Today’s Thoughts
The Outsiders - Catcher
With the exception of third base, no defensive position has produced fewer Hall Of Fame players than catcher. That’s largely due to the brutal physical toll that the position takes on a player. Not only do they have to sit out a lot of games during a season, thereby reducing their chances of accumulating large totals in counting stats, but they also tend to age quickly, which means they don’t often have the large career totals that impress voters. Even Johnny Bench rapidly declined soon after turning 30. (To me one of the freakiest stats is Randy Hundley catching 160 games in 1968, doubly so because this was well before the Cubs installed lights at Wrigley Field. The dude was toiling through a batch of midwestern summer days. On one hand, respect, but on the other, WTF?)
Another issue with catcher evaluation is that this position holds differing requirements. There have been so many brilliant defensive catchers who were poor hitters, as well as many productive hitters whose defense was only passable. With that in mind, here’s my attempt to take a crack at ranking the best catchers not in the Hall of Fame. (Reminder, this only covers players that have already been removed from the BBWAA ballot, hence no Buster Posey.)
Joe Torre (129 OPS+, 57.6 bWAR)
Thurman Munson (116, 46.1)
Bill Freehan (112, 44.8)
Jorge Posada (121, 42.7)
Elston Howard (107, 27.0)
Lance Parrish (106, 39.5)
Smoky Burgess (116, 33.4)
Del Crandall (96, 28.0)
Sherm Lollar (104, 30.1)
Gene Tenace (136, 46.8)
Leading off with Torre is a bit of a cheat, as he is a member of the Hall Of Fame, albeit as a manager. It is my contention that he deserved to have been inducted as a player - he made 9 all-star teams, more than half of those as a catcher, and later in his career won an MVP award after he had moved to third base. Munson died in a plane crash at the age of 32, so his career totals fall well short of standard HOF consideration. On the other hand, he did do a lot of things which generally impress voters. He won Rookie of the Year and MVP awards, he was the captain of back-to-back World Series winning teams, and his postseason numbers are spectacular. On the third hand, his production was dropping sharply in his final 2 seasons, suggesting that he was already in the decline portion of his career. We’ll never know for sure if he would have rebounded had he lived. I’m leaning towards believing that he belongs in the Hall, but even if he gets a spot on the next Era Committee ballot, chances are very strong that there will be multiple candidates on that ballot with stronger credentials than his.
If you want to use All-Star games as a metric, then Bill Freehan is your man. He made the team in 10 consecutive seasons, 11 overall. No man without PED connections or a lifetime gambling suspension has made more without a plaque. There’s something about playing in Detroit that causes voters to overlook a guy. Posada was a clutch hitter during the Yankees most recent dynasty. He had a reputation as an atrocious fielder; I saw enough of him to say that while he was no Jim Sundberg, he was better than his reputation suggested and that productive bat more than made up for any defensive shortcomings.
Elston Howard really got screwed by racism. He made his Negro League debut in 1948, the last season in which MLB classifies the leagues as major league caliber. That left a large gap in his career until the Yankees finally made him their first African American player - in 1955. A full 8 years after Jackie Robinson. When Howard was already 26 years old. He could have put together a legitimate HOF career had he been given an opportunity when he deserved it. Lance Parrish was - look here, another underrated Detroit Tiger - a player who put together consistent power hitting seasons as part of that Tigers team that gradually rose up the ranks until they finally won it all in 1984.
Burgess, Crandall, and Lollar all played in that same 50’s-60’s era in which they were consistently among the very best catchers in the game at a time when there were few great ones. All 3 are largely forgotten today, although Burgess gained fame later in his career as one of the game’s great pinch hitters. A darling of the advanced stats crowd largely due to his keen batting eye, Tenace drew more than 100 walks 6 times which raised his career OBP to .388. Combining that with above average home run power made him a very valuable hitter. I probably have him rated too low, but he spent almost as much time at first base as he did behind the plate. He wasn’t quite as valuable as an infielder.
Next week I’ll take a look at first base. That position has so many guys with huge power numbers, cutting it down to 10 is a challenge.
Classic SNL Recap - Season 5 Midseason Episode
This episode was hosted by Chevy Chase, with Marianne Faithfull as the musical guest. You know what you’re gonna get with a Chevy Chase episode, starting with the obligatory fall in the cold open. This show aired in February 1980 when it was apparent that Ronald Reagan was going to win the Republican nomination, but at the time GOP leaders were worried about his ability to win a general election. So the sketch presented Al Franken as Henry Kissinger, visiting Gerald Ford’s home in an attempt to convince him to enter the race. The bulk of the piece took place near a long staircase, with Ford constantly threatening to walk down the steps while Kissinger insisted that he would instead walk up so that Ford would not have to maneuver the stairs. Just like Chekhov’s gun, it was inevitable that Ford would eventually take a tumble down the stairs.
In one of the more notorious incidents in show history, Chase and Bill Murray nearly got into a fistfight the first time he hosted. The show addressed that in the monologue, with Chase inviting Murray to join him to sing a few songs together. The conceit was that it was allegedly spontaneous and unrehearsed - Murray was already in costume for the first sketch - as they performed a medley of “I” songs changed to “we.” We Write the Songs, We Shot the Sheriff, and so on.
That first post-monologue sketch was one that I still remember very well after all these years; a commercial parody for Pre Chew Charlie’s. A takeoff on the Beefsteak Charlie’s chain, this was a restaurant serving soft food for people who either can’t chew their food - a customer with a broken jaw was seated at one of the tables - or didn’t want to. The main punch line showed Chase’s waiter taking a piece of a customer’s steak and, yes, pre-chewing it. Gross, but funny.
In season 5 SNL attempted to introduce a new set of repeat sketches, most of which were failures. One such example was The Bel Air-Abs. A modern update of The Beverly Hillbillies, instead of a rural family discovering oil and moving into a ritzy neighborhood, this sketch featured a Middle Eastern family transplanted to Bel Air. It featured a bunch of stereotypes that have aged poorly. Gilda Radner in a burka screaming gibberish that sounds vaguely Arabic? Nope. The one saving grace was Jane Curtin’s spot-on Nancy Kulp impression.
The highlight of this week was a game show titled You Can’t Win, even though it relied a bit too much on Chase acting as a smarmy game show host - or was he just acting as his natural self? This was a show which promised expensive prizes; the final set of showcase prizes totaled more than $1 million, but the contestants almost literally could not win. For that final prize a mystery booth was brought on stage and to win the contestant merely needed to guess which celebrity was in the booth with no hint whatsoever. For the record, Garrett Morris’s contestant guessed Jane Fonda but he wasn’t even close. It turned out to be Bert Convy.
The episode ended with peak Chevy Chase. He sat at a piano and performed a relatively straightforward version of Sixteen Tons with the SNL band. I said relatively straightforward. He basically smirked his way through the song. I’m sure it played well at the time, but with hindsight now it feels insufferable.
Next week it will be time to officially close the book on the first golden era of SNL. Buck Henry hosted one final time for what would be the farewell episode for the original cast. The episode featured at least one all-time classic sketch. IYKYK.
Tradition!
I don’t follow hockey very closely, but if I have any rooting interest it’s that I like to see teams based in classic hockey hotbeds do well. That makes me so happy to see all those fans that grew up skating on the frozen ponds of Miami getting to watch their team win its first Stanley Cup. Although if we’re being technical Sunrise is geographically closer to Fort Lauderdale than it is to Miami, but you get the idea. Enjoy the good times, you’ve earned it.
TV Of the 21st Century - Weeds
One of the tougher decisions TV programmers need to make is when is the proper time to end a series. As long as an aging show does not cost too much, the impulse is to keep it going as long as possible. Which is understandable; acting is a profession in which underemployment is the norm, so the safety of steady work is reassuring. And for a network, the fewer slots on the schedule they need to worry about, the better. The problem is that if a show sticks around long past the point in which it has run out of story to tell, it runs the risk of generating “this is still on?” feelings and forcing people to forget about what had made the show so memorable in the first place.
More than any other network Showtime was notorious for refusing to cancel long-running series. Weeds was a perfect case in point. It ran for 8 seasons; it could have, and probably should have, ended after around season 4. Combine that with the fact that it inevitably suffered in comparison to another show that dealt with a lead character resorting to selling drugs in order to make ends meet, and Weeds has lost a bit of its luster over the years.
Weeds starred Mary-Louise Parker as Nancy Botwin, a recently widowed mother of two sons - one teenager & one pre-adolescent - living in a ritzy community in Southern California. She begins selling marijuana to maintain her lifestyle. In the show’s beginning she was a middle woman; purchasing her supply from a family of growers. Her product was known on the street as MILF weed, and in a funny guest cameo, Snoop Dogg immediately wrote a tribute rap after sampling the product. In addition to her two kids (Silas & Shane) the other major supporting characters were Kevin Nealon as Doug, an accountant/local city councilman and one of Nancy’s top customers, Elizabeth Perkins as Celia, PTA mom & chief frenemy, and Justin Kirk as Andy, Nancy’s late husband’s screwup of a brother & reluctant father figure to the two boys.
The early seasons leaned heavily into the conformity of suburban life, most notably in the opening credits which used the old song Little Boxes over footage over identical people in identical houses driving identical cars. That symbolism was probably a bit too obvious at times, but the “things aren’t what they seem” vibe was exemplified by the characters. Nancy had her secret life, Doug was a respected member of the community but he was also always baked, and behind her demand that everything be perfect Celia was pretty much a monster to her husband and daughter.
Mary-Louise Parker held the whole thing together perfectly. Drew Barrymore was one of the early contenders to portray Nancy, and man the show would have been much different if she had. Nothing against Drew, but I don’t know if she would have been able to walk that line between comedy and drama as adeptly as Parker. Parker has got the most expressive eyes, and she often put that skill to great use. I’m thinking specifically of the brick dance scene. She had to pick up a supply, and the dealers demanded that she do a little dance for them to earn that brick. All at the same time she needed to convey the bravery to enter that atmosphere with no backup, the defiance to perform that dance, as well as the terror in knowing that she is all alone with a group of bad men who could easily have the worst of intentions. Her work was magnificent.
Over time the show’s quality started to trend downward. Nancy eventually pulled her family out of their gated community and it was a bit of a road show for a few years. The change of locale had both benefits and drawbacks - that meant we unfortunately lost Romany Malco but we eventually gained Demian Bichir. It also meant that Doug and Celia joined the family on their journey. I understand not wanting to lose the services of Nealon & Perkins, and by this point Doug had lost his council seat, so it makes some sense that he had nowhere else to go so why not stick close to his weed dealer? There was no logical reason to keep Celia around, however, and it was almost a relief when she finally left. She was too much of a square peg in a round hole.
The last few seasons also demonstrated the downside of casting younger actors. If a series is successful enough to last years you have to hope that the actors can handle heavier workloads as they age into more mature plot lines. Sometimes you strike gold and realize that you have Kiernan Shipka, or sometimes things don’t work out as well. I won’t shame anyone by throwing out any specific names but I’m sure you can think of multiple examples of younger actors who found themselves over their heads as they were given material a bit beyond their capabilities. Let’s just say that with Weeds they went 1 for 2. Hunter Parrish as Shane was a good find; and his character became a skilled grower once he learned of his mother’s side gig and got into the family business. I’ll leave it at that.
As I implied, the show was not quite as good once it starting moving around to different locales, and it probably should have ended well earlier than it did; especially once Breaking Bad premiered Weeds was much less necessary. Nevertheless it was an outstanding show in its first few years, and Mary-Louise Parker was an absolute treasure as Nancy. The show also attracted lots of guest starring arcs for some cool people - Jennifer Jason Leigh, Zooey Deschanel, Matthew Modine, Julie Bowen, Martin Donovan, Alanis Morrissette. Guillermo Diaz.
Originally aired on: Showtime
Currently streaming on: Freevee, Hulu, & Peacock
Closing Laughs
OK, that’s enough for today. Thanks everyone for reading. See you all again on Friday. Peace out!
