The Wednesday Newsletter
The Outsiders - Right Field
My trip around the diamond to choose the top 10 players from each position who are not in the Hall Of Fame ends in right field. I’m sure you have an image in your mind of what a great right fielder should look like - a power hitter with a cannon arm. There are guys who fit that profile on this list; who is the best of the best?
Dwight Evans (127 OPS+, 67.2 bWAR)
Bobby Bonds (129, 57.8)
Dave Parker (121, 40.1)
Reggie Smith (137, 64.5)
Rocky Colavito (132, 44.9)
Sammy Sosa (128, 58.6)
Vic Wertz (122, 27.0)
Gary Sheffield (140, 60.5)
Jack Clark (137, 53.1)
Darryl Strawberry (138, 42.1)
Dwight Evans has a lot of things going against him in the search for proper respect. He was often overshadowed by teammates with higher profiles, and he was more of a multi-skilled player than the sort who does one thing so well that he wows people. Plus, his best season came in the strike-shortened 1981 year, so he didn’t accumulate the counting stats that he could have. He provided elite defense, and remained a productive player well into his thirties. Bobby Bonds became known in the latter half of his career for the frequency with which he was traded; he played for 7 different teams in his final 7 seasons. Before his nomadic period he was the perfect blend of power and speed. At the time 30/30 seasons were a relative rarity; he accomplished it 5 times.
What I said before about a prototypical right fielder being a power hitter with a strong arm? That’s Dave Parker. An imposing physical presence with 2 batting crowns and an MVP award, he was briefly in that “this guy is the best player in the game” conversation. Reggie Smith was one of the best switch hitters of his time, and was a key component of such fondly remembered teams as the Impossible Dream Red Sox, and the Dodgers team with whom he was part of a quartet of players who hit 30 home runs. Smith twice finished in the top 5 of the MVP vote.
Rocky Colavito almost sounds like a character made up by a lazy scriptwriter, but he was real and spectacular. He topped 40 homers three times in a 4 year period, and finished in the top 10 of the MVP vote thrice. Speaking of guys who racked up a plethora of home runs along with strong MVP showings, Sammy Sosa is such a difficult player to properly evaluate. He was once a 30/30 man himself in his younger days, but by the time he bulked up he was so immobile that he was nothing more than a bulky slugger. He loses points for having next to no value when he wasn’t pulverizing the ball.
Vic Wertz is best known for hitting the long fly ball which resulted in Willie Mays’s legendary catch in the 1954 World Series, but he was a fine player. He moved around a lot from team to team, and his playing time was inconsistent, but he was still able to finish in the top 10 of the MVP race 4 different times. Gary Sheffield is similar to Sosa in some ways. He had tremendous power, and looked so fierce in the batter’s box. On the other hand, he has some of the worst defensive numbers in history. That needs to be taken into account.
Jack Clark had a lot of difficulty staying healthy in the latter portion of his career, but when available he was a very valuable hitter, particularly in his time with the Cardinals. He was basically the only one on that team who was a home run threat. He used his keen batting eye to lead the NL in both on base percentage and slugging percentage in 1987. Spot #10 was basically a coin flip between Darryl Strawberry & Ken Singleton, but I’ll choose to go with Straw. Before back injuries sapped his power (and I will continue to insist that physical maladies were just as big of a factor in his swift decline than his substance abuse was) he was an outstanding home run hitter, with one of the most majestic swings you will ever see.
Classic SNL Recap - Season 12 Finale
There may not be a longer standing criticism of SNL than its overreliance on recurring characters. To be fair, the show has noticeably cut back on that in the past few years. Which leads me to season 12. On these rewatches I take a random sample of 3 episodes per season, but this is still worth noting. In the 3 episodes I watched from this year, Church Chat appeared in all 3, as did pathological liar Tommy Flanagan.
Dennis Hopper had the honor of hosting the season finale; this show coming at the height of his post-addiction renaissance. This week also featured one of the better host/musical act pairings. Roy Orbison was in the early stages of a major comeback in his own right. This was more than a year before the first Traveling Wilburys album came out, but one of the catalysts that spurred his comeback was the use of In Dreams in Blue Velvet. (Yes, I know it was Dean Stockwell’s character who lip synced the song, but when you think of Blue Velvet, you think of Dennis Hopper. So there is a real Hopper/Orbison connection.) This was also a few months after Orbison’s induction as part of the second class of artists in the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.
Speaking of Blue Velvet, it inspired my choice for the top sketch of the week, which is unfortunately not on YouTube. It was a game show parody in which Hopper’s Blue Velvet character Frank Booth hosted a show titled What’s That Smell? Members of a celebrity panel were given gas masks and asked to identify the smells, and in a later round given dirty towels in which they were asked which celebrities the towels smelled like. The celeb panelists were Dana Carvey as Robin Leach, Jan Hooks as Tammy Faye Bakker, and Jon Lovitz as Judd Nelson, who proved to be a true odor identification savant.
The show mined Hopper’s reputation very well. The monologue made multiple references to his drug-laden past, and he brought the right level of creepiness to make a perfect foil for the Church Lady. His acting skills were also put to good use in a late-episode sketch in which he and Hooks portrayed mechanics in a southwest desert working on a broken down car owned by Phil Hartman’s yuppie lawyer. It was gradually revealed that the mechanics were considerably smarter than appearances would lead Hartman to believe.
I also liked the goofiness of the This Week With David Brinkley piece. It was a one-joke sketch, but just silly enough to work. Since this was 1987, the Sunday morning panel consisted entirely of stern white guys - in addition to Hartman as Brinkley, the sketch featured Carvey as George Will, Lovitz as Hodding Carter, and Kevin Nealon as Sam Donaldson. The joke was that Donaldson constantly leaned so far back on his chair that he was interrupting the proceedings to plead for help lest he tip over. He blamed it all on an allegedly faulty chair.
This was a fairly trifling episode, but it’s more of a minor blip in a triumphant season. Season 12 was one of the highest points in SNL’s long history, having added some hall of fame level repertory players into the mix. This age of glory continued into season 13. Next week I’ll look at that season premiere - hosted by Steve Martin. If my memory serves correctly there are at least 2 awesome sketches in that one that I’m looking forward to watching again.
Today’s Olympic Notes
The Olympics always include all sorts of world records set on the playing fields, but we may have also seen a world record in the art of Liberty Valencing, with the legend having become the fact. There are many who are making the claim that Raygun has single-handedly killed breaking as an Olympic sport. It’s true that breaking will not be part of the program in Los Angeles 2028, but that decision was made long before Raygun’s kangaroo hops.
Host nations/cities can include as many as 6 “test” sports for inclusion. That is how breaking wound up as part of the program, or why baseball and softball were not Olympic sports in Paris. Turns out there aren’t a lot of baseball stadiums in Paris, and there wasn’t much interest in building one that would immediately become superfluous. LA organizers did not select breaking for one of those open spots; it seems odd that they passed up the opportunity to stage such a competition at the setting of Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, but what do I know? For the record, there will be 5 of these test sports in Los Angeles: baseball/softball, cricket, flag football lacrosse, and squash. Sport climbing, skateboarding, and surfing have now been officially named as permanent additions to the Olympic program. In a sign of how drastically the sporting landscape has changed, as of this moment boxing has been eliminated.
So no, Raygun did not kill Olympic breaking. Now, it’s conceivable that organizers of the 2032 Brisbane Olympics could attempt to bring back breaking for one of those test slots. It’s also conceivable that the IOC would not approve that request. That’s a discussion for another day.
Current Chicago White Sox Pace
Now that the Pale Hose have been mathematically eliminated from postseason, it feels like piling on to constantly point out how poor their record is. I’ll pop in from time to time if they continue to threaten the 1962 Mets’ record for most losses. At the moment, the dream is still alive. They lost yet again last night, dropping the pace to 38-124.
Phil Donahue 1935-2024
I’m not sure if younger generations understand what a big deal Phil Donahue was. The short version of his story is that he was one of the major pioneers of the daytime talk show, but that minimizes his impact. When people think of the format the first thought is of the Springer/Povich sort of train wreck, and to be honest Donahue did on occasion delve into tabloidy topics. At heart he was a serious journalist, which meant that not only did he frequently produce programs of real substance, but he instinctually treated more titillating pieces with respect.
I think back to what was one of his more famous episodes; one on crossdressing. He returned from a commercial break wearing a dress. Rather than play that for shock value, he respectfully asked audience members if that bothered them, and if so, why. I can’t picture many other daytime hosts doing this; if they had it would have been done for laughs.
He eventually began to be painted as a caricature of the 1980’s Sensitive Man, along with Alan Alda. The man had a very distinctive style; some of his questions essentially doubled as monologues and as a result many of the greatest impressionists of the era (Phil Hartman, Dave Thomas, Darrell Hammond) perfected their own spot-on Donahue impressions. His show gradually fell out of favor, battered by the Oprahs on one side and the Springers on the other. He spent some time as a cable host; I fondly remember a show that he used to co-host with Russian journalist Vladimir Posner. As cable news devolved into what it has become, there was no longer a place for him there. For the last 20 years or so, he has largely been a newsman emeritus, making the occasional random appearance without the permanent platform that a man with his résumé deserved. He was one of the true giants of television history.
Also this week R&B singer Maurice Williams died at the age of 88. He and his band The Zodiacs only had one hit single, but what a hit it was. Stay, from 1960, remains the shortest song to hit the top of the Billboard Hot 100, clocking in at a brief 1:34. The tune is a classic, there’s a reason why filmmakers have so frequently included it in soundtracks for movies set during that time. It is so evocative of a particular time.
50 Years Ago - Heart Like a Wheel
There are few major artists for whom I’ve found it more difficult to figure out what to make of than Linda Ronstadt. Blessed with a voice both powerful and tender, during her commercial heyday she developed a reputation as the Cover Queen, scoring a huge number of hit singles which were cover versions of well-known songs. Yet, I don’t think her interpretive skills were all that great. With few exceptions, her versions paled in comparison to the originals. I give her credit for having a great ear. Beyond that series of covers, she recorded songs written by talented writers who were not yet mainstream names, such as Karla Bonoff, or in the instance of this album Anna McGarrigle, who penned the title track. (Side note, I can’t be certain but I would suspect that Warren Zevon earned more royalties from Ronstadt’s cover of Poor Poor Pitiful Me than he did from any of his own recordings.)
Heart Like a Wheel was arguably the peak of her career, both artistically and commercially. You’re No Good was her sole #1 record on the Billboard Hot 100. It was also a cover song, but with this one the original version was not as well known as many of the other songs she recorded, so there wasn’t as much of a “I like the other one better” vibe. It also happens to be my single favorite Ronstadt solo song - over time her first hit & my actual Ronstadt favorite, Different Drum, which was originally credited to the band The Stone Poneys, has come to be regarded as a Ronstadt solo tune as well. I choose to be an annoying purist; in my eyes that one is a band track, NOT a solo one.
Heart Like a Wheel is the purest Linda Ronstadt there is, in the sense that it fully demonstrates her entire range. Before its release she was largely considered a folk & country singer, and the album includes several examples of that niche: there’s a Hank Williams cover which features harmony vocals from Emmylou Harris, along with the aforementioned title track and one of the best versions of Lowell George’s Willin‘. You’re No Good showcases her ability to bust out her pipes in full rocker mode, and her cover of I Will Be Loved effectively straddles both the rock and country genres.
As mentioned, the success of this album really kicked off a period of around 7 years or so in which she was one of the Biggest F***ing Deals in the music industry. Not only were her own albums tremendous successes, but other major artists of the time were eager to recruit her to add her star quality to the recording. IMHO she never topped this album.
Closing Laughs
That brings things to a close for another day. Thanks for reading, and come on back on Friday.
