breakup for Morrissey to come out with his first single as a solo artist, and he immediately hit it out of the park. Suedehead still had a bit of a Smiths feel; Johnny Marr’s distinct guitar tones were not completely replicated, but this comes reasonably close. Better yet, Morrissey’s misanthropy wasn’t yet as exhausting as it would soon become.

I like the production of this record; the echo effects don’t make it feel like a 1980’s record. One of my big turnoffs from this era is the heavy use of electronic drums. Not so here; there is a very clean drum sound in this one.

It’s always been hard to figure out Morrissey’s whole deal. How much of it is self parody, and how much of it is genuine self loathing? This song has some nice lyrical touches; it’s about an old lover whom he just can’t seem to get rid of. “Why do you come here when you know it makes things hard for me?” “You had to sneak into my room just to read my diary.”

Morrissey’s persona is often so overwhelming that it’s easy to forget the reason why he became such a big deal in the first place. He is a very skilled vocalist, listen to way in which he rides the melody. Well done.

Fernando

Taking a look at Fernando Valenzuela’s Baseball Reference page only scratches the surface. A 17 year career, 173 career victories, a career ERA of 3.54 & a career ERA+ of 104. There’s a healthy scattering of bold type to seen, and if you move your mouse all the way to the right you can see plenty of awards. But he was much more than that. He Meant Something.

It’s a cliche to say that it’s hard to understand Fernandomania if you weren’t there to witness it, but it was so true. Here was a 20 year old kid, more than a tad paunchy, yet somehow had both the talent and the poise to take the league by storm. A last minute emergency Opening Day start in 1981 was the first of 8 consecutive starts in which he went 9 innings. It took no time at all until attendance figures - for both home and away games - exploded whenever his turn in the rotation came up. He swept both the NL Cy Young and Rookie Of the Year awards in 1981.

1981 was also the season in which the Dodgers won their first World Series title in more than 15 years, and Valenzuela was instrumental in making that happen. After dropping the first 2 games to the Yankees, Game 3 was a much ballyhooed matchup between rookie aces Valenzuela and Dave Righetti. Valenzuela gritted his way through a complete game victory. He gave up 9 hits & walked 7, but limited the damage to only 4 runs, and that game began a stretch of 4 consecutive wins which gave the Dodgers the championship.

His cultural impact was similarly massive. The Dodgers franchise had an awkward relationship with the local Mexican community; they had displaced many residents from Chavez Ravine when Dodger Stadium was constructed. Valenzuela’s emergence brought tremendous pride to that community, and Valenzuela made it OK for that population to embrace the team, a relationship that continues to this day.

All those innings eventually took its toll; 1986 was his last big year. He was on the 1988 championship team, but due to a shoulder injury he was not on the postseason roster. He stuck around with the Dodgers for a couple more years and even pitched a no-hitter in 1990. But he had an acrimonious breakup with the franchise. He bounced around several teams until he retired after the 1997 season. After a few years of estrangement he finally returned to the Dodgers in 2003 to serve as the analyst on the team’s Spanish language broadcasts. (The first hint the public had that there was something to be concerned about was that he quietly stepped aside towards the end of this season to concentrate on his health.) Last year the team broke from its policy of only retiring numbers for players who have made the Hall Of Fame (Jim Gilliam had been the only previous exception) when they officially took his #34 out of circulation.

And even though he is not in Cooperstown, so what? There is no shame in your favorite player not making it into the Hall, the memories are always there. It’s safe to say that those memories of Valenzuela will last much longer than those of many players who are in. When Luis Tiant recently passed I mentioned how so many young fans, myself included, loved to mimic his delivery. Same with Valenzuela. I never tried it myself - I would have likely injured myself if I ever attempted to impersonate a left handed delivery - but his was a similarly distinctive motion. That long pause mid motion, as he looked towards the sky before throwing screwball after screwball. That image is seared in all of our collective memories.

Fernando Valenzuela was exactly the type of player who simply made the game much more fun to watch. He was only 63 years old. It’s never a “good” time to lose someone that young, but it’s even more poignant that it came at the eve of the first Dodgers/Yankees World Series matchup since his 1981 heroics.

The Fall Classic

About that World Series… We have all seen how big of a crapshoot the postseason is in this era of expanded playoffs. All of those small sample sizes create an atmosphere ripe for upsets; it’s little wonder that it’s increasingly rare for the teams with the best records in their respective leagues to meet up. Well, we’ve got it this year. (Why did it have to happen in a year in which the Yankees had the best AL record? Serenity now! Serenity now!)

Talk about a star-studded World Series. Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge. Mookie Betts and Juan Soto. Ideally the Series should be a showcase for the best of the best, and that is absolutely the case this year. It’s so great to see that after languishing in Anaheim all those years that Ohtani is now only 4 victories away from a championship. That would put him one up on Tungsten Arm O’Doyle.

As the wheels continue to turn in my head while I try to figure out which WS finish would be more likely to result in Juan Soto taking his talents to Flushing, there is this. In 2020 the Dodgers World Series winning roster included catcher Will Smith. Then, from 2021-2023 nomadic relief pitcher Will Smith was on the roster for each World Series winning team. Now, the Dodgers, and their own Will Smith, are back. There’s no arguing with history. The Roaring Twenties are clearly the Will Smith Decade. You can’t win a World Series without a Will Smith. That’s just science. I’m picking the Dodgers to win.

BTW, the weather in New York looks like it will be unseasonably mild the 3 days that games are scheduled to be played in Yankee Stadium. The chances of seeing a middle infielder dressed like he’s preparing to summit Mt. Everest are slim.

Sacramento Update

The Artists Formerly Known As The Oakland A’s made some news regarding their temporary home. Sutter Health Park in Sacramento will not convert to an artificial turf field after all and will stick with the natural grass. The original thinking was that because the minor league Sacramento River Cats will continue to play their home games at the park the wear and tear would be too much for the field. The MLBPA pushed back on that idea; with summer temperatures in Sacramento reaching as high as 110 degrees the thought of having to stand on an ungodly hot field was unacceptable.

Reviewing Olympic Sports

Sailing - I’ve been intensely following the Olympics since 1976, and in that time I don’t believe I have watched a single moment of Olympic sailing - or yachting, as it was previously known. Of course, ABC never carved out any time to air the sport, but even once NBC began to use its entire cable infrastructure, there was no sailing to be seen. There’s a good reason for that, which is also the same reason why I don’t even attempt to sample it on Peacock.

Simply put, it is a major time commitment. There were a total of 10 events on the Paris schedule, each one consisting of a series of approximately 8 races or so spread across several days. The length of the each race varies depending on the specific boat, but suffice it to say that these are not sprints. If you had followed the America’s Cup during that brief period when it was prominent enough to make it onto the cover of Sports Illustrated you will recall that most boat races are quite lengthy.

This makes it a difficult sport to follow casually. Another factor is the format. Once again it varies depending on the boat, but in most cases the standings are determined by cumulative results from each race with the worst result tossed out. This is good in the sense that a pilot can recover from one bad race, but it also means that following the event is slightly more complicated, or at least more complicated than it’s worth. So, even though sailing contains two elements that I generally look for - a race along with a scenic backdrop - I’m happy to ignore this sport.

Shooting - The one & only time I watched shooting was during the Los Angeles 1984 games. Al Trautwig called the sport, and in his intro to the first event he brought up the point that the competitors need to bring down their heart rate significantly in order to keep their hands steady. Then, once the event ended and the winner clinched gold, she had almost no reaction. She was still so much in the zone that she was incapable of showing any immediate emotions. That robbed it of any excitement from me.

That’s probably an unfair response. After all, archers act similarly, yet I am willing to spend a few minutes watching archery. Maybe it’s the cacophony that comes with all of those firing guns. It’s just too noisy for me. I give this sport credit for making it more viewer friendly. This isn’t the case for every single event, but most begin with a mass qualifying round with the top 8 shooters advancing to the final. Then, the finals are staged elimination style. Each gets 10 shots at the target; lowest score is eliminated and the process continues until the last 2 remaining stage a gold medal shoot off. That sounds like it would be an exciting watch.

50 Years Ago - The Conversation

The Conversation is a movie whose reputation has only increased over time. In an era filled with paranoid thrillers the conventional wisdom is that this might be the best of them all. There are even some who consider this to be Francis Ford Coppola’s singular masterpiece, even above the first two Godfathers & Apocalypse Now. I wouldn’t go that far, although I admittedly saw this before I was old enough to fully appreciate it.

The Conversation starred Gene Hackman as a surveillance expert who was hired by a man known only as The Director to spy on, and plant a bug on, a couple. The plot turns on a crucial point. He is able to isolate a conversation but as it turns out he misinterprets an important sentence, more specifically which particular word needed to be stressed. Murder eventually follows.

The cast is filled with some of the top actors of the era. Robert Duvall at his most foreboding was The Director. Teri Garr and Harrison Ford had small roles. The couple was portrayed by Frederic Forrest and Cindy Williams. (Williams was good enough that you have to wonder what her career would have looked like on an Earth 2 in which she had never gotten the role of Shirley.) The cast also included classic 1970’s That Guy Allen Garfield as well as the great John Cazale. Cazale had one of the most unique careers in Hollywood history. Because he largely focused on theater and because he died young, he only acted in 5 feature films. All 5 of those received Oscar nominations for Best Picture. You can’t top that track record.

But this was Gene Hackman’s movie all the way. His career was so impressive that it’s basically impossible to point to one role and say with certainty that it is his best work; this has gotta be near the top. Vince Gilligan obviously studied this movie carefully; one of the defining characteristics of both Breaking Bad & Better Call Saul was the number of long scenes in which we watched Mike Ehrmantraut quietly and methodically go about his work. That could be seen several times in this movie. The closing sequence always sticks with me. MILD SPOILER ALERT. Once he knows that his own apartment has been bugged he tears the whole place apart in an attempt to find the listening device.

Consider 1974 once again. In that one 12 month period Mel Brooks released both Blazing Saddles AND Young Frankenstein. Coppola released both The Godfather Part II AND The Conversation. How many times in the modern era has a director released 2 all-time classics like that in the same year? Off the top of my head I can think of Steven Spielberg in 1993 with Schindler’s List and Jurassic Park. Any others?

Closing Laughs

That will be all for this day and for this week. Have a great weekend everyone, thanks for reading, and we’ll talk again on Monday.