Your Morning Read

SNL Recap

FFS, Alec Baldwin? Really? Are you trying to tell me that he is the only man on the planet capable of doing an impression of Bret Freakin’ Baier? It’s futile to complain about the frequency with which SNL brings in ringers, but this still led off the show on a sour note.

This week’s episode shows exactly why SNL rarely airs new shows 4 weeks in a row. It ran on fumes this week; as much admiration as I have for 4th time host Michael Keaton, and as much edgy energy as he brings to the show, there were real slim pickings this time.

To be fair to Baldwin, the cold open was one of the better ones so far. He portrayed Baier with a Jack Donaghy vibe. It cut from Fox’s Kamala Harris interview to various Trump moments from the week, a litany of “this can’t be real life” moments - his Fox town hall, his Univision town hall, and of course the let’s do a music rally. The theme of Keaton’s monologue dealt with the Beetlejuice sequel. He said that children trick or treating dressed as the character is adorable, 40 year old men wearing the costume less so. After that line Andy Samberg & Mikey walked on in Beetlejuice costumes. Sandberg explained that this was because they couldn’t find a way to fit Doug Emhoff into the cold open. (No Jim Gaffigan this week.) The best line from the monologue came when Keaton looked offstage and complemented Sarah on her Beetlejuice costume, but she responded to say it was no costume, that’s just the way she normally dresses.

It was tough to choose a Best Sketch Of the Week, but I’ll go with the first Please Don’t Destroy video of the year. This one broke from their usual format. Rather than play themselves as the biggest losers on SNL, here they portrayed characters. John & Martin were skydivers about to go on their first jump with Ben & Keaton as their instructors. Ben was getting ominous feelings and Keaton dove into nihilism upon learning that he had lost custody of his kids. Add this to the fact that newbie Emil Wakim’s pilot was flying for the first time in his life & panic set in.

Otherwise, not much to go with. There was a sketch set in Detroit in 1955 (or Detriot as the screen briefly read) in which Andrew and Ego tried to gain the approval of their families for their forbidden romance. Ego’s father & brother (Kenan & Devon) were OK with it, but Andrew’s parents (Keaton & Heidi) were trying to act supportive while reminding them that an interracial romance in 1955 would not fly. Andrew proved his love by singing a song he had written for her. He took out a ukulele and performed Hey Soul Sister, which changed everything. The black family was horrified - Kenan hated the “I’m so thug” line as one should - and the white family started bopping along with the song. Andrew really sold the concept well.

On Update Wakim became the second of this year’s rookies to get a spotlight; he spoke of what it is like growing up as a Christian man of Arab descent. And Sarah messed with Jost yet again, this time talking about the revival of the Victoria’s Secret fashion show. She praised the show’s spotlight on different body types, but still asked where the “Midwestern 4’s” were.

As another sign of how pedestrian this week’s show was, it was also a challenge to hand out the Employee Of the Week award. I’ll give it to Ego. She did good work as a conspiracy theory spouting Uber driver in the Think About It sketch.

The final sketch of the week spoke volumes about the ragged quality of the show. It could have been a good one; during a restaurant dinner waitress Heidi reminded Keaton of a woman he had a romance with decades earlier. This tapped into Keaton’s keen ability to lean into eccentricity, and Heidi matched that intensity quite well. But it had a very abrupt ending, it seemed that they were instructed to keep it going until it was time to end the show and they should just stop whenever.

I’m a huge Michael Keaton fan, but everything about this week just seemed out of sync. After a much needed week off, the show returns on November 2 with SNL royalty John Mulaney hosting for the 6th time. Chappell Roan will serve as the musical guest.

A Requiem For The 2024 New York Mets

Being a sports fan involves a certain amount of compartmentalizing. Wish #1 is always to have your team be the one celebrating at the end of the year. Logic dictates that the odds of this happening are long. There are 30 teams in MLB, which means that 29 fanbases will end the year saying “wait till next year.” Knowing that a season will almost certainly end without a title, how does one evaluate a year upon its conclusion?

I think the best way to look at it is to consider the journey as much as the destination. I was just a bit too young to fully appreciate the 1969 Miracle Mets, so my only championship as a lifelong Mets fan came in 1986. All of the other seasons were not created equally. Some were dreadful as early as April. Some were promising years which ended in crushing disappointment. Most were somewhere in between, blending into each other. But I can safely say that the 2024 team is one that I will always remember fondly; it will rank near the top of my all-time favorite Mets teams.

There was little early indication that the season would turn out the way that it did. The company line was that this would be a reset year; all of the offseason moves were made to improve the margins: useful players signed to one year deals, but no big ticket items. This upcoming offseason promised to be the big one; with a massive amount of money coming off of the payroll that was going to be the time to spend. In the meantime, 2024 looked to be a season with hopes for a .500 record at best.

Then, once the season started even those small dreams were dashed. An 0-5 start only began to tell the tale; by Memorial Day fans were already coming to grips with the likelihood that Pete Alonso would be traded at the deadline. The early portion of the season was epitomized by Jorge Lopez making his contribution to LOLMets lore by tossing his glove into the stands in frustration after being removed from a game.

But then, things started to happen. This squad suddenly became meme worthy in a positive sense. Grimace. OMG. A now-legendary players meeting seemingly turned the clubhouse culture around overnight. Suddenly early season jokes such as the Rally Pimp and Seymour Weiner retroactively felt like early indications that there was a special mojo surrounding the team.

As the summer went on, two things were clear. The team was too good to break up, so Alonso was safe. But also, they had dug themselves too deep of a hole in April & May, so postseason play was unlikely. Yet, they continued to win and win and win. Was this possible?

A special season turned into a Special Season once the calendar flipped to October. The team snatched victory from the jaws of defeat countless times. Francisco Lindor’s home run in Atlanta to clinch a playoff berth. Alonso’s home run in Milwaukee while they were trailing in the 9th inning in an elimination game. Lindor’s series clinching grand slam against Philadelphia. It says a lot that even though I was realistic about their chances against the Dodgers, I had already seen the movie enough times to know that, to steal a couple of famous quotes about a different Mets team, ya gotta believe and it ain’t over till it’s over.

The magic finally ran out against the Dodgers, who were frankly the better team. No shame in losing to them. Which brings me back to my earlier point. This team gave me more thrills than I could have hoped for. Yet at the same time, it’s agonizing to have come so close. To put it in perspective, as a wild card team the Mets would have needed to win 13 games to win Rob Manfred’s Piece Of Metal. They won 7; those last 6 were going to be increasingly more difficult. I really wanted those 6 additional wins, next year is never promised.

That’s especially considering the fact that the unique alchemy of this team cannot be duplicated, whether or not Alonso does in fact depart as a free agent. Sure, Lindor & Brandon Nimmo & Mark Vientos and so many others will be back. But a team is more than just the stars. The best teams are built from 1-26. The 2024 Mets were just as much about Sean Manaea & Tyrone Taylor & Jose Iglesias as they were about the big names. As is the case with every team there will roster churn in the offseason; the hope is that the 2025 Mets can maintain the momentum.

Here’s why I remain optimistic for the future. I’ll make a bold statement: Steve Cohen runs the team much differently than Fred Wilpon did. Wilpon & his son Jeff were too often hesitant to spend money the way that one would expect from a New York based team. I’m not just talking about the major league payroll, the Mets were notorious for having an understaffed and underfunded analytics department and the frequency with which their minor league prospects failed to pan out indicates that their scouting and developmental programs left a lot to be desired.

As for the major league team, they occasionally opened up the checkbook, but they also had a tendency to respond to every big contract that failed to pay off with a quick retreat back to austerity. As a result, success has generally been brief. You can’t sustain things if players leave the organization once they become free agents. And because that developmental program was so poor, it’s not as if they were able to replicate the Tampa Bay Rays method of always having a talented young player ready to plug in any holes. I always hate the annual Bobby Bonilla Day jokes - most teams have several contracts with large deferred payments - but there was at least one season in which the payroll was so small that the Bonilla payment was larger than the salary of any outfielder on the major league roster. That is unacceptable.

Cohen is a smart man, he is not going to spend foolishly. But he understands that building a winning team involves spending. My hope is that the Mets can steal Juan Soto from the Yankees, but even if that is a pipe dream, I know that the organization will work hard to build on the success from this year. POBO David Stearns is the perfect man for the job, his years running the Milwaukee Brewers forced him to find reasonably priced talent wherever he could; that’s one of the main reasons why the 2024 roster was filled with so many low-profile yet extremely useful players.

So congrats to the 2024 Mets, you done this town proud. Let’s make 2025 even better & LFGM!

We Got Next & We Got Now

The Mets were not the only New York team whose season ended Sunday night, but the other one ended much differently. The Liberty finally won the first championship in franchise history. They had been the only one of the league’s surviving original franchises without a title, so this was kind of a big deal.

In some ways the trajectory of the Liberty has paralleled that of the WNBA itself. Initial excitement followed by disinterest almost to the point of irrelevance until a dramatic resurgence leading into the ultimate triumph. The original franchises in the W were owned by the owners of their NBA counterparts, which meant that James Dolan had his fingerprints all over the original incarnation of the Liberty. Over time independent owners began to purchase the teams, but Dolan was one of the last holdouts from that original batch.

Not that this was good news. Anyone familiar with the way in which the lead guitarist of JD & The Straight Shot had run the Knicks into the ground can imagine how he handled the Liberty. For example, at one point he had hired Isiah Thomas as team president. This is the same Thomas who had cost Dolan millions after losing a sexual harassment lawsuit. Hiring such a man to lead a women’s team was not a good idea. Dolan was also terribly negligent; he treated the team like a tchotchke that he had tossed in a drawer and then completely forgotten about. By the end of his tenure the team was playing home games in a tiny gymnasium in Westchester, with predictably minuscule attendance figures.

The first sign of the turnaround came when Nets owner Joe Tsai purchased the club in 2019 and moved to Brooklyn’s Barclays Center two years later. It took some time to rebuild the franchise, but it is now a first class organization and a desired destination for free agents. It’s amazing what a difference it is when there is an owner who actually gives a s***.

Sad Late Breaking News

Word came out late last night that the great Fernando Valenzuela has passed away at the age of 63. I’ll have more to say on Friday. What a terrible loss.

50 Years Ago - AWB

It’s all part of the pop culture circle of life. As newer artists gain prominence, older ones fade from the zeitgeist. It would be a stretch to call Average White Band major stars, but they were a familiar presence and their biggest hit was the sort of recognizable earworm constantly heard over sports highlights or used as a transition to a commercial break.

The album titled AWB was a solid collection of music that wasn’t quite R&B, wasn’t quite funk, but found a happy place somewhere in between the two. That’s more noteworthy considering that they came from Scotland, not exactly known as a bastion for deep soul. It’s impressive that they could sound so authentic. This album also contains their signature hit, Pick Up the Pieces. Those great horns, that thumping bass, that signature guitar chug, all combine to create a deep groove.

Pick Up the Pieces was a magnificent instrumental jam. It is fairly representative of their basic sound, and they also sounded like a lot of their contemporaries without being derivative. The album contains a well-made cover of the Isley Brothers’ Work To Do, and songs such as You Got It or Got the Love would not have sounded out of place on a Kool & the Gang album.

They aren’t technically a one-hit wonder band; they totaled 5 top 40 & 2 top ten hits, but they are best known for the hit from this album. Pick Up has a hook that is so recognizable that practically everyone is familiar with the song, even if they don’t know who the recording artist is. I’m not going to claim that this album is some sort of forgotten classic, but it is an enjoyable listen from first track to last. It also has classically bawdy 1970’s cover art; a drawing of a woman whose backside perfectly fits into the “W” of the album’s title. Tee-hee.

Closing Laughs

There hasn’t been a baseball game for days. Someone needs to do something about that. Thanks all for reading, and I will see you again on Friday.