Greatest Song Evah 12/13/24
London Calling
This might be an obvious selection, but just because it’s the obvious choice doesn’t mean it’s the incorrect one. The title track and leadoff track from the third album by The Clash, it is the perfect kickoff for an album that is on the short list of candidates for greatest album ever made.
And that classic riff makes that opening even better. It’s reminiscent of songs such as Kashmir or Edge Of Seventeen. Create a guitar line that is utterly hypnotic, keep it on loop, and build the song around that. The added twist is that it displays the band’s reggae influences quite well. It’s got that slight hesitation to it that is the signature characteristic of the reggae beat. Not quite reggae, not quite punk, it’s an ideal mash of the two.
The song is now 45 years old, yet it remains timely. Unfortunately a lot of the topics covered in the lyrics still resonate. The threat of nuclear annihilation, the dangers of raising river levels, police brutality. The great Joe Strummer sings with the level of fury that the song requires.
The Clash may have only recorded 5 albums with their classic lineup, but in that relatively brief time they put together a catalog that stands up with any of the giants of classic rock. And you know what they said? Well some of it was true.
The Ballot Countdown
Newcomer #9 Curtis Granderson - It’s more than just that Grandy at his best had a perfect combo of power, speed, and defense. It’s also that he had a great instinct for how to customize his hitting style for the requirements of his home park. He came up with the Tigers, and took advantage of the fact that Comerica Park’s deep fences result in an expansive outfield. He drove line drives into those power alleys and turned on the jets. In 2007 he, along with fellow ballot denizen Jimmy Rollins, were the 6th & 7th men in MLB history (and as of this moment the last 2) to hit 20 doubles, triples, and home runs in the same season.
Then, once he was traded to the Yankees he similarly took advantage of Yankee Stadium’s short right field porch and turned himself into a premier power hitter, topping the 40 home run mark in consecutive seasons. His home run totals dropped once he signed a free agent deal with the Mets, but he reverted to his skill at hitting to all fields and was a valuable member of the Mets most recent pennant winning squad.
This won’t add to his vote totals, but he has also long had a reputation for being a really nice guy, and I have really enjoyed his work on TBS. His career stats all fall well short of HOF level, but overall he was simply a good baseball player who was a tremendous asset to multiple winning teams. I salute you Grandy Man, you were always a good one.
Holdover #9 Andy Pettitte - In the big picture sense, his Hall candidacy has been decided. He admitted to using PED’s and therefore the torches and pitchforks contingent has written him off. In his admission he also claimed that he only used twice, and that was to help him recover more quickly from an injury. Make what you wish of this, but if he was being honest, do the hanging judges really want to take things so far that one mistake negates an entire career?
As for his on field credentials, he won 20 games twice on his way to 256 career victories, and more importantly he was one of the cornerstones, one may say a core, of the Yankees dynasty of the late 1990’s. The camera shots of him standing on the mound with his cap pulled down low as he stares at the catcher’s signal is one of the defining images of the time.
His lifetime totals are at or near the top of several career postseason pitching statistics. Still, I don’t know if I would rate him as a truly great pitcher. He only led the league in a significant statistical category once, and as much as he has a reputation as a great money pitcher, he also had several famous flameouts in the playoffs. His playoff stats are roughly on par with his regular season ones which are very good, but…
I don’t necessarily believe that a trophy full of Cy Young awards are a necessity to make it into the Hall, but I would prefer that a pitcher consistently ranks among the top 5 in the game. Was Pettitte that good? Probably top 10, which isn’t enough for me. Or if you wish to compare him to perennial playoff pitchers from an earlier generation, he was more of a Mike Cuellar or Ken Holtzman that he was a Jim Palmer. He is one of the most beloved players from those Yankees teams, but he falls short of the Hall of Fame, regardless of whatever type of PED penalty one chooses to sanction him with.
Your 2025 Media Award Winners
The next kinda sorta phase of the construction of the Class of 2025 came with this week’s announcement of the winners of the annual Ford Frick and BBWAA Career Excellence Awards. Allow me to pause and put on my Ummm Actually hat and act annoyingly pedantic. There is no such thing as a writers wing or a broadcasters wing in the Hall, nor are either of these winners Cooperstown inductees. That is why they are to be honored on the Saturday of induction weekend, not at the actual induction ceremony. These are prestigious lifetime achievement awards, but they do not constitute induction into the Hall Of Fame.
With that out of the way, Thomas Boswell has won the BBWAA award. Now retired, he was a columnist for the Washington Post for decades, and during much of that time he was one of the most visible baseball writers in the country. He was one of the major talking heads in the Ken Burns documentary, for example. That’s why I find it very surprising that he did not receive the award until now. I will always remember his annual article in Inside Sports magazine in which he would run through the results of his proprietary Total Average statistic, which years before the development of WAR served as a way to measure a player’s overall contribution beyond simply looking at the triple crown stats.
The Frick Award for career excellence in broadcasting most often goes to a play-by-play man who has been the voice of a specific franchise for generations, and that was the case this year. The prize goes to Tom Hamilton, who has been behind the mic for Cleveland Indians/Guardians games since 1990. In addition to that long career, he earned loads of viral fame from his call of a brawl between Jose Ramirez and Tim Anderson in the 2023 season. Down goes Anderson! Congratulations to both winners.
What A Career
Marshall Brickman died last week at the age of 85. He may not be a recognizable name, but he had about as wide ranging of a show biz career as one can imagine. His biggest claim to fame is that he won an Oscar for co-writing Annie Hall, but that only scratches the surface. He collaborated with Woody Allen on other films, but his life almost seems as if it came from a movie that he was not part of. Like Zelig, he was seemingly everywhere. So let’s start.
His first job was in the folk group The Tarriers, the same band that gave Alan Arkin his start. His next group, the New Journeymen also included John & Michelle Phillips. That band, with new members and a new name, went on to bigger things after Brickman left. He later performed in a bluegrass band with Eric Weissberg, and one of their songs featured dueling banjos - yes, those dueling banjos that were effectively used in the film Deliverance. He eventually focused on writing, and became the lead writer on The Tonight Show, where among his contributions he co-created Carnac the Magnificent and came up with the idea of Carnac’s curses “may you ___” in response to the audience after a joke bombed. There was so much more; he wrote & directed a handful of films on his own, and wrote Broadway plays such as Jersey Boys. That is quite a varied resume.
Several notable baseball players have also recently passed. Bill Melton died at the age of 79. A long time third baseman and later broadcaster for the White Sox, he led the American League in home runs in 1971. In a sign of how low-scoring the atmosphere was at the time, 33 homers were enough to lead the league. Merv Rettenmund died at the age of 81. He was a 4th outfielder and clutch pinch hitter for two of the signature franchises of the early to mid-70’s, the Orioles & the Reds. Never a star, but he was a familiar presence on our TV’s being that his teams constantly appeared on the Game of the Week and in the playoffs.
Rocky Colavito also passed away this week. One of the most popular players in the history of the Cleveland franchise, he was a prolific power hitter, leading the AL in homers & RBI once each and finishing in the top 10 of the MVP vote 4 separate times. His trade to Detroit in 1960 was such an unpopular move that some in Cleveland have claimed that it resulted in a Curse Of Colavito, and, well, they haven’t won a title since. Draw your own conclusions. Plus, isn’t that a great sounding name? Rocky Colavito. Even if you never saw him play, and I was too young to have seen him, just hearing that name inspires an immediate image. He looked exactly like you would expect a guy named Rocky Colavito to look. Colavito was 91.
Finally, the actor Michael Cole died this week. He was one of the stars of The Mod Squad, a show famously promoted with the line “one white, one black, one blonde.” He was a bit of a troubled soul, and struggled to find steady work following the end of the show. The show has faded from memory to some extent; I’m not sure how much relevance it has for people younger than I am, but it was a huge deal at the time and Cole, along with his costars Clarence Williams III & Peggy Lipton, was a big star. Cole was 84.
SNL Preview
Chris Rock will host for the 4th time this weekend. Even though he is a much honored SNL alum, his historical position in the show is more in line with someone like Julia Louis-Dreyfus. He was a regular for several years, but the show never figured out how to use him best, and it was not until after his departure that his career exploded. On top of that, his skill set is that of a great standup more than that of a great sketch comedian. All of which goes to say that it’s probably safe to not expect too much; as big of a name as he is he is not one who is likely to pull the show out of the morass that it has been stuck in so far this season. Rising star Gracie Abrams will be the musical guest. And it’s practically a given that we will see a Luigi Mangione sketch starring Marcello Hernandez.
50 Years Ago - Before the Flood
A few weeks ago I talked about Bob Dylan’s Planet Waves album, which was both a return to form and a creative reunion with The Band. Only a few months after that release, the live album Before the Flood came out. In a reflection of how quickly things moved back then, Planet Waves was released in January, the concerts that the majority of the songs in this collection came from took place in February, and the live album was in record stores in June.
Dylan’s first official live album, it as much of a Band album as it is a Dylan one. In fact it is co-credited to both of them. Not only did The Band serve as the backing group, but they also performed on their own in the shows. Of the 21 tracks on the record, 13 are Bob Dylan songs and 8 are from The Band sans Dylan. Both artists had a lot of experience working with each other, so they sound very tight and in great form.
One of the challenges with live Dylan is that he loves to tinker with arrangements. The one time that I saw him perform live was back in 1986 when he toured with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. It was similar to the setup here; the Heartbreakers backed up and Dylan would intermittently step aside and allow Petty to perform some of his classics. I’m not exaggerating when I say that for about half of the songs there would be a murmur in the crowd during the opening notes as we collectively tried to figure out which song it was that he was playing.
He did not get too adventurous with the arrangements on this collection. The songs sound slightly different from the studio versions, but nothing so radical that it’s unrecognizable. Before the Flood is not the only release from this tour. This past summer, Sony Music released The 1974 Live Recordings, an epic 27 disc collection documenting the complete tour, or at least the Dylan portions. As much as I love Bob Dylan, 27 discs containing 431 songs is the very definition of overkill. (For non-masochists there is a 20 song sampler available.) Before the Flood is sufficient.
Closing Laughs
A bankruptcy judge rejected the sale of Infowars to The Onion. This is why we can’t have nice things. Have a great weekend all, and I will see you again on Monday.
