Happy 29th Anniversary Deep Space Nine!

 

Deep Space Nine at 29

I, like most people, enjoy being right.  It happens far too seldom.  The film I think should win Best Picture never does.  The baseball team I think has the most talent goes out in the first round of the playoffs. The restaurant I like goes out of business.  But occasionally I have my moments of prescience.

For many years I have been in the distinct minority of Star Trek fandom in thinking that the crown jewel of Star Trek TV series was Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.  It was maligned when it came out as Next Generation was winding down. The flaws that Trek fans glommed on to were many: the main character wasn’t a Captain; it was set on a space station, not a star ship; the doctor was an asshole.  Okay, that last one was an accurate complaint; it the 2-volume history of the Trek franchise The Fifty-Year Mission the creators of DS9 concede that they oversteered into making Dr. Bashir a jerk. But the other complaints were trivial compared to what ultimately was created, which was the most complex, rewarding, well written, well-acted series in the Star Trek universe.

It all started 29 years ago on January 3, 1993, with the release of the pilot episode, “Emissary.”  It was an auspicious start, far better than The Next Generation’s pilot “Encounter at Farpoint.” The cast of characters was the most diverse of any Trek incarnation: Commander (eventually Captain) Benjamin Sisko was not a swashbuckling rogue like Captain Kirk, or a dedicated explorer like Captain Picard; for one thing he wasn’t a Captain, and for another he was a widower raising a son and disenchanted with his assignment.  The science officer was a beautiful young woman who had the memories of 7 previous lifetimes implanted in her via a slug in her abdomen.  The chief of security was a shape shifter.  The chief engineer was Miles O’Brien, a holdover from Next Gen.  The primary businessman was a Ferengi, a race that Next Gen tried, and failed miserably, to create as the next big threat to the Federation.  The doctor was, as I mentioned, a vainglorious tool.

Most notable was Sisko’s second in command, a former resistance fighter and a native of Bajor named Kira Nerys (the first name is the family name).  I’m not sure exactly, but I believe when Deep Space Nine started word was out that the next Trek series, Voyager, would have the first female captain in Star Trek’s TV history.  I believe the anticipation of that made Trek fans overlook the fact that DS9 had a woman in command who was intelligent, fearless, beautiful, and most importantly didn’t take crap from anyone, especially men.  After so many years of Star Fleet officers politely acquiescing to whatever nonsense an admiral spouted, it was refreshing to have a character who yelled at her superiors on Bajor that they were idiots.

The show got off to an admitted rocky start; the first two seasons are barely watchable (save for the occasional pearl like the episode “Duet,” a sci-fi version of The Man in the Glass Booth). But the creators course corrected some things (Dr. Bashir became less of a pain in the ass) while creating an impressive array of semi-regular characters, such as a Cardassian tailor named Garrick whose shadowy past was fleshed out over time but never fully revealed.  The show featured several actors in heavy latex—Rene Auberjonois as shapeshifter Odo, Armin Shimmerman as the Ferengi Quark, Andrew Robinson as Garrick, and Marc Alaimo as Cardassian Gul Dukat—who had never made much impact with their real faces but now excelled while performing under layers of plastic.

Deep Space Nine, along with the contemporaneous Babylon 5, eschewed the episodic nature of the original Star Trek and The Next Generation and developed a more serialized approach.  While this made viewing while the show was syndicated or in reruns awkward, it has proven a boon now that streaming is available, and shows can be watched in rapid sequence.  The creators of the show have said that binge watching on Netflix is how the show should be viewed.

The show was lowly regarded for years, but that started to change when, in 1996, TV Guide did a poll the name the best episode of Star Trek of all time.  The heavy favorite was an episode from the original series, “City on the Edge of Forever,” but when the votes were counted the winner was a DS9 episode, “The Visitor.” TV Guide declared the result “a shocker.”

In The Fifty-Year Mission, the creators of DS9 said the show was about “consequences.” Kirk or Picard would fly to a planet, meddle in whatever was going on, fix things, then leave.  On Deep Space Nine, when someone made a choice, it often came back to bite them on the ass.  The show’s depiction of the war with The Dominion (which many have noted was the biggest deviation from Creator Gene Roddenberry’s concept that by that time humans will have outgrown the notion of war) conveyed a sense of what a long, protracted conflict does to people, even those on the periphery.  In the episode “In the Pale Moonlight” (the highest rated episode on IMDB) Captain Sisko recounts how he orchestrated a plan to induce the Romulans to join the Dominion War at the cost of killing several innocent people, something the high-minded Captains Kirk and Picard would never have considered.

I run through DS9 on a loop on Netflix and recently watched the season three two-part episode, “Past Tense.” In the episode Sisko, Dax and Bashir are accidently sent back in time to 2024 San Francisco, where Sisko and Bashir are thrown into a “Sanctuary District,” a place where homeless and jobless people were herded into “for their own protection.” Now that we are two years away from 2024, the episode seems eerily prescient about the homeless problem and society’s reaction to wide-scale economic distress.

I will always maintain that Deep Space Nine was the best of all the Trek TV incarnations.  The original series was great—for the first half of its three-year run.  The Next Generation was terrible in seasons one and two, and six and seven, and the middle three years were hit and miss.  I never warmed to Voyager, and I gave up on Enterprise early in season two.  Discovery has been erratic; I disliked season one but loved season two, then was disappointed by season three.  DS9 started slow but gathered momentum as the writers and the audience grew to know the characters.

So happy birthday, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine!  Maybe there will be a party for your 30^th birthday next year.

TV Review: Doctor Who Flux (spoilers!)

 

TV Review: Doctor Who: Flux (spoilers)

 The Chris Chibnall era of Doctor Who is coming to an end.  I have only two words.

Thank.  God.

Chibnall took over after Steven Moffat’s departure and was gifted a new Doctor in the guise of Jodie Whittaker, the first female Doctor. As with another of my favorite Doctors, Sylvester McCoy, I can only imagine how good she might have been had she been given any decent scripts to work with.

In the three seasons under Chibnall’s leadership, I have enjoyed exactly one episode, the Amazon parody Ker-Blam.  Based on IMBD ratings I am not alone; season 1 under Chibnall had an average episode rating of 6.1, which is not good, and in season 2 the average rating shot up to 6.2.  For his third season Chibnall rolled the dice and did a 6-part miniseries called Flux that was about . . . well, it was about 6 episodes long.  Beyond that I am not sure.  The series was Chibnall’s best season, producing the only two episodes that were rated higher than a 7 at IMDB, but I see the whole thing as a disaster.

To explain what I think are Chibnall’s deficiencies I will do something unfair and compare him to his predecessor, Steven Moffat.  Why is this unfair?  Because Moffat is a genius.  He has written some of the best Doctor Who episodes of all time, and on top of that won an Emmy for writing Sherlock.  Comparing a TV writer to Moffat is like comparing a short story writer to O. Henry. But both Moffat and Chibnall worked on Doctor Who, so there is room for overlap.

Moffat writes episodes that use the Doctor’s ability to travel in time, but unlike Chibnall he knows how to construct a linear narrative while having characters moving back and forth in time.  I am thinking of two of Moffat’s best Doctor Who episodes, The Girl in the Fireplace and Blink (possibly the best Doctor Who episode EVER).  In both of those episodes, despite the fact that events in the story occurred in a non-linear fashion, the plots played out as if they were linear.  There was a beginning, a middle, and an end to the story.  Moffat used the ability to move about in time to strengthen the structure of his narrative.

Chibnall, by contrast, just has character pop from one time to another because they can.  Chibnall is more interested in creating puzzlement than understanding; enjoying a good mystery is one thing, but to be deliberately obscure is not the same as good story telling.

The other attribute Steven Moffat brings to Doctor Who that Chibnall lacks is an emotional investment in what’s going on.  The Girl in the Fireplace pays off because Moffat builds an emotional connection between the Doctor and Madam du Pompadour (if you haven’t seen the episode, don’t ask; just go watch the episode).  Chibnall moves characters around like chess pieces, but it is never clear what we are supposed to feel about what is happening other than we should like the Doctor and hate her enemies.  I mean, we aren’t supposed to like Swarm and Azure (they have names!) but it is hard to emotionally invest in disliking someone who says their goal is to destroy all objects in the universe. At least they have goals.

There are a lot of other nitpicks I could raise about Flux (Spoilers!!!). I think it is cheap for Chibnall to have the Doctor transform into a Weeping Angel and then turn her back again and say it was only to make transporting her more convenient.  And then there is the small matter that at the end the Doctor commits triple genocide by allowing the Daleks, Cybermen, and Sontarans all to perish in the final push of the Flux.  The Fourth Doctor famously debated eliminating the Daleks in Genesis of the Daleks and decided that genocide was wrong, even of an evil race that did nothing but kill.  I guess the Doctor has changed her mind.  Oh, and a Sontaran is induced to commit treason for . . . chocolate?  Please.

Chibnall’s era isn’t quite over.  He is the showrunner for the New Year’s episode, which IMDB has little information on.  But he has produced the worst seasons of Doctor Who since the dreaded McCoy era, which was unable to recover from the damage done by the even worse Colin Baker era. The show went off the air in 1989 until it was brilliant revived by Russell T. Davies in 2006. 

Davies will re-assume showrunner duties of Doctor Who after Chibnall steps down.  All I can say is that he has his work cut out for him again.

Les Dodgers est mort

 Les Dodgers est mort

 

Let me begin by saying that, as a boy, I grew up loving the Dodgers even though I was raised in Northern California.  This was the late 1960’s and the ‘70s, and I preferred the Dodgers’ emphasis on pitching, defense, and speed over the Giants emphasis on power.  And for most of my life the Dodgers have been the more successful franchise, at least until the Giants turned their trifecta of championships in the 2010s.

But at some point, I realized that I was, as Jerry Seinfeld said, rooting for laundry.  The ideological differences between the teams eventually disappeared as players and management came and went.  Recently, I’ve come to look on the Dodgers as the West Coast Yankees, overdogs who win because they have more money and then demand to be praised because they are so smart and so determined.

My existential crisis came to a head this season as the plucky SF Giants unexpectedly took the lead in the National League West despite having a payroll seemingly 1% of the Dodgers.  Not that the Dodgers gave up; when they were in second place at the trade deadline, they simply picked up Max Scherzer and Trey Turner, a future Hall of Famer and an All-Star.  Surely that would enable them to win another division title.

But it wasn’t enough, and the 106-win Dodgers had to settle for the Wild Card behind the 107-win Giants (the over/under on Giant wins at the start of the season had been 75).  Beating the Cardinals in a one-game play-in game, the Dodgers and Giants then had their first post-season meeting ever.  On the day of the first game, 5 of the 6 people I saw on ESPN said the Dodgers would obviously win, because they had better hitting and better pitching.  Of course, if they had better hitting and pitching, then why did the Giants win the division and the season series with the Dodgers?  As Geoffrey Rush’s character said in Shakespeare In Love, “It’s a mystery.”

The Dodgers did win the series but had to eke out winning two elimination games, the last one by one run thanks in part to a bad third strike call. Now all the Dodgers had to do to get to the World Series was crush the Atlanta Braves, who won 18 fewer regular season games.  No problem.

Then the wheels came off.  The Dodgers had already lost Cy Young winner Trevor Bauer to the world’s longest domestic violence investigation, then they lost Cy Young winner Clayton Kershaw to injury, then in Game 6 they lost Max Scherzer to a dead arm. They had lost Max Muncy before the post-season, then lost Trey Turner and Justin Turner to injury.  The Dodgers, whose roster had been so overstocked that they had All-Stars coming off the bench most games, ran out Walker Buehler on short rest because of a depleted starting rotation and lost game 6 of the NLCS to a Braves team that won 18 fewer games in the regular season.

Were the Braves the best team in the National League?  Probably not.  Both the Giants and the Dodgers were clearly superior, but since MLB insisted on a post-season format that had the two best teams play each other in the first round the result was like the two fighting fish Blofeld owned in From Russia With Love who exhausted each other, allowing the weaker but smarter fish that stayed out of the fight to then kill the victor.  Some would argue that the Brewers were a better team and were undone by key relief pitcher and 2020 Rookie of the Year Devin Williams stupidly breaking his hand while celebrating them winning their division.

So, we have a World Series featuring a team with a racist logo and name against a team that recently won a World Series by admittedly cheating.  Not a great combo.  It’s too bad MLB just couldn’t slip to a Dodgers-Giants World Series, convention be damned.

TV Review: Lucifer season 6 (spoilers)

 

TV Review—Lucifer Season 6 (spoilers!)

 An end is come; the end is come.  Ezekiel 7:6

It seemed only fitting to begin a review if the TV series Lucifer with a quote from the main character’s least favorite work of fiction.  Of course the TV show Lucifer has shown a knack for resurrection that the main character never manifested; it was killed after three seasons by Fox, came back for two seasons on Netflix, and then Netflix decided that wasn’t enough and gave it another season.  But it looks like this is definitely the end for Lucifer.

And frankly, it may be time.  Season six was a letdown; not bad by any standard, but a step downward from the dizzying heights the show had reached in season 5.  The show fell back on some old habits that it had cast off and relied a little too much on an appealing cast and a reputation for making bat-shit crazy decisions.  The result was a satisfying conclusion, but one that was less interesting than it might have been.

Season 5 ended with an angelic battle for the right to sit on the celestial throne as, well, God, with Lucifer (Tom Ellis) coming out the victor.  Season 6 starts with Lucifer finding excuses for delaying his ascension.  This is an old failing of the show during its time on FOX; either the producers or the network would come up with any old excuse to keep Lucifer and his love, Detective Chloe Decker (Lauren German), from progressing in their relationship. I understand that the relationship couldn’t have been allowed to progress too fast—I remember as a fan of the series Chuck that fans wanted Chuck and Sarah to hook up immediately, which would have ruined the show.  The problem was that the reasons for the one-step-forward/two-steps-back plotting were frustratingly arbitrary.  So it is here, where Lucifer has literally battled a host of angels to become God but now he has second thoughts, just because.

The main plot of season 6 is the appearance of a fearsome young woman named Rory who is an angel whose wings are steel-tipped razors and who bears a grudge against Lucifer.  The explanation of who she turns out to be is the one genius inspiration of the season, and I won’t spoil it here.  The ten episodes wind along pleasantly enough, but the plot moves ahead in fits and starts with character motivation seemingly arbitrary.  The show does fall back on another unfortunate habit; I used to joke in seasons 1 and 2 that not only did the show not know how real cops solved crimes, but they also didn’t seem to know how fictional cops solve crimes.  The show’s stupid gene reappears as a major plot point is that a prisoner serving time for murder is able to escape simply because his cell door didn’t completely shut, as if there would be no other locked doors between his cell and the outside world.

One bullet that was dodged was that the show does what a lot of long-running shows do, give cast members a shot at directing.  The results can be indifferent (the episode of The X-Files directed by Gillian Anderson was a low point) but here the results are positive.  DB Woodside (Amenadiel) does a good job capturing the visual style of Lucifer in the episode he directed, and Kevin Alejandro (Dan) had already proven to be an excellent director on episodes he directed in prior seasons.

The ending . . . what to say about the ending, other than it rivals All That Jazz as the longest death scene since Carmen.  But, given that the bulk of the final episode featured only Lucifer and Chloe, it was nice to show all the other characters progressing with their lives.  There is even a nice shout out at the end to the episode Off the Record, my pick for the best single episode of Lucifer.

If I was to pick an MVP for season 6 it would be Rachel Harris as Dr. Linda Martin, Lucifer’s long, long suffering therapist.  One of the first things I liked about Lucifer was that he wasn’t just about sleeping with gorgeous models, he enthusiastically agreed to have sex with Harris’ Dr. Linda even though she is in her late 40’s and could hardly be called leggy (don’t get me wrong, I think Harris is gorgeous, but by tv standards she should be playing someone’s mom).  She had the best running plot thread in season 6, her writing a book entitled Sympathy for the Devil, and she always managed to be funny without ever seeming to try.  I also like the fact that the show once again demonstrated that she is a “middle-aged” woman with a healthy sex drive as she is shown waking up from a drunken hook up after Maze’s (Leslie Anne-Brandt) wedding.

When one of my favorite series, Angel, was unceremoniously canceled, I reacted to the fan demands that it continue with the observation that anyone who had watched the show should realize that living forever is not necessarily a good thing. I will miss Lucifer, a show that started weak and somehow got better; few shows do that.  But a show as imaginative and audacious as Lucifer had to run the well dry at some point, and that point seems to have come.  Adieu Lucifer!  I will keep watching you on Netflix as long as the good lord is willing.

 

Field of Dreams game connects modern fans to the distant past -- 1989

 

Field of Dreams game connects modern fans to the distant past -- 1989

 

Baseball has one advantage over football and basketball—mythology.  Other sports have their Halls of Fame, legendary players, and iconic heroes, but only baseball has Gods.  MLB’s governance in recent years seems to have lacked a certain je ne sais quoi that the commissioners of the NFL and NBA have been able to tap into, but that’s partly the nature of the game; in the NFL, every week is an event, while in baseball, every game is just 162nd of the trudge to the finish line.

Where baseball’s advantage shows up is in movies.  Pick the greatest baseball film of all time, and you’ve got Pride of the Yankees, Eight Men Out, The Natural, A League of Their Own, and the Kevin Costner trifecta of Field of Dreams, Bull Durham, and For the Love of the Game.  All these films revere the game of baseball, and most got Oscar nominations.  The best football movie of all time is probably North Dallas Forty, which is cynical and hardly holds the sport up to any ideal.  Basketball does have Hooisers, but after that the next best basketball film is either the original Space Jam or The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh.  The best soccer film of all time is Bend it Like Beckham.

During the regular season, it is hard to focus on any single baseball game as an event worthy of attention.  Back when only one team from each league made the post-season, a sample size of 162 was needed to sift the wheat from the chaff.  Now that 10 teams make the post-season, maybe a smaller sample size would accomplish the task.

August 12^th was the first in-season event (other than the All-Star Game, which has come to rely on the Home Run Derby for noteworthiness more than the actual game) the MLB has attempted in a very long time.  They linked the event to a movie that was released before most current players were born, 1989’s Field of Dreams.  They staged a baseball game in an Iowa cornfield, and it was a game that counted in the standings and not an exhibition, like football’s Hall of Fame Game.

A lot could have gone wrong.  Baseball’s reliance on nostalgia could have been misplaced.  Recollection of the movie could have been weaker than MLB anticipated.  The visual of baseball players walking out of a cornfield and onto a baseball diamond could have come off as, well, corny.  But it worked.  Everything worked. 

For those unfamiliar with the movie, Field of Dreams was based on a fantasy novel by W. P. Kinsella about a farmer in Iowa who hears a voice in his cornfield tell him to plow under the corn and build a ballpark.  The farmer, played by Costner, obeys the voice, because who wouldn’t obey a disembodied voice?  After he builds the ballpark, a ghostly figure in a baseball uniform emerges from the remains of the cornfield, and it is Shoeless Joe Jackson, the legendary ballplayer who was banned for life for participating in the fixing of the 1919 World Series (debate still rages over whether he actually participated in the fixing, or if he meant to but was really bad at trying not to be great).  Other former baseball greats join him, and eventually there is a phantom baseball game every day.  The bank threatens to foreclose on the property, but James Earl Jones delivers one of the greatest monologues in movie history about how people love baseball’s past so much they will pay to watch old time ghost players. Capitalism saves the day.

The film was a breakout hit for director Phil Alden Robinson, who was nominated for an Oscar for adapting the screenplay.  The film also picked up Oscar nominations for Best Picture and for Best Score.  The studio had such low expectations they opened it in only 4 theaters, but it went on to gross $64 million in the United States. The movie was also the last screen appearance of Burt Lancaster.

The Field of Dreams Game, planned for 2020 but postponed because of, you know, recreated the ball players emerging from the cornfield. Unfortunately, they replaced the fences for the game, which was understandable, but I had been looking forward to outfielders disappearing into the stalks chasing homers. Because there were no bleachers in the outfield or along the first base side attendance was limited to around 4,000.  Both teams, the visiting Yankees and home White Sox, flew in that day and left that evening, to resume the series in Chicago Saturday.

It helped that the game was entertaining, with good pitching early on then fireworks late.   The Yankees came back from a three-run deficit in the 9^th inning on home runs by Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, but in a Hollywood ending the White Sox won the game in the bottom of the 9^th with a walk off homer by Tim Anderson.  Two other games Thursday featured one team scoring 17 runs; thank goodness the Field of Dreams Game had better pitching than that.

I still have faith that baseball will continue to connect with fans, even though the ubiquity of “three true outcomes” makes it difficult to appreciate the game.  One of the biggest problems is that during the season baseball fades into the wallpaper, while ESPN shows have talking heads argue over football and basketball year-round.  This was a major step that baseball can come up with ideas that put its best foot forward and continue to create mythology for another 150 years.

Lucifer Season 5.2--Good to have the Devil back

 

TV Review: Lucifer Season 5.2—The Devil is Still Alive and Kicking

 The aging process of a TV show is hard to anticipate.  Some shows come out strong after a long crafting period, but then have no where to go but down (Twin Peaks, Heroes).  Some start weak and then find their legs after growing pains (Parks & Recreation, Legend of Tomorrow).  Shows showing continued growth and creativity in their fifth season are unusual.

Lucifer started off with some problems.  The first season took time to establish the relationship between The Devil AKA Lucifer Morningstar (Tom Ellis) and LA Police Detective Chloe Decker, whose main characteristic was the repeated statement that she had starred in a raunchy sex comedy when she was a teenager.  The season revolved around a police scandal summed up by the word “Palmetto” and if you played a drinking game and took a swig of something alcoholic when ever that word was uttered, you’d be blitzed before the end of any episode.

The show got more creative in season 2 when they introduced Tricia Helfer as the Earthly body inhabited by the Goddess of All Creation (God’s wife and Lucifer’s mother).  The creators said they checked with the Bible and found no mention of Lucifer’s mother and decided the character was free to be utilized.  The cases of the week, the murders assigned to Detective Decker and her ex-husband Dan (Kevin Alejandro) faded into the background and the philosophical issues of the Devil living on Earth took more prominence.  The rest of the cast (DB Woodside as Lucifer’s brother Amenadiel, Lesley-Ann Brandt as his assistant Mazikeen, Rachel Harris as Lucifer’s psychiatrist Linda) was fleshed out and the storytelling got more confident.  Season 3 introduced Biblical character Caine, and Season 4 added Eve to the mix.  Season 5 introduced Lucifer’s twin brother Michael (Ellis doing a passable American accent) and the first half of the season ended with the appearance of Lucifer’s father, better known as God.

If you make The Almighty Divine Creator of the Universe a character in your TV show, you’d better find an actor who can carry the role.  Lucifer nails the casting with Dennis Haysbert, now known for his insurance commercial but once cast as the President of the United States in the series 24.  He was credible as the President even though he was African American and this was pre-Obama (some have speculated that Obama’s election owed some thanks to Haysbert for making a Black president seem credible; at the time a critic said that if Haysbert changed his name to David Palmer [his character’s name on 24] and ran for President he’d probably win).  There was also an issue with cast-member Woodside, who reportedly lobbied for an African American actor in the role as his father since a Caucasian actress had played his mother.

Haysbert is perfect.  He has a deep, commanding voice that invites obedience, but a genial manner that bespeaks the softer side of God.  He fits right in with the family dynamics established by the show, intimidating mortals like Chloe and Linda, puzzling his son Amenadiel, and infuriating Lucifer. 

I have watched the first two episodes of season 5.2, and I am pleased to report that the creativity Lucifer’s writers have displayed in the past is in full force.  The first episode milks the family dynamics to the max, with God summoning a thunderstorm to quell the squabbling.  Linda keeps poking God to assure his existence and tries to duck out on family dinner, Amenadiel becomes depressed when he is told his son with Linda is human, not angelic, and a murder at a mini-golf course is solved (yawn).

Episode 2 is the long teased, long awaited musical episode.  Musical episodes are tricky; except for Buffy the Vampire Slayer few series attempting one have cleared the bar.  The one, titled Bloody Celestial Karaoke Jam, isn’t quite up to the Buffy musical but it is the closest I’ve seen since the Scrubs musical episode My Musical.  It starts with a great cover of Wicked Game by Ellis, followed by a rousing group sing of Queen’s another One Bites the Dust at the murder scene.  The musical numbers get a little less on the nose as the episode progresses (Linda singing “Just the Two of Us” to her baby is somewhat generic; I half expected her to break into "What if God Was One of Us" at one point) but the cast steps up, especially Alejandro who continues to show comedic chops undreamt of in season 1 (Dan is worried because he slept with the woman whose body was inhabited by God’s ex-wife, and he is not reassured by Amenadiel when he tells Dan that his father is probably not happy with that fact and that God is sort of vengeful). 

Lucifer has been a tad erratic over its run, but shows that push creative boundaries often are (again, see Legends of Tomorrow).  Since moving from Fox to Netflix the show has embraced shedding the broadcast shackles (not to mention clothes), and coming up with some innovative fight scenes.  This freedom seems to have invigorated the writing staff, and Lucifer continues to be one of the most surprising shows being produced.

If you have been a fan of Lucifer, catch season 5.2.  If not, take my advice and watch the pilot then skip to season 1 episode 1 and go from there.  You’ll have a Devil of a good time (sorry, the Devil made me do it.)

Tim Tebow: Tight End--it makes sense

 I have rarely seen such unanimity about a decision by a coach or manager among the intelligentsia on ESPN.  Usually there is always a debate, a difference of opinion, because controversy and clash help ratings.  But almost everyone on ESPN was in agreement—Urban Meyer is an idiot for signing Tim Tebow as a tight end. 

“Oh,” they wailed, “He’s too old!  He hasn’t played football in years!  He’s never played tight end!  There is no way he can be successful!”  One person on ESPN opined that this was just another example of Tim Tebow’s privileged position.

To that last comment I have to ask, “Really?  Privileged?”  This was a guy who was an incredible athlete, who won a Heisman Award and two national championships.  He was such an inspirational leader, his school engraved one of his locker room speeches on one of its walls (although not everyone loved it).  You keep hearing how bad he was at quarterback, so I guess every defensive back in the SEC must have been horribly incompetent to explain his two national championships.

Yet despite being one of the most successful college quarterbacks in history, he wasn’t chosen in the draft until the 25^th pick by the Denver Broncos.  After a year as backup, Tebow took over as the Bronco’s starter in 2011 when the team was 1-3.  All Tebow did was take them to the playoffs, and then win the first game in the playoffs. 

How was Tebow thanked?  Did they throw him a parade?  Did they build a statue to him?  No, the next year they traded him to the New York Jets for two low-round draft picks.  He bounced around the league but never was a full-time starter anywhere else and was washed up after only 3 seasons in the NFL.

He was then privileged to join the New York Mets’ farm system and try and make it to the Majors in baseball.  His “privilege” was to bounce between A ball, AA ball and AAA ball for four seasons, never making it to “The Show” despite the fact that jersey sales possibly would have paid his rookie salary.  Four years of minor league baseball is no one’s idea of “privilege.”

But are the haters right?  Does Tebow have any business signing as a tight end in the NFL?  Let me ask a few questions:

Did the Jacksonville Jaguars just draft Trevor Lawrence, the most heavily hype QB prospect since Y.A. Tittle strapped on a helmet?

Do you think Tim Tebow could tell Lawrence something about The Gospel According to Urban Meyer, Tebow’s coach in college and now the coach of the Jaguars?

Do you think Tebow has any wisdom to share about making the transition from highly successful college player to being a tackling dummy for Aaron Darnold and JJ Watt in the NFL?

Do you think having Tebow in the Jaguars’ training camp will take a little of the spotlight off of Lawrence as he learns a pro-style offence?

The answer to all of these questions is, “Duh!”  Tim Tebow will be an asset to Urban Meyer and Trevor Lawrence even if he never plays a down at tight end in a regular season game.  If nothing else, he can be a cautionary tale to a young man who has also won a Heisman Trophy and now dreams of NFL glory. 

I doubt Tim Tebow will make it to the Pro Bowl as a tight end.  I doubt he will be on the Jaguars’ opening day roster.  I do not doubt his leadership, or that he can help Trevor Lawrence get something Tim Tebow never got in the NFL—respect.

Tom Brady's best decision

 

There is an extensive literature about the possibility of an individual selling their soul to an entity (let’s just refer to this entity The Devil) in exchange for their heart’s desire.  That may be fame, wealth, love, success with members of the opposite sex, or anything else humans want; use your imagination.  Usually in these fictional tales, the deal ends up badly for the dealmaker, because The Devil is a difficult entity to outwit.  If you sell your soul for immortality, be sure to add eternal youth or you’ll be a decrepit old coot for a very long time.  If you wish for fame, you’ll be the best-known person in the world, but then someone else will take your place because all fame is fleeting.  Anyone wanting an abject lessen on the subject should watch the film Bedazzled (the original Dudley Moore/Peter Cook version, not the vastly inferior American remake).

If there is one person on the planet I’d suspect of having made such a deal, it would be Tom Brady.  A physically unprepossessing back-up quarterback in college, he was somehow drafted in the 6^th round of the NFL draft.  He warmed the bench until the starting QB for the Patriots, a Pro Bowl caliber quarterback named Drew Bledsoe, suffered a horrific injury, making Brady the starter.  He led the team to a Super Bowl, and suddenly that old axiom about football players not losing their jobs due to an injury was out the door, as was Bledsoe. 

You know the rest.  Tom Brady has played in 18% of all the Super Bowls ever.  He has won more Super Bowls than any franchise in the NFL.  He married a gorgeous supermodel who makes millions of dollars a year for being beautiful.  There have been the occasional bumps—modest injuries, Spygate, Deflategate, inexplicably Eli Manning twice—but he has bounced back from every trial stronger than before.  And now he has done what many said was impossible, winning his 7^th Super Bowl at the age of 43, and age that is probably five years beyond what used to be considered the productive life span of a quarterback.  At 43 George Blanda was called “The Ageless Wonder” and he was primarily a kicker.

With all the praise being heaped upon Tom Brady after Tampa Bay’s triumph in Super Bowl LV, there is one thing that I don’t think is getting enough praise.  A year ago Tom Brady had a decision to make, one of the most significant ones of his life.  Should he stay with the familiar New England Patriots and Bill Belichick, a combination that had led to the Patriots winning 17 division titles in 19 years, or should he seek his fortunes elsewhere?  And if the latter, where?  Los Angeles has good weather and two NFL teams, one (the Chargers) that was in need of a new quarterback.  The Raiders were opening a new venue in glitzy Las Vegas.  Several other teams (Vikings, Bears) had flirted with the playoffs but were maybe only missing a quarterback with some magic to go all the way.

Tom Brady chose the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a team that had gone 7-9 the year before and had a young quarterback named Jameis Winston who had won the Heisman Trophy, been selected first overall in the draft (unlike Brady who had been chosen 199^th), and had thrown for over 5,000 yards and 30 touchdowns the year before.  He also threw 30 interceptions, but he was a mobile quarterback which is the current rage in desirable QB talents; Tom Brady, for all his training, is about as immobile as a quarterback can be.

I won’t do the research, but I believe that no one in the major media outlets predicted Brady would choose to become Tampa Tom.  What was it that made Tom look at a franchise whose best years were far, far behind them and decide that they gave him the best chance of winning a Super Bowl NOW?  Did he know he could attract Rob Gronkowski from retirement, and Antonio Brown from his exile?  Did he know that he could work with Coach Bruce Arians to develop an offense that would suit his playing style?

The results certainly looked iffy at the midpoint of the season.  The Bucs started off at an unimpressive 7-5, including an embarrassing loss to the Super Bowl favorite Kansas City Chiefs and two solid losses to division-rival New Orleans.  They came off their bye week and did what they had to do, going undefeated the rest of the season to gain a tenuous hold on a wild card spot in the playoffs.  Then, in order to win it all, they had to beat future Hall of Famer Drew Brees and the Saints for a third time, beat future Hall of Famer and eventual league MVP Arron Rogers, and then beat possible future Hal of Famer and former MVP Patrick Mahomes, who had a 25-1 record since becoming the Chiefs’ signal caller.  I won’t mention that they also had to beat a sub-.500 Washington team with its third string QB.

Was anyone in America as smart as Tom Brady to see that Tom Brady + Tamp Bay Buccaneers = instant championship?  That what that team needed was a change of culture from the most successful and driven QB of all time, a few new pieces that would want to play with Brady, and a risk-averse QB who could temper his coaches’ inane motto of “No risky, no bisky”?  If there was anyone else who saw what Tampa Tom saw, I don’t know his or her name.

I am still put off by Brady holding practices that violated COVID protocols, and then declaring that there was nothing to fear from a virus (he might want to talk to the families of the over 400,000 people in America who have died from COVID about what to be afraid of).  But in the wake of a Super Bowl trophy, what’s a little pandemic among teammates?

In the end, it’s like the time on The Simpsons when someone asked movie star Rainer Wolfcastle how he slept at night.  He replied, “On top of a pile of money with many beautiful ladies.”  Tom only has Giselle Bunchen to sleep with, but I imagine that’s sufficient.

No one gets into the Hall of Fame, no one should care

 

If the hold an election for the Hall of Fame and nobody wins, does it still count?

For the ninth time in its history the Baseball Hall of Fame held their annual selection vote and no one received the 75% necessary to enter the hallowed halls of the Hall.  Despite what you may have heard, the reason isn’t steroids.

First of all, I don’t see the failure to select someone as a negative.  It proves the Hall has some standards for admission, and won’t admit some mediocre player like Harold Baines just to avoid having no entrants (I hate to harp on the selection of Baines, who by all accounts was a nice guy, but his selection in 2019 was the worst choice for induction since the selection of Jesse Haines).  Some years there will be multiple no-brainers eligible five years after retirement; in other years the choices will be more . . . subtle.  But no entrant this year means they have some standards.

Also, it isn’t like they can’t hold an induction ceremony, since they cancelled last year’s due to COVID.   So people can still gather in Cooperstown in July and watch Derek Jeter and Larry Walker give their speeches, a long as they maintain social distance.

The main thrust among the talking heads on ESPN is that the reason for the failure to elect anyone in 2021 is the hypocrisy of keeping out Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens for alleged steroids use.  The flaw in that argument is that, if not for the steroids allegations, they would have been elected on their first ballot nine years ago.  So leave the debate over steroid users for another day.

The other elephant in the room is Curt Schilling, who support hovers just below the 75% threshold.  Some call Schilling an obvious first ballot Hall of Famer, which I think is overselling it a bit.  He won 216 games, while Jim Kaat won 283 games and won 16 Gold Gloves, yet he isn’t in the Hall.  If Schilling wanted to be a first ballot no-brainer, he should have won some more games.

But he did have a Hall of Fame type career, and his post-season heroics elevate his candidacy above those of players who made no impression at all in the playoffs or World Series.  The problem is that Schilling himself has publicized his bigoted and homophobic views; when Schilling complains that “they” have ruined his reputation, he should really look in a mirror.  But should that keep him out of the Hall?

Lots of players are in the Hall despite being racists, bigots, and what not.  The had the name of the man who enforced the segregation of African Americans, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, on the MVP trophies until last year.  As troubling as Schilling’s beliefs are, the Hall is supposed to reflect the history of baseball, and that history includes Schilling’s bloody sock. 

There is a “character” clause in the Hall of Fame voting rules, but what counts as character?  Should it only apply to the game, and not what people do in their private lives?  Was it cheating to use amphetamines in the 1960’s and 70’s, as many players did?  Are all the members of the 2019 Huston Astros ineligible for the Hall of Fame because the team won a World Series because they cheated?  If it applies to activities outside the realm of baseball, what is over the line?  One accusation of spousal abuse, or does there have to be a long running pattern?  Is one DUI enough to keep Todd Helton out, or must there be repeat offenses?

If the Hall starts keeping out players because of a single incidence or allegation of wrongdoing, then the Hall will become like the San Francisco commission on school names that decided that Abraham Lincoln was evil and didn’t deserve to have a school named after him because he didn’t treat Indigenous-Americans nicely. 

I enjoy Hall of Fame debates, because they can be so multi-faceted.  How much do we discount stats from players who played in Colorado?  How much weight do we give to Gold Glove winners (Jim Kaat won 16 Gold Gloves in addition to 283 games, so they must not count for much)?  How much does post-season heroics add to a resume?  But when you start wading in to whether someone is worthy of being in the Hall of Fame, I am not sure there are clear standards.

In the movie 61*, Billy Crystal’s recreation of the Maris/Mantle duel for the home run title in 1961, there is a depiction of Yankee fans being asked who “deserved” to break Babe Ruth’s record of 60 home runs in a season.  This is a stupid question; the person who “deserves” to break it is the man who does. 

As Clint Eastwood’s character in Unforgiven said, “Deserves got nothin’ to do with it.”

 

Newsflash: Doug Pederson lied

There is a story I once heard that I love so much I have never dared to attempt to confirm it.  When Nick Saban was coach of the Miami Dolphins, the coaching job at Alabama became available.  Supposedly someone asked him whether he was going to take the job, and he insisted he would remain the coach at Miami.  A week later, he was the head coach at Alabama.  When asked why he lied, he allegedly replied, “I didn’t lie, I said something that, in retrospect, turned out to be inaccurate.”

Phooey.  Doug Pederson lied.

Often proving someone lied is a complicated undertaking, involving intense research, uncovering sources, and using precise logic to parse what someone said.  What Doug Pederson said was, “I was trying to win the game; and I put my third string quarterback in to play in the fourth quarter of a three-point game because I wanted to give him some snaps.”  Those two statements are prima facia evidence of a lie.

The outrage over Pederson’s statements has been two-fold; some people object to him lying (or at least not putting more effort into lying more credibly), while others are distressed that not trying to win a game hurts the integrity of the game.  Oh, and there are New York Giants fans who are livid that their 6-10 football team was denied a chance to host an NFC playoff game.

The last is easily dismissed; if you want to host a playoff game, then win more than 6 games.  But the first two are worthy of discussion as to whether they are a fundamental breech of protocol in the National Football League.

Coaches lie all the time.  Coaches may say with a straight face that even though the team is 1-6 they expect to make the playoffs.  Coaches may reassure a player that he won’t lose his job because he got injured (I’m sure someone said that to Drew Bledsoe when he was taken out for an injury and replaced by a kid named Tom Brady).  But these are just examples of things that in retrospect turned out to be inaccurate. 

Pederson was NOT playing to win.  What coach, down by three points with a quarter to play, would think of putting in the third string quarterback as a way of increasing his team’s chance of winning, when the first and second string quarterbacks are both healthy?  The lie is so transparent, it becomes an insult.  How stupid do you think we are, to tell us you were trying to win because Nick Sudfeld is a much better QB than Jalen Hurts?  Of course, if Pederson honestly thinks that Nick Sudfeld is a better QB than Jalen Hurts, then it raises a new set of questions about Doug Pederson’s qualifications.

There is some speculation that Pederson was ordered to throw the game by the GM or the team’s owner, in order to get the 6^th draft pick instead of the 9^th.  If that is true, then Pederson should have said, “The owner told me not to win the game.  If you have any further questions, ask him.” 

Let’s skip over the blatant lying and look at the other source of disgust, the fact that Pederson wasn’t trying to win the game, he was trying to put the Eagles draft pick at #6 instead of #9.   Other teams, like the Steelers who had locked in their playoff slot, rested starters and lost to the Browns.  If they don’t try to win, why should we criticize Doug Pederson for doing what’s in the franchise’s best interest?

But the Steelers weren’t trying to lose, as the closeness of the Brown’s two-point win demonstrates.  They weren’t broken up about losing, but they were playing to win in the context that the week 17 game meant very little, and the first-round playoff game meant a lot.  Pederson pulled the Eagles’ starting QB with 12 minutes to play and down by three, and also didn’t go for a Hail Mary on the last play of the game.  That’s not resting starters, that is sabotaging the outcome.

And his reason wasn’t because Jalen Hurts was injured, or too tired to continue.  He wanted Nick Sudfeld to “get some snaps.”  First, why do you care if your third string QB gets playing time?  Do you really expect him to compete for the starting job next year with Hurts and Wentz?  Second, if you want him to get snaps, why wasn’t he put in at the end of the Cowboys game the week before, when the Eagles were down 30-17 in the 4^th quarter, instead of a winnable game when the Eagles were down only by three at the start of the 4^th quarter?  Third, why not take Sudfeld out after his interception and lost fumble?  Hadn’t you seen enough at that point to remember why Sudfeld is NOT your starter?

Of course, you might have put Wentz in at that point, but he’d already been scratched despite being perfectly healthy.  He probably needed a game off given how hard he’d been working in his new role as the back-up QB.

And what did Pederson gain by giving Sudfeld “some snaps”?  His credibility is shot, his players have denounced him, and he lost a winnable game.  Was it worth it to give Nick Sudfeld “some snaps”?  I doubt it.  Now we need to wait and see if it lost him his job.  If the owner doesn’t fire him, then maybe we do know where the order to throw the game came from.

The Negro Leagues are now "major leagues"; this is progress?

 So, the ranks of former major league baseball players expanded dramatically this week when Major League Baseball declared that the Negro Leagues were "major leagues."  My first reaction is to recall the joke told by Ben Franklin in the musical 1776; when told that he has the honor of being called an Englishman he says while that may be, he does not have the same rights as an Englishman and “. . . to call me [an Englishman] without those rights is like calling an ox a bull; he’s thankful for the honor but he’d much rather have restored what was rightfully his.”

Let me be very clear here; I am not saying that the African Americans who were forced to participate in the Negro Leagues were inferior ballplayers.  It is the greatest stain on a sport I adore that for many decades some of the greatest athletes in America were unable to play merely because of their skin color.  The history of the Negro Leagues, which Ken Burns ably and rightly included in his series Baseball, is a necessary component of understanding the game.  I have been to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, and it was a shame that the exploits of those players were not documented as fully as those of players in the National League and the American League.

But it wasn’t “Major League” baseball, and calling it that I find a trifle insulting.  If anything, maybe it was better.  As Jackie Robinson demonstrated once he was allowed to join the “major leagues,” the style of baseball played in the Negro Leagues was faster, more daring, requiring more strategy than the style of White teams in the 1950’s, where power hitting was all the rage. 

Not only was the style of play different, but the teams also didn’t play a set schedule of 162 games like the “major leagues.”  Facilities were usually inferior and travel schedules were more taxing.  Pitchers pitched more frequently as staffs weren’t very deep.  They played shorter schedules, so adding them to Major League statistics won’t affect counting stats, but average stats will be skewed; according to the LA Times article linked above, now Babe Ruth and Ted Williams will no longer be in the top ten for batting average.  This isn’t because Negro League players were better; they just played shorter seasons and had shorter careers.

What I think is the real damage from declaring the Negro Leagues to be “Major Leagues” is that now MLB can deny that there ever was any discrimination in baseball.  African Americans can now no longer say that they were kept out of the Major Leagues until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, because now Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson DID play in the Major Leagues.  Problem solved.

If baseball wants to do something about racial issues, there are other steps that can be taken.  Cap Anson, the architect of the policy of excluding African Americans from playing in the Major Leagues, should have that fact added to his plaque in Cooperstown, permanently labeling him as a racist.  This year MLB took former Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis' name off the MVP trophies awarded at the end of the season; they should add a similar codicil to his plaque in Cooperstown as well (or just vote him out; what did he do, other than enforce the color barrier for 24 years?).

I will assume MLB meant well by “promoting” the Negro Leagues to Major League status, but it doesn’t make up for over a half century of overt, unabashed racism (and several more decades of covert, clandestine racism).  I consider it to be rewriting history to make past racism seem more palatable.  Once again, a mostly White organization takes symbolic action against racism; maybe eventually there will be some real, non-symbolic progress.

Does Colin Kaepernick have a job in the NFL?  I didn’t think so,

Are TV Comedies even trying to be funny?

 Many people have described the current TV landscape as a “Golden Age.”  Precisely, the third Golden Age; the first was the 1950’s, when TV technology was too crude to allow the filming of car chases or go on exotic locations, so TV dramas consisted of actors standing (or sitting) on a stage . . . [gulp] talking.  The second Golden Age was the late 1970’s/early 1980’s, when Grant Tinker and MTM revolutionized the drama with groundbreaking shows like Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere.  We are now in the late stages of the third Golden Age, when pay cable unfettered content restrictions and revenue streams were divorced enough from “ratings” that daring new shows like The Sopranos, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad could forge new ground.

This may be the Golden Age of Drama, but in my humble opinion it is the Lead Age of Comedy.  Of course, it is dangerous to discuss comedy rationally, as it is entirely subjective.  I won’t do the research, but I suspect that the audience for The King of Queens regularly exceeded that of the great TV classic Taxi.  But while I will confess that what I find funny is idiosyncratic, I still look at the recent winners of the Emmy for Best Comedy and wonder if this isn’t some joke on one of those prank shows.

At the last Emmy Awards the series Schitt’s Creek swept all the major awards.  That was for its sixth season; I have not watched it, but I did watch the fifth season (after having been told the first four seasons were not very good).  The show isn’t exactly bad, and my respect for great performers like Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara, both of whom I loved when they were on SCTV, is tremendous.  But the set up is cliched, and the writing didn’t seem to go anywhere.  In one episode a rumor starts on the internet that Catherine O’Hara’s character had died; people were surprised to see her, then it all stopped because a giraffe stepped on a kitten and the entire internet focused on that.  There was no pay off, no revelation for anyone about being happy to be alive, or being sad when the attention stopped. There was no plot development that I could detect.

As unsatisfied as I was about Schitt’s Creek, I liked the previous year’s winner, Fleabag, even less.  Again, I did not watch the season that won but the previous season, season 1.  For the life of me I could not understand why this was called a comedy, except that if it was called a drama it would be considered worse.  The sole joke was that the main character was devoid of redeeming qualities, which I suppose could be developed amusingly but there was no attempt to do so.  I gave up after 3 episodes, which may be unfair, but life is too short to watch a TV show you aren’t enjoying (besides, there were only 6 episodes so I watched half a season).

I was only able to watch episodes of the previous Best Comedy winner, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, on a plane over the Atlantic, so I reserve judgement (but I will say that what I saw did not encourage me to seek out more episodes).  I have recently watched another Best Comedy nominee from that year, season 1 of the dark comedy Barry.  This is another show with one joke; a hit man in LA stumbles into an acting class while tailing a mark, and decides he wants to become an actor.  I have been able to keep watching Barry, as it is well made and well-acted, and the plot is developing into an absurdist existential farce.  But it isn’t “funny.”

It’s almost as if the modern comedy has evolved to the point where it isn’t supposed to be funny.  Lucy frantically trying to manage items on a speeding conveyor belt is so passé; now we are supposed to watch a character in an uncomfortable situation and chuckle (internally) at the character’s discomfort.  Eliciting laughter is not a comedy’s raison d’etre.

Frankly, the funniest show on broadcast television now might be Legends of Tomorrow, the CW’s pastiche of superheroes that is masquerading as a show about superheroes.  I will concede that my favorite comedy of the past four seasons, NBC’s The Good Place, often passed on doing jokes in favor of some absurdist philosophical point (but the show still had many, many moments of unbridled hilarity).

I think the problem is that the TV marketplace is now so Balkanized, so fractured, that there is no point in trying to appeal to a mass market funny bone.  Why try to appeal to 22 million viewers, like Friends did in its final seasons?  There are so many networks and platforms, it is futile to try and reach that audience.  I can’t even find data on how many people in America watched Fleabag (I didn’t try very hard) but I am guessing it is in the low single digit millions, if that.

And don’t get me started on what these shows call a “season.”  Barry is all of 8 less than half-hour episodes; Fleabag was 6 per season and ran out of ideas after two seasons.  Cheers produced 22-27 episodes per year for 11 years; yes, the Kirstie Alley were a slog at times, but that’s over 270 episodes.  I’m going to go out on a limb and say creators who can create 270 episodes of a TV show (while racking up 179 Emmy nominations and 28 wins) are more talented than ones who call it a wrap after 12.

So, there will never be another I Love Lucy, or All in the Family, or Cheers.  TV comedies aren’t even trying to be funny; maybe the last funny sitcom was Modern family, and that ran dry a couple of seasons before the end.  I guess if we want to find the humor in our modern world, we have to read the political news.

Dick Allen for the Hall of Fame?

 Ron Santo.

Marvin Miller.

Dick Allen?

The Baseball Hall of Fame has gotten into a nasty habit recently of denying entry to deserving people, then letting them in immediately after they die, when they are unable to appreciate the honor.  Marvin Miller, one of the two or three most influential people in the history of baseball, was kept out until after his death, but he said he understood why the owners, who control the Hall of Fame, would not want him admitted.  The case of Ron Santo I find harder to fathom, as he was a popular player and then a beloved announcer for the Cubbies.  The fact that he also lost a leg to diabetes and was in ill-health when he was not being voted in adds to my confusion.

Recently former MVP and Rookie of the Year Dick Allen passed away.  The objective case for his Hall of Fame induction is obvious.  According to Baseball Reference, his ratings for Black Ink, Grey Ink and the Hall of Fame Monitor all put him over the threshold (albeit marginally in some cases).  He put up impressive offensive numbers during one of the most pitching-dominant periods in baseball history, the 1960’s.  The fact that he picked up an MVP award during his career further solidifies his case. 

Yet he never garnered much support from the Baseball Writers Association, where he never got more than 19% of the vote, and far cry from the needed 75%.  The Veterans Committee came close to inducting him, giving him 11 o the needed 12 votes.  Since then the Phillies retired his number, and a revote on his induction was postponed due to COVID.

The case for Dick Allen entering the Hall of Fame is obvious, but so is the case for keeping him out.  You don’t have his numbers and peak at under 20% of the writers’ vote for no reason.  He was difficult to work with, attacked managers and teammates in the press, was a divisive locker room presence, and never led a team to a championship.  Bill James, in his seminal book What Ever Happened to the Hall of Fame, recounts Allen’s tumultuous history and concludes, “And if that’s a Hall of Famer, I’m a lug nut.”

But now that he has passed away, will he get in?  If he only missed by one vote before, I’m guessing the sentimental vote will put him over the top.  Also, a lot of his “difficulty” at the time can be attributed to racism, and in a more woke culture some of the complaints about him will be muted (Bill James acknowledged that Allen was the victim of racism, but pointed out that so were Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Roy Campenella, Bob Gibson, and others who weren’t excluded from the Hall because they were “difficult”). 

I do wish that the Hall would make an effort to indict players while they are alive so they can appreciate the honor.  I previously wrote that Pete Rose should be inducted after he dies, because his “lifetime ban” will have expired, and the point of the ban was to deny him the honor.  For millionaire superstars (like Rose, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens) there aren’t many penalties that will deter them from bad acts, but not seeing themselves inducted in the Hall of Fame should make them think twice.

I’m not proposing that dead players be ineligible for induction, like deceased persons can’t win a Nobel Prize.  I’m just saying that for marginal persons who are kept out, greater weight should be given to how close the person is from meeting the Grim Reaper.  Come on, you know Marvin Miller should be in the Hall, so when he gets past 80 years old just put him in.   Ron Santo was the best third baseman during a pitching-dominated era and played in a pitcher-friendly park, and put in years as a broadcaster.  He should be alive when the inevitable and overdue induction takes place.

The Hall is not about numbers and statistics.  If it were, they would have an objective standard for entry, like golf.  Anyone with a lifetime OPS of .900 or career WAR over 60, come on down.  There are intangibles.  When Harold Baines was inducted, I protested that it is the Hall of FAME, not the Hall of Pretty Good.  Sandy Koufax only had 6 or 7 good seasons, but he was the best pitcher when he was on, and he led his team to championships.  On the other hand, Rafael Palmiero had 3,000 hits and 500 home runs, but never led his team to anything.  Koufax goes in, Palmiero stays out (although granted it is for the failed drug test).

So, Hall of Fame voters, if you are on the fence in the future, look at the player’s birth certificate and take that into account when voting yea or nay.

 

I defend analytics

 Something happened a month ago that I just didn’t feel like talking about, even though it was in my wheelhouse.  It was something where I would defend a decision that everyone in the world was attacking, but I guess the attacks were so ubiquitous I figured what would be the point?  I love tilting at windmills but it gets tiresome.  But the attacks have gone on for a month and at some point my natural contrariness gets backed into a corner and has to come out fighting.

The event I am speaking of was the decision of Tampa Bay Rays manager Kevin Cash to pull starter Blake Snell from Games Six of the 2020 World Series in the sixth inning while he was pitching a 2-hit shutout.  The relief pitcher, Nick Anderson, proved less capable and the Dodgers won the game and the Series.

Cash subsequently won the AL Manager of the Year award (for his work during the regular season).  Snell has said he was disappointed by the decision and he now is the subject of trade rumors.  Last week on ESPN one of their personalities opined that the award for “Turkey of the Year” should not only be given to Cash, but named after him in perpetuity for making the dumbest decision of all time.

The decision was motivated by analytics, namely the fact that Snell had gone through the Dodgers’ line-up twice and that he was not as effective when facing batters for a third time.  The most vociferous attacks on Cash have come from the anti-analytics community, who see the Rays’ loss as conclusive proof that analytics are stupid.

First of all, using analytics to make decisions does not me that the decision is always going to work out 100% of the time.  Analytics is about probability, that over time you will more often come out ahead if you make rational decisions based on past observation of outcomes.  Part of the allure of non-analytics is that practitioners remember when their “hunches” paid off and forget all the times that their gut led them astray.

Second, decisions have to be executed.  If Nick Anderson had come in and pitched two shut out innings, we might not be having this conversation.  But he gave up a double to the first batter he faced, Mookie Betts, and the Rays’ fate was sealed.  News flash—Mookie Betts is a pretty good hitter.  Maybe if he had faced Snell for a third time, he would have timed a fastball and hit a home run.  Anderson’s subsequent failure to execute does not impact the decision made to pull Snell before he started facing batters for a third time, which had historically proven to be a bad idea.

What might have happened if Snell had been left in?  Let’s go back to the 2015 World Series.  Mets starter Mat Harvey is pitching a gem in Game 5, cruising after eight innings.  Harvey, who had only pitched one complete game in his entire history (and that was a blowout, not a close game), convinced his manager to ignore what the numbers said and to leave him in.  Mets’ manager Terry Collins eventually gave in and . . . the results were not good.  Harvey blew the game in the ninth, the Mets lost the game in extra innings, and thus lost the Series 4-1.  Analytics doesn’t look so bad now, does it?

As far as I can tell, people who don’t like analytics have one thing in common; they aren’t good at math.  They hate what they are incapable of understanding.  Analytics are responsible for getting the low-payroll Rays into the Series in the first place; analytics is the only weapon teams like the Rays and the “Moneyball” A’s have to compete against teams who can afford to make mistakes and overpay players who don’t work out. 

I concede that analytics has made sports less interesting.  Analytics says home runs are the most efficient way to score runs, so we have to put up with most at bats ending in a strikeout, base on balls, or home run.  In basketball, the mid-range jumper is dying because the most efficient strategy is to combine dunks with 3-point baskets.  In football, the short passing game is preferred to a “ground and pound” rushing offence or unleashing a mad bomber at quarterback because it has proven most effective.

But it is evolution, not heresy.  Yes, I miss the days when Bob Gibson would have punched his manager in the nose before giving up the ball before the ninth inning of a World Series game.  Yes, I miss the days when the 1971 Orioles had four 20-game winners on their pitching staff, when now there aren’t four 20-game winners in all of the majors (in 2019 there were exactly two).  Yes, I wish modern hitters listened to Wee Willie Keeler who said the secret to success was to “hit it where they ain’t,” instead of hitting into a shift when a bunt down the third base line would be an easy double. 

I miss those days, but they are in the past, not the future.

Memo to Mets owner Steve Cohen--don't start planning your parade route yet

 

The Mets new owner plans to win World Series; isn’t that cute?

The New York Mets were sold to Steve Cohen, about whom all I know is that he is rich enough to buy a sports team in New York, which doesn’t predispose me to liking him.  At his press conference after the sale was announced, he said he would be “disappointed” if the Mets didn't win a World Series in 3-5 years.

Mr. Cohen, prepare to be disappointed.

Non-sports people often buy sports teams and announce that the reason why the team hasn’t won recently is that they haven’t tried hard enough, didn’t plan strategically, or just didn't have enough heart. The baseball people who had been in charge, who had spent 20-30 or more years in the game, didn’t have the keen business mind that allows people to succeed in any field.

Let me remind Mr. Cohen of a few facts from recent history.  The Chicago Cubs recently ended a 108-year drought.  The Red Sox, despite the best efforts of Ted Williams and Carlton Fisk, had 86 years of frustration.  Currently, the Cleveland Indians are at 72 years and counting for a championship.   The vaunted Dodgers, one of the premiere franchises of the National League (and one of the richest) just won their first World Series after 32 years.  The Minnesota Twins, who haven’t won in almost 30 years, have lost 18 post-season games in a row.  The Oakland A’s, who haven’t won it all in 31 years, this year won their first post-season elimination game since 1973,  47 years ago.  Currently, 15 of the 30 franchises have championship droughts of 25 years or more.  One of those teams is the Mets, working on a 34 year drought.

Heck, four teams, the Rangers, Brewers, Padres, and Mariners, have never won a World Championship: for the Rangers that’s a 6-decade span.

But this Steve Cohen guy is going to come in, take a team that had a losing record in 2020 (okay, the 2020 season was hardly typical; they did have a .531 winning percent in 2019), and by virtue of his superior intellect, make them World Champions in 3-5 years? 

Because of its rich history with statistical analysis, table-top simulation games like Strat-O-Matic, and the Hot Stove league busy every off-season, there is a long tradition of people thinking they know more than the managers and general managers that play the game.  In some cases, this may be true; but it’s rare.

I would direct Mr. Cohen to the words of wisdom from the late Baseball Commissioner Bart Giamatti, who once said, “Baseball breaks your heart.  It was designed to break your heart.” You may be planning a parade in Manhattan sometime in 2023-25, but the Dodgers, Braves, Yankees, Astros, Nationals, Cubs, Indians, Tigers, Reds, Royals, Rangers, and 18 other major league teams have other ideas. 

Mr. Cohen, prepare to be disappointed. 

 

Lucifer Season 5 Review; there's still life in the old Devil

 

Life is full of tradeoffs.  Taking a job for more money may mean less time to spend with your kids.  Buying something that is more affordable usually means getting something more cheaply made.  Going out and having fun means risking catching a potentially deadly virus.  What to do.

A perennial trade off is that of quality versus quantity.  Let’s take the example of television programs.  Once upon a time, a “season” of a TV show meant a lot of episodes.  For example, the 1950’s half-hour Western “Have Gun – Will Travel” produced 39 episodes in its first season.  At this early stage of network television, the “TV season” started in the Fall and literally ran a new episode every week until it was time for the “summer rerun season” when networks showed repeats.  As you can imagine, the pace was grueling on the regular actors.

The number of episodes in a “season” slowly went down to where, in the mid-1960’s, a season was an episode count in the mid-20’s, such as Star Trek’s third season which produced 24 episodes.  The number continued to fall until at some point an equilibrium set in at 22 episodes, usually an initial order of 11 and then a “back order” of 10 additional episodes if the show was successful.

But then came a revolution when Premium cable started producing original shows but only 13 at a time.  Imagine, a season with one-third as many episodes as a show in the 1950’s!  But here is where the trade off comes in; the shows are higher quality, but there are fewer of them.  It is a lot easier to maintain high quality in scripts if, like The Sopranos, you only have to do 13 instead of 22, or 39.  This is probably why the last network show to win an Emmy for Best Dramatic Series was 24 way back in 2006.  In 2019, Game of Thrones season 8 won an Emmy for Best Dramatic Series despite producing only six episodes.

This is a long-winded way of my getting around to reviewing Season 5 of Lucifer, which was on Fox for three seasons and now resides at Netflix.  Fox gave the show a limited order for season 1, then showed confidence with an 18-episode order in season 2 and a 26 episode order in season 3.  But now that the show is on Netflix, fans have to comfort themselves with a paltry 10 episodes in season 4 and only 8 in season 5.

But here’s the thing—Lucifer has never been this consistently good during its run.  Don’t get me wrong, after a mediocre season 1 the show made some wonderful course corrections and proved to be a source of good-natured blasphemy thereafter.  But there were more than a few episodes where the case of the week seemed a little thin, or the plot twists with lucifer’s backstory seemed a tad arbitrary, or Lucifer’s sexual puns were more lame than usual.  I have seen the first five episodes of season 5, and they have been five of the best episodes the show has produced.

One thing possibly improving the quality is that, before Netflix belatedly decided on a sixth season, this was supposed to be Lucifer’s swan song, and as the saying goes there is nothing like the prospect of being executed at dawn to focus the mind.  The show has shaken up the loose bounds of its formula (Devil solves crimes in Los Angeles) and is having more fun in how it tells stories.  Just as the show’s best episode, Season 3's "Off the Record," broke with its format, the show is now rising to new heights reveling in its new-found freedom.

Gratuitous spoiler alert at this point; proceed no further if you want NO information about Lucifer Season 5 (then why are you reading this?).  Episode 1, “Really Sad Devil Guy,” adopts a wonderfully executed concept where Lucifer, in Hell, decides to investigate the same murder as Detective Decker, only Lucifer can only access the murder victim’s memories.  This means he is recreating experiences that happened about 36 hours before Decker visits the same locations.  The second episode trots out the long-spoiled revelation that Lucifer’s twin brother, Michael, will attempt to impersonate him, with star Tom Ellis doing very impressive double duty (even if his American accent is lame).  Episode 3 gets delightfully meta as Lucifer and Decker investigate the murder of a showrunner for a TV show called Lieutenant Diablo, about a crime solving Devil in LA with an attractive female partner. 

Episode 4, “It Never Ends Well For the Chicken,” goes two places where it is surprising the show has not gone before: a black-and-white filmed homage to film noir, and Lucifer telling Trixie a bedtime story (their relationship is one of my favorite ones since the first episode).  The last episode I’ve seen, “Detective Amenadiel,” teams up Lucifer’s brother with Decker, revealing new sides of him, and also gives us some much-needed back story for Doctor Linda.

The show has never been better at balancing the needs of a large and talented cast, with only Aimee Garcia’s Ella getting some short shrift (made up for by her playing mobster Tommy Stompanato in Lucifer’s retelling of the story of how he got his ring; you have to see it to understand).  But there are three episodes remaining, so maybe Ella gets another visit to the nudist colony she and Lucifer went to in season 4.  D. B. Woodside and Kevin Alejandro both get to flex their comedic muscles, Lesley-Anne Brandt gets more to do as Mazekean than just glower and kick ass (she sings!), and the always wonderful Rachel Harris does more than just look exasperated when Lucifer is in her office.

I still wish season 5 was more than eight measly episodes, but so far season 5 is looking better than the slightly larger (10 episode) season 4, which was mainly notable for the aforementioned trip to the nudist colony (of course Lucifer would be enthusiastic, but who would have pegged Ella as his equally enthusiastic companion; shame about the unfortunately very long [and strategically placed] hair).  Eight great episodes of Lucifer is better than no episodes, but is it preferable to 20 mostly good episodes? 

As Woody Allen said in Love and Death, “It’s not the quantity of you sexual relations that counts, it’s the quality.  On the other hand, if the quantity drops below once every eight months, I would definitely have it looked into.”