Greatest Song Evah 12/22/23

You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet

If there’s a more perfect example of solid mid-1970’s guitar rock I’d love to hear it. Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s biggest American hit is the perfect song to play air instruments to, whether it be guitar or drums. It’s got that great slightly echoed vibe to it, and the chorus really kicks.

There’s a lot going on in the production here. The way the separate guitar lines interact with each other is really well played. And of course, the stuttering in the chorus is the signature characteristic of this song. In short, this is the biggest compliment I can give to any song. Even after as many times as I have heard this song I still turn up the volume every time I hear those opening notes. Our Canadian neighbours have given us so much great music over the years; this stands up with any of them.

The Countdown Continues

Newcomer #2 - Chase Utley. My fellow Mets fans are gonna hate me for ranking him this highly, or fans of any team besides the Phillies and Dodgers for that matter. If there were such a place as a Hall Of Fame For Guys Whom You Hate But Would Love If He Played For Your Team he would be an obvious inductee. As for Cooperstown? His counting stats fall somewhat short, as he did not receive regular playing time until his age 26 season. He’s also more of a sabermetric favorite; his value lies more in his overall contribution to winning atmospheres than it does in one bright shiny number. But I think he qualifies.

Unless you count hit by pitch as a major stat, the only significant black ink on his Baseball Reference came from leading the league in runs scored once. But there is a lot to like about his candidacy. He made 6 All-Star teams, won 5 Silver Slugger Awards, and received MVP votes in 5 different seasons. Although he never won a Gold Glove, he was a top notch defensive second baseman. Outstanding defense at such a crucial position combined with exceptional baserunning skills and OPS+ numbers in the 125-135 range added up to outstanding WAR totals each year; he was above 7 for 5 consecutive seasons; that’s near MVP level.

I get the reasons why voters or fans would dismiss his chances. The relatively late start to his time as a regular left him shy of 2000 career hits. To find the most recent player the BBWAA voted in with a hit total that low you’d have to go all the way back to Ralph Kiner in 1975. The paucity of league leading totals is another minus on the ledger. I think the totality of his skills adds up to a Hall of Fame player, however. He could beat you by lining a game winning double on Friday, by diving deep into the hole to save a crucial run on Saturday, and by taking the extra base on Sunday.

Holdover #2 - Todd Helton. It took me a while to come around on Helton. I couldn’t get past the Coors Field factor, but that’s one of the chief benefits of advanced stats. Many of the numbers take park factors into consideration, which paints a more accurate picture of a player’s production. While it’s true that his home/road splits were dramatic, his road stats were still damn impressive. He was clearly not a high altitude illusion.

Even taking the above into account, his 2000 season was unreal. In addition to leading the NL in hits, doubles, and RBI, he also led the league in all 3 triple slash categories. It was the first of 2 consecutive seasons with at least 400 total bases, as well as the first of his 5 consecutive years with an OPS above 1.000. Looking at more advanced numbers, over his best 10 year stretch his average OPS+ was 143, and he was also one of the better defensive first basemen in the game. That helped raise his WAR above 6 for 5 consecutive years.

He is currently 20th in career doubles, and he finished with the rare .300/.400/.500 triple slash. Once again, playing half of his games in the thin air of Denver helped raise those numbers, but lots of guys played for the Rockies. No one else provided that much production for as long as he did. Last year he fell 11 votes shy of induction; it’s a near certainty that he will gain the additional support he needs this year. He will be a worthy choice.

A Seasonal Trope

This isn’t as common in the age of shorter television seasons, but back in the day most TV shows would occasionally grab the opportunity to get very silly. It’s easy to understand why. When you have to pump out 22 new episodes each year, there’s only so much you can do without repeating yourself. And as much as actors relish the steady work, playing the same character with the same beats 22 times gets a bit repetitive. So, everyone has a good time if there’s an episode where a character hits his head and imagines that he’s been transported to Arthurian times or has a dream in which they’re living in the colonial era. At least it’s something different.

One of the more reliable examples of this would come this time of year. Several series have done their own riff on A Christmas Carol. It almost writes itself; make one of the characters a Scrooge stand in, other cast members portray the 3 spirits, and so on. The problem is that by necessity you can’t radically change characterizations in a long running series. The whole point of A Christmas Carol is that Scrooge saw the error of his ways and vowed to change. That’s tough to do on a TV show without drastically changing the premise.

For example, look at when Family Ties did their take. It makes sense to portray Alex as a budding Scrooge, but the whole purpose of his character was that he was the avatar of the Reagan era greed is good mentality. You don’t have a show anymore if Alex is no longer Alex.

Then there was the time WKRP In Cincinnati travelled that route. This one also seemed logical; just picture the usual depictions of the spirits. The Ghost of Christmas Present generally looks like a participant in a Bacchanal feast, so Venus was perfect for that role. And with his dark shades, dark pea coat, and general gloomy demeanor, Johnny Fever already looked like the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. But Mr. Carlson did not fit in as a Scrooge type. He may have been a weak boss, but not a miserly one. It didn’t quite work.

The TV show that I believe best captured the Christmas Carol essence was a one-season show that is barely remembered today. The Famous Teddy Z was based on a piece of Hollywood folklore. The legend is that one time a mailroom clerk at a talent agency picked Marlon Brando up at an airport & during the ride called Brando out for his appalling behavior. Brando so admired the kid’s moxie that he made the kid his new agent. The series duplicated that tale with Jon Cryer as the young employee who told the Brando stand-in that he wasn’t having any of his bullcrap. Unfortunately, ig only lasted the one season, and wasn’t able to live up to the standards of its outstanding pilot. If the series made any lasting impact today it’s from the memory of Alex Rocco’s Al Floss. Years before Ari Gold met Vince Chase this was the quintessential high-powered shark of an agent. He made a natural Scrooge, forcing his employees to work on Christmas so that he could go on his Hawaiian vacation. The Christmas Carol dream happens, but when he wakes up the next morning he simply says “screw it,” grabs his luggage, and heads for the airport. Perfect.

Godspeed, Bryant Gumbel

On Tuesday evening HBO premiered the final episode of Real Sports, ending a 29 year run. Traditionally the last episode of each year would serve as a wrap-up; the correspondents hold a roundtable discussion of the stories they had covered over the preceding 12 months. This time, in a supersized episode they all looked back at nearly 3 decades worth of memorable stories and personalities. It really was a special show; it’s difficult to imagine the current media landscape being able to support a similar show. That’s a true loss.

As part of the promotional run for the show’s end Bryant Gumbel has strongly implied that this is probably a good time for him to retire from television entirely. If so, this brings to a close one of the most noteworthy careers in broadcast history. He may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but he has been a near constant presence on our tee vees for almost a half century.

He spent the first several years of his national career as NBC’s studio host for almost every major sporting event in the network’s inventory. He was a natural born broadcaster; extremely comfortable in front of a camera with a very smooth speaking style. He felt somewhat limited by sports, and moved to the news division to take the co-host job on the Today Show in 1982. At the time he gave the impression that he almost felt as if broadcasting sports was beneath him. Look at his hosting gig at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. He had all of the enthusiasm of an 8 year old child forced to eat vegetables; he looked like he would rather be anywhere than there.

It’s odd that he thrived as long as he did as the host of a morning show. That job requires a specific set of skills that not everyone has. It is a news show, but it’s also meant to ease viewers into the rest of the day. As a host, you could find yourself interviewing a head of state and then a half hour later putting on an apron and cooking pancakes. That’s why Savannah Guthrie is such a perfect morning show host. She freely admits that she’s a big dork who gets easily starstruck, but if breaking news suddenly happens she can turn on a dime and get serious. Gumbel, on the other hand, leaned almost entirely towards the serious side. There are a lot of words you can use to describe him; warm and fuzzy are not two of them.

Yet between Today and the CBS Morning Show he hosted morning shows for more than 2 decades. He started hosting Real Sports during this period. I gave my praise to the show when the announcement of its imminent end came out, but let me repeat it again. It was initially promoted as a sports version of 60 Minutes, and in its infancy it probably did focus a little too much on hard hitting exposes. It eventually found a better balance of hard news/uplifting stories/profiles of interesting people. Some of the best journalism in recent years came from that show. It will be missed. And as polarizing as Gumbel is, admit it, you’ll miss him as well. It’ll be odd to see him completely absent from the scene.

A Few NBA Notes

Time is flying; we’re already almost 1/3 of the way through the NBA regular season, so it’s a good time for a few quick hits. First off, a mea culpa. I mocked the Clippers when they hit a deep slump at the exact moment they traded for James Harden. He insisted that all was well, the team just needed to get some reps together & Harden himself needed to get in proper game shape. That’s exactly what happened. Although the Clips lost last night they were working on a 9 game winning streak, Kawhi Leonard is playing some the best ball of his career, and they look like a legitimate championship contender.

Ja Morant returned from his suspension and didn’t miss a beat. In his first game back he scored 34 points with 8 assists and hit the game-winning shot to boot. The Grizzlies currently sit 6 games out of a spot in the play-in tournament, that could be too big of a hole to climb out of. It’s estimated that they would need to play at a 50 win pace the rest of the way to qualify. It’s doable, but they can’t afford an even a minor setback. Good health will be paramount.

The 4 teams that reached the semis of the IST have taken divergent paths. The two losing semi finalists have thrived since. Milwaukee has gone 6-0; New Orleans 5-1. The finalists? Indiana is 2-5; the Lakers are 1-5. It won’t be long until we hear “the tournament harms teams, don’t ask me how, it just does” hot takes on par with the annual “Home Run Derby messes up a guy’s swing” discourse.

Finally, here’s a crazy stat. Joel Embiid currently has more points than minutes played. How impressive is that? In the history of the league, only Wilt Chamberlain has done that for an entire season. No other great scorer - not Michael Jordan, not George Gervin, not even T.R. Dunn - has managed to achieve that feat. Definitely worth watching as the season progresses. Want another crazy number? The Pistons have lost 25 games in a row, only 1 loss shy of matching the league record for futility. To put it in further perspective, the Texas Rangers have won 3 games since the Pistons’ most recent W.

My Dips*** Mayor, Still Undefeated

I guess the best thing you can say about Eric Adams is that he didn’t have the worst week that a current or former New York City mayor has had.

First, WTF? Second, he had plenty of time to come up with a response to his original gaffe and that was the best he could come up with? Somehow, I don’t think “New York! Where a 9/11 can happen at any time!” will catch on as the new tourism slogan. There’s something not right in that man’s head.

Album/Song Of The Year

One of the side effects of my age is that I just don’t have the amount of time to search for new music that I did when I was younger. If only I were still working in college radio, where I could dive into a pile of records and find neat new stuff. So with the caveat that there is likely some fantastic stuff that escaped my radar, my favorite album & song of the year both came from the same artist.

boygenius released an EP a a couple of years ago, but their first full length album as a unit finally came out this year & it was well worth the wait. A sort of supergroup consisting of three top notch indie singer-songwriters, the voices of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus mesh perfectly. Each of them has put out some fantastic stuff on their own, but working together they really bring out the best in each other. Is it too easy to call them a modern day, distaff, LGBTQ Crosby, Stills, & Nash?

Their album, simply titled The Record, is my choice for album of the year, and Cool About It is song of the year. Each of the three take turns with a verse of their own, & it perfectly demonstrates the unique timbre of each of their voices as well as the splendid way in which they blend together. They received multiple Grammy nominations this year. It figures to be a great night for SZA & Taylor Swift, but I hope boygenius ends the night with a few trophies themselves.

Holiday Schedule

I won’t have a newsletter on Monday, so there will only be the regular Wednesday & Friday postings next week. I will do the regular 3 newsletters the following week, so you will all have something waiting for you to read when you wake up from your New Years Eve debauchery.

Closing Laughs

And with that, here’s wishing a wonderful holiday weekend to all. Try not to hit the egg nog too hard, otherwise visions of sugar plums may dance through your head. See you all on Wednesday!