The Big East fell apart this year. I have a lot wrapped up in that conference, since I went to a Big East basketball school and grew up watching Thompson and Boeheim take on the Roman Catholic Coaches Association (Carnesecca, Massimino, Carlesimo, Pitino). Watching the disintegration, led by Syracuse of all places, made me realize my experience with college sports was done.

Over at Grantland, Charlie Pierce thinks the NCAA is coming down.

Every few years, some angry, stick-waving prophet would come wandering into the cozy system of unpaid (or barely paid) labor and start bellowing about how the essential corruption in the system wasn’t that some players got money under the table, but that none of them were allowed to get any over it. Sooner or later, these people said, the system would collapse from its own internal contradictions — yes, some of these people summoned up enough Marx through the bong resin in their brains from their college days to make a point — and the people running college sports had best figure out how to control the chaos before it overwhelmed them. Nobody listened. Very little changed, except that college sports became bigger and more lucrative, an enterprise of sports spectacle balanced precariously on the fragile principle that everybody should get to make money except the people doing the actual work.

What comes after that? Someone is going to have to stuff steroids down these teenagers’ throats to get them big enough for the NFL, right? If athletes were employees of their universities, would anybody want to watch? And if we removed colleges from the equation entirely, would anybody tune into watch whatever intermediary staging area develops?

The best example of what would happen to the NCAA is probably the current baseball model. There is scant interest in NCAA baseball and Minor League baseball. All anybody cares about are the Major Leagues, because the best talent in the world, from all ages is on display there and only there.

Compare the incredible amount of revenue surrounding the NCAA title games in basketball in football to whatever will be available after the NCAA cracks like an egg and you can see how ugly this is going to get.

Matty Alou has passed away.

Check out this BBC radio documentary about the loneliness of the goalkeeper.

[Photograph by Ryan Heffernan via Zach Ancell]

I don’t go for horror movies. Sure, I watched a mess of them when I was a kid–“The Exorcist,” “The Omen,” and “Rosemary’s Baby.” I also saw “Halloween,” and “Friday the 13th,” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” “I Spit On Your Grave,” all that stuff and more. I had a stronger constitution then. Now, I just don’t like being scared.

I even worked on a “horror” movie, was the assistant film editor on “The Blair Witch Project II,” although the scariest part of that project was the silence in the screening room after the executives saw the first cut. Scary for the director, I should say, I thought it was pretty funny.

Anyhow, horror movies aren’t the only ones that are scary. Heck, you could argue that “The King of Comedy,” is Scorsese’s scariest movie (and that “Taxi Driver” is his funniest). I’ll never forget the final shot of “Planet of Apes,” when I was little and hiding under the covers wondering about the big questions of life.

The movie I can’t get over, though, is “Mad Max II,” aka “The Road Warrior.” Scared me as a kid and makes me jittery when I watch it today. It’s a comic book but an effective one. Watch this scene and tell me you don’t get nervous in spite of how silly it all is.

The Circle Home

By John Schulian

I went from vanishing to vanished in the speed it took me to drive away from Universal for the last time. There was no talk of an opening on another writing staff, no phone call from my worthless agent to buck up my spirits. The truth was, my spirits didn’t need bucking up. I’d done what I’d set out to do. I’d worked in Hollywood and lived to tell the tale. I’d been part of the game, and now I wasn’t. That was fine with me. Hollywood never defined my life. Maybe that’s why there are days now when it feels like it never happened.

And yet it was a thrill each time I drove onto a studio lot. It didn’t matter which one – 20th, Warners, Paramount, Universal, old MGM – because miracles were the coin of the realm in them all. The real world was something that wasn’t supposed to get past the guards at the gate. They stood between the public and the buildings named for Jerry Lewis, Clara Bow, and Abbott and Costello where I tried to navigate a business that can make you Malibu royalty or leave you like driftwood on the beach.

At lunch one day in the Universal commissary, I saw Paul Newman get a big hug from Lew Wasserman, who was then the most powerful man in show business. I scribbled dialogue on a legal pad or typed it on a computer screen and watched actors use it to give life to characters who sprang from my imagination. I embraced the silliness when an assistant producer on “Hercules” told me why she couldn’t get an actress’s breasts to stay submerged in a milk bath and keep the censors off our back: too much silicone. Most of all, I’ll never forget the kindness of two actors on “L.A. Law,” Jill Eikenberry and Michael Tucker, who sought me out to say thanks for the script I’d written. I blush at the fact that I didn’t tell them it was Steven Bochco they should be thanking, but maybe they already knew that. What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that even with the rough patches I hit, I wouldn’t give back a minute I spent in Hollywood.

I loved the work when it was just me and a piece of paper. As for the rest of it, I wavered between ambivalence and outright hatred. But I could never hate it for long because I didn’t know when luck might start breaking good for me again. Even now, eight years after from my last TV job, I’ve got an idea for a screenplay rattling around inside my head. A friend with big screen credits planted it there after he read a short story of mine and saw the makings of a movie. I’ve made notes on it, toyed with how to structure it for the screen, come up with dialogue while I’ve been out on my daily walk. I’ve also put it away, but always with the caveat that I can take it out again. That’s how the business works for most of us: once seduced, always seduced.

But let me not get carried away by dreams and nostalgia. I’m no longer part of the show-biz whirl with its non-stop talk about movies and TV pilots I’ve got to see, actors and writers and directors I’ve got to be aware of, and salaries that will make my head explode. When I’m around friends who are still in the game, it takes me half the night to get up to speed and the other half to forget what I’ve heard. There are too many names I don’t recognize or need to remember. And if there are any executives who remember me, they would probably just say, “Oh, yeah, the sports writer,” and move on to the next subject.

By the time I arrived in Hollywood, I had downgraded sports writer to the pejorative. It was a label that stuck to me like gum to the sole of my shoe and I resented it. I was sick to death of games and athletes and the words I lavished on them. But no sooner did I leave the Philadelphia Daily News than Sport magazine asked me to assay Sugar Ray Robinson for its 40th anniversary issue. Never mind that I’d not been closer to him than a TV screen. I wrote the piece. When I went to buy the magazine, convinced that it contained my unofficial farewell to sportswriting, I could hear practically hear a booming old-fashioned score in the background, something by Dimitri Tiomkin or Max Steiner or one of those Newmans who are related to Randy. Show business had such a hold on my brain that it wasn’t until years later I understood that the true significance of my ode to Sugar Ray. It stood as proof that part of me would always belong to sportswriting.

In 1988, when a screenwriters’ strike lasted five months, I wrote a spec screenplay that eventually ended up at the right studio at the wrong time, but I also wrote an essay for GQ about how the American male gets his first lessons in personal style from athletes. In 1992, when I came off my first unhappy year in TV, I regained my balance by doing a bonus piece for Sports Illustrated about L.A. when it was a minor league baseball town and an essay for the L.A. Times Book Review about my two favorite boxing novels, “Fat City” and “The Professional.”

Strange how I was taking refuge in something that just a few years before felt like a noose around my neck. And it felt as if I were writing better than I ever had. I don’t know how much, if any, of that I can attribute to my work for the screen, but I certainly felt more confident and more comfortable with the language. Maybe screenwriting–and the myriad smart people who did it for a living–opened my mind to ideas that enriched my prose. Just as important, I was no longer too good to rewrite something, and not just once either. What I once would have turned in as a finished product was now being constantly rewritten, tinkered with, and buffed to a shine until I had to turn it in or miss my deadline. That would have been unthinkable with a four-times-a-week sports column. In any case, it was a joy to be writing for magazines and the occasional newspaper again. Even when I was up to my ears in alligators on “Hercules,” I would write 1,000-word GQ essays not just on sports but on my favorite guitar shop, the joy of greasy-spoon dining, and why white-collar criminals deserve the death penalty. Never once did those pieces feel like work. They were a tonic. You might even call them a salvation, just as TV was a salvation when I bogged down as a sports columnist.

In the lulls that grew longer and longer as I neared the end in Hollywood, I wrote for old friends at SI, GQ, and msnbc.com and new ones at the Oxford American magazine and the New York York Times. Yes, finally the Times – but I arrived in its pages not as Red Smith’s successor but as the author of a piece about a reclusive country singer named Willis Alan Ramsey. Vic Ziegel, whose death last year left a hole in a lot of lives, thought that was hilarious. “A shitkicker?” he scribbled on a postcard.

It was guys like Vic, Bill Nack, Tom Boswell, and Dave Kindred who over the years made certain I didn’t forget the ballparks and boxing halls where I’d battled deadlines, the all-night diners where I’d eaten too much too late, and the friendships without expiration dates. I heard from John Ed Bradley once in a while via a predictably courtly hand-written note, and talked on the phone with Peter Richmond, and had dinner with Leigh Montville when he was in L.A. I wondered if Charlie Pierce was ever going to come this way again and provided lodging for Mark Kram Jr., Phil Hersh, and my favorite editors at SI, Rob Fleder and Chris Hunt. And always there were the old sportswriting friends who had become L.A. guys, too – Mike Downey, Randy Harvey, Ron Rapoport. They were conduits to my past, the lot of them, and to my future, too.

Oscar Charleston painting by Michael Hogue

In Hollywood I rarely thought beyond my next job. But when there were no more jobs for me, it seemed only natural to write a piece for SI about Oscar Charleston, the black Ty Cobb, and to begin putting together a collection of my baseball writing called “Twilight of the Long-ball Gods.” No trumpets blared, no one hailed my return, and that was as it should have been. The days of need I’d experienced as a columnist – the need for acclaim, money, and a chunk of space in the paper to call my own – were gone. I was seeking something different now, a chance to recapture the joy I’d felt when I was a kid alone in my room, listening to Little Richard on the radio as I wrote for an imaginary newspaper or sketched scenes for a movie that would never move beyond a wish. I couldn’t recapture such innocence, of course, but that kid still lived inside me just the same. I counted down from three and stepped into the wind.

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Brian Cashman is signed through 2014.

“Not a big fan of Cash any more, but I do have to give him credit for this year. The Yanks had a strong bench, great bullpen, above average starting pitching. Ironically, in the end, it was the Yanks’ hitting that led to the Yanks elimination.”
— Comment from Banterer Dimelo

The task of presenting an even-handed critique of the man we affectionately call “Cash Money” is surprisingly difficult. On one hand, there’s a record of success — six World Series appearances, four titles — only surpassed by George Weiss (no relation) and Ed Barrow. But there’s the counterargument that it’s easy to be successful when you work for a billion dollar enterprise and can show up, put pictures on a corkboard, affix a few stacks of bills to a sharp object and pick your target.

That perception is not reality.

Consider the pressure cooker. The expectation to win the World Series every year. That standard is set at the Steinbrenner level and trickles down to the fiber of each individual working in the organization. The work conditions, to put it diplomatically, are less than ideal. Forget the Steinbrenner factor for a second. Add Randy Levine, Lonn Trost, and the Tampa Brain Trust, and you have difficult politics to negotiate. This dynamic begat the most common criticism levied against Cashman: that he hasn’t built a team from scratch; that he wasn’t the one making the personnel decisions.

There is evidence to support that theory. Cashman was the beneficiary of the work done by Stick Michael and Bob Watson. Draft picks like Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Mariano Rivera, and Jorge Posada had either blossomed or were maturing. Acquisitions like Paul O’Neill and Tino Martinez were already in place. Yes, he inherited a great team. It was made an all-time team when the Yankees traded Brian Buchanan, Eric Milton, Cristian Guzman, Danny Mota and cash to the Minnesota Twins for Chuck Knoblauch. Scott Brosius was picked up off the scrap heap to solidify third base. Those two moves alone proved to be a resounding introduction for the GM lauded as a Boy Wonder long before Theo Epstein.

But looking at Jason Giambi, Randy Johnson, Raul Mondesi, David Wells Part 2, Carl Pavano, Jaret Wright. Do those moves have Cashman’s stamp?

The tension led to Cashman having a Howard Beale moment at the end of the 2005 season. He considered leaving. Eventually, the gentlemen on the rung above Cashman decided to give him more autonomy, and he signed the extension that carried him through the 2008 season.

That winter, he signed CC Sabathia, AJ Burnett, Mark Teixeira and Nick Swisher to boost a team that had missed the playoffs for the first time since the 1994 strike. The 2009 World Championship team was all Cashman. Critics say he bought the title. But many youngsters on that team — Robinson Cano, Chien-Ming Wang pre-injury, Joba Chamberlain, and Phil Hughes — were able to have an impact because Cashman refused to trade them when presented the opportunities in previous years. Either Wang, or Cano, or both, were on the block for Randy Johnson and Johan Santana. Hughes was dangled as a chip as well. That season was the fruit of Cashman’s efforts to build the farm system.

In recent years, the Yankees have had depth. Instead of Tony Womack or Clay Bellinger, there was Jerry Hairston Jr., and Eric Chavez. Instead of John Vander Wal, there was a homegrown Brett Gardner, and Andruw Jones.

Perhaps the greatest difference in Cashman in the last six years of his tenure is his demeanor. There is a confidence that Cashman openly displays. He speaks to the media more directly and is more of a mouthpiece than he used to be. In some cases, the hard demeanor has backfired. The PR gaffes regarding the management of Bernie Williams’ exit, his silence during the Joe Torre negotiations following the 2007 playoff exit, the Joba Rules and everything that has occurred on that front, the Derek Jeter negotiations taking place in the media, and the Jorge Posada drama this past season all reflect negatively on Cashman. He whiffed on Cliff Lee not long after Lee whiffed the Yankees as a Texas Ranger.

And there are still moments when stories surface that Cashman’s authority has been overridden: The most glaring examples are 2007, when Hank Steinbrenner negotiated directly with Alex Rodriguez when A-Rod opted out of his contract; and last winter when Cashman said publicly he did not want to sign Rafael Soriano, and then lo and behold, Soriano was a Yankee and the heir apparent to Rivera, begrudgingly pitching the eighth inning a season after leading the AL in saves.

The three-year extension made official on Tuesday is the second since that “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” manifesto. If you believe Wally Matthews, the Yankees are meandering. They have no direction. A few recent moves would indicate otherwise: Sabathia is re-signed; Swisher’s option was picked up; Andrew Brackman has gone the way of the parrot in the Monty Python skit. Rafael Soriano’s option, according to reports, is likely to be exercised. Looks like the first priority is shoring up what you have before filling in the gaps.

Priorities are being set. Now that Cashman is settling back in, he can begin establishing the direction, which he has said is pitching. Twenty-nine other teams are doing the exact same thing.

We have seen Brian Cashman grow from Boy Wonder to steely-eyed fortysomething. The winter following Cashman’s last extension featured the biggest spending spree ever. What he spends — or doesn’t spend — could define the remainder of his career in New York.

Only Barrow, who lasted 24 seasons, had a longer tenure than Cashman. When faced with the question, “Who else could do this job?” Weighing all the factors, given what he’s endured, and how well he understands the central nervous system of the New York Yankees, it may be that Brian Cashman is the best person for the job. He is, at least, for three more years.

The Yanks cut Andrew Brackman loose today. Over at the Pinstriped Bible, Steven Goldman has more.

In the history of the movies, there are few actors and roles linked as indelibly as Boris Karloff and Frankenstein’s monster. Karloff had been acting in the movies for a decade by the time he donned Jack Pierce’s make-up in director James Whale’s “Frankenstein,” (which debuted 80 years ago this December) but it was the monster that made him a star. In return, Karloff made Universal’s (and Jack Pierce’s) version of Frankenstein’s monster an icon for the ages. Mary Shelley may have created the character in her 1818 novel, but its Pierce’s make-up and Karloff’s portrayal – the flat head, neck bolts, ill-fitting suit coat and heavy platform boots – that dominate the popular conception of him.

When Universal Pictures set out to make “Frankenstein,” it was to star Bela Lugosi, capitalizing on his “Dracula” success. However, after a few failed make-up tests, Lugosi left the project. Whale brought in 44 year old character actor Karloff, who created a movie monster for the ages. The monster doesn’t speak in the first Frankenstein film, but Karloff’s performance is a masterpiece of movie acting. Universal Pictures had thought the film would make Colin Clive (as Dr. Henry Frankenstein) a star, but instead audiences took to Karloff’s monster. Karloff’s monster, shuffles and lurches, moans and grunts, smashes and strangles and whimpers in fear. The image of the monster reaching for the light coming through the open ceiling seems to imbue the murderous brute with a spiritual yearning. The most shocking moment comes when the monster drowns a little girl as they play beside a pond.  The monster is bewildered and confused that little Maria does not float the same way the flowers they had been tossing in the water had. The movie’s script had taken a turn from Shelley’s novel, attempting to take away any humanity from the character of the monster, to make him a monster that could simply be seen as dangerous and bad and needing to be killed, but somehow Karloff got through to audiences anyway. As the townspeople revel in burning down the old mill with the monster inside, chances are even 1931 audiences were sad  to see the monster go.

The film was a hit and Universal went on to make several more Frankenstein films, with and without Karloff. The first of these, “Bride of Frankenstein,” also directed by Whale and starring Karloff and Clive, is the rare sequel that equals or surpasses the original. It’s also one of the loopiest horror movies ever made, with an introductory sequence of Shelley, Lord Byron and Percy Shelley sitting around on a stormy night to set up the sequel with her telling them that the story didn’t end the way they thought but — there was more! From there we re-enter the story of the monster, Henry Frankenstein (It’s unclear why the doctor’s name was changed from Victor, his name in the novel), and his bride Elizabeth. Now add a second “mad scientist,” Dr. Pretorius who also has learned how to create life and wants to team up with Frankenstein to create more creatures. Frankenstein wants no part of it, so Pretorius kidnaps Elizabeth to coerce him. Meanwhile, the monster, who had survived the first film’s fire thanks to an underground well is roaming around the countryside on a rampage. Luckily for him, he stumbles upon a blind hermit who feeds him and begins to teach him to speak. Yes, this is the sequence parodied so brilliantly by Peter Boyle and Gene Hackman in Mel Brooks’ great “Young Frankenstein,” but even the original scenes are hilarious (“Alone – baaaad! Friend – gooooood!”). Ultimately, the monster is detained long enough by Pretorius and Frankenstein so he can watch them create his bride – a female monster played by Elsa Lanchester (who also played Mary Shelley in the prologue). However, she doesn’t take much of a shine to Karloff’s monster (“She haaaaate me!”) and he decides to blow up the lab and all inside it, being nice enough to let his creator, Frankenstein and Elizabeth run to safety first. (Frankenstein’s monster here has clearly advanced to the mentality of an adolescent male – when the girl you like doesn’t want to get together with you, hey – flip that switch and melodramatically blow everyone up.)

Although Karloff would play a variety of roles throughout his long film, stage and television career, he would always be linked to the horror genre and to Frankenstein in particular. However, he was always appreciative of the role that made him a star. As he said, “The monster was the best friend I ever had.”

Brian Cashman is back.

C.C. Sabathia, still a Yankee. Wonderful news.

Vanishing Act

By John Schulian

In my show business alphabet, the scarlet letter will always be “s” for syndication. The instant I started wearing it, the network and cable people doing high-end dramas treated me like I was descended from intellectual pygmies who eat rabid bats and worship Soupy Sales. Only the young and promising receive special dispensation for working on a syndicated show to get a foot in Hollywood’s door. But I was 51 when I crawled away from “Xena” and “Hercules,” old enough to have known better. I would have had to be a miracle worker to avoid being branded as a junk peddler and cast into darkness. Alas, I was fresh out of miracles.

My new status hit me like a pie in the face on my next gig, an appallingly uninspired private eye show called “Lawless.” The title had absolutely nothing to do with Lucy, though I couldn’t help wishing she were around to give our leading man lessons in how to roll with the flow instead of turning to stone whenever the camera was on him. Brian Bosworth was a washed-up football star who realized how badly he wanted to act when Bo Jackson trampled him on national TV. The Boz got his chance in a series of cheap action movies that proved he wasn’t any better at it than he was at tackling. But that didn’t stop the brain trust at Fox TV from handing him “Lawless.” The thinking seemed to be that if enough helicopters landed in Lawlesss’s mother’s backyard simultaneously, we’d have a hit.

I found myself in the trenches with Frank Lupo, who had created or co-created something like 16 series, and Richard Christian Matheson, who had scored big in TV and was now devoting most of his time to writing novels and screenplays. While the network dithered about choppers and the proper sidekick for Bosworth, our biggest decision every day was where to eat lunch. The rest of the time, we cashed fat paychecks, complained about our offices in a converted Culver City warehouse, and listened to Lupo tell stories. My favorite was about Robert Blake, in his “Baretta” days, introducing himself to this son of a Brooklyn pizza maker by saying, “I’m crazy, you know.”

On Friday nights, gang kids would gather in the shadows of our dead-end street to drink and howl at the moon while we scampered for our respective Mercedes. That was as close to the real world as we came, unless you want to consider the fate of “Lawless” itself. Fox didn’t get its desired number of helicopters and we were left to bang out scripts in a white heat. Predictably, the show was cancelled after one episode. The only reason “Lawless” lasted that long was because the network didn’t have anything to replace it at the half-hour.

Lew Jenkins

From that point forward, I could see the last of the sand running through my hourglass. I tried to buy myself more time by writing screenplays, one of them based on W.C. Heinz’s unforgettable magazine story about Lew Jenkins, a go-to-hell prizefighter from Texas who became a war hero in Korea. The Jenkins script got me a flurry of meetings and, for a minute or two, made me the poster boy for the Creative Artists Agency’s in-house campaign to have its TV writers cross over to movies. Unfortunately my timing was dreadful. “Cinderella Man” was already in the works, and so was a Meg Ryan movie about a real-life female fight manager. I wanted to tell the people who were using those projects as a reason to say no to me that Jenkins’ story was better than either of them. But I kept my mouth shut, and when movie people asked if I had any other ideas, I always mentioned Gram Parsons, who married classic country music to a rock-and-roll sensibility and died of hard living way too young. I didn’t get anywhere with that one, either. Johnny Knoxville did. Need I say more?

Eventually I did what most every frustrated screenwriter does. I changed agents. Why not? I’d changed agents, and agencies, even when I wasn’t frustrated. I’d changed them because one agent was a creep who sexually harassed his female assistants. And because my instincts told me another was a bad fit for me. And because a woman who represented me left United Talent for CAA after she became a target for an abrasive, emotionally damaged colleague she had made the mistake of dating.

When I talked myself into believing she had lost sight of whatever it was I did best, I jumped again, to Paul Haas, at ICM. It was the worst move I ever made professionally. When I think of him now, I’m reminded of Murray Kempton’s analysis of Bill Clinton: “too smart by half.” Haas wasn’t book smart, though; he was Hollywood smart, slick and self-absorbed, almost feral in his quest to get to the top of the meat pile. Not unusual qualities in an agent, but I failed to see the warning sign that said “by half” until he told me to meet with the producers of a show about a fat cop who was a martial arts wizard. It was exactly the kind of claptrap I wanted to get away from, so I refused. Then the producers of another show about a fat cop said they didn’t want to meet with me because I’d done “Xena” and “Hercules.” They robbed me of the chance to say no to them first, the bastards.

Far worse, however, was that Haas soon lost interest in me. He had bigger fish to fry, more important clients who could make him more money, and a more prestigious place at the table to claim for his own. The only attention I got from him bordered on condescension. When I wrote pieces for GQ and Sports Illustrated to maintain my sanity, he congratulated me on “reinventing” myself, as if I’d never told him that I was a newspaper and magazine guy at heart. That wasn’t the only thing he didn’t pay attention to. There was also my Lew Jenkins screenplay, which he handed off to two of ICM’s young sharks. Their names were Todd and Danny, and on those rare occasions when I look at the trade papers now, I see they’ve prospered. But when they were supposed to be championing my cause, I never heard from them. After a year of being ignored, I complained to Haas and quickly got a call from Todd. Or Danny.

“That was a great script,” whichever one I was talking to said.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Remind me what it was about, would you?”

I hung up. If it hadn’t, I would have told Todd – or Danny – I had a new screenplay that I had written specifically for the purpose of sticking up his ass. Even now I have moments when I fantasize about seeing one of them in some fancy-schmancy restaurant and decking him. Not so much as a “Remember me?” Just lights out. But I’m too old for such nonsense and too weary to get exercised over the everyday cruelties that pass for standard business practices in Hollywood. Maybe I was gassed back then too and just wouldn’t admit it. How else to explain the fact that I never fired Haas no matter how useless he was?

It took an old friend from “Midnight Caller,” Stephen Zito, to open the door for me at “JAG.” The show was more fun than I expected it to be with one exception: its creator and executive producer, Don Bellisario. With a foul-smelling cigar smoldering in his mouth, a disdain for any idea that wasn’t his, and a tin ear for dialogue, Bellisario leeched all the joy out of writing. He was a bully and a lout and a war lover who’d never been to war. You’d have to go a long way to find anyone in TV more despised. I’m surprised I lasted 25 episodes. Not that things improved when Haas steered me to “Outer Limits” and I promptly shot myself in the foot by telling an executive producer with a lube-job haircut that a story he embraced was no story at all. That would have been my last stand if David Israel hadn’t brought me aboard as his right-hand man on “Tremors.” It had monsters, oddball humor, and weird characters in a forgotten desert town. Hits have been made of less. But we were saddled with the two amiably passive-aggressive guys who wrote the movies on which “Tremors” was based, and they refused to adapt to the realities of TV. They just made the same mistakes over and over until they looked up one day and the show was off the air.

I was as far as I could be from those heady times when Steven Bochco invited me to come out and try my hand at writing scripts. Where once the TV business had given me with hope, I now felt diminished. I found myself remembering the long-in-tooth writers who had come in to pitch their tired episode ideas on “Miami Vice” and “Midnight Caller,” and how I had promised myself I wouldn’t end up the way they had. If I insisted on squeezing the last drop of juice from the orange, that was exactly who I’d be – short on pride and dignity, just a beggar with a nice car. It felt as though there were less of me every time I turned around. I was in a bad sci-fi movie and I was slowly vanishing.

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C.C. Sabathia is expected to opt out of his contract today and the Yankees are expected to announce that Brian Cashman will return as general manager. Robinson Cano and Nick Swisher had their options picked up by the team over the weekend.

Last winter, the Yanks lost out on the Cliff Lee sweepstakes. They hope not bag their man Sabathia this time around.

Stay tuned.

Aliens (1986)

In 1979, director Ridley Scott brought us “Alien“, a horror/sci-fi film revolving around the crew of a space freighter Nostromo battling a merciless extraterrestrial being wanting to use humans as “hosts”.  The alien being “attached” to the face of the victim, and implanted its egg down the victim’s throat.  The egg would grow and eventually a new “baby alien” would announce its presence by bursting through the victim’s chest.  Oh, and the blood of these aliens appears to be a highly corrosive acid, so please don’t let any of it get on you.

The film provided a rarity … a female lead character (Ellen Ripley, portrayed by a then-barely known Sigourney Weaver) that didn’t launch into a “Perils of Pauline” dialogue during a crisis.  The movie was an unexpected hit.  Seven years later, James Cameron, fresh off his massive hit “The Terminator,”  gave us “Aliens”.  Rarely has a sequel measured up to its predecessor, let alone surpassed it.

As the film opens Ripley, (the only human survivor from the destroyed Nostromo of the original film) is rescued and revived after drifting for years in a space shuttle while in a form of “hypersleep”.  Her employers, a corporation named Weyland-Yutani, do not believe her tale of the “alien” encounter as no physical evidence of the creature survived the destruction of the Nostromo.   She has her space flight license suspended as a result of this, and learns that LV-426, the planet where her crew first encountered the Alien eggs, is now home to a terraforming colony.

Ripley is later visited by an employee of Weyland-Yutani, Carter Burke (Paul Reiser, in a rare dramatic turn)  and Lieutenant Gorman (William Hope) of the Colonial Marines, who inform her that contact has been lost with the colony on LV-426. The company decides to dispatch Burke and a unit of marines to investigate.  Ripley is given the chance to restore her flight status and have her work contract picked up if she will accompany them as a consultant. Naturally shell-shocked by her previous encounter with the Alien, Ripley initially refuses to join, but finally accepts as she realizes she can face her post-traumatic fears. Aboard the warship Sulaco she is introduced to the Colonial Marines, including Sergeant Apone (Al Matthews, who it turns out actually was a Marine for six years), Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn, working with Cameron again after starring in “The Terminator”), Privates Vasquez (the wonderful chameleon of an actress Jenette Goldstein) and Hudson (Bill Paxton, another Cameron holdover from “The Terminator”), and the android Bishop (Lance Henriksen, and yes, he appeared in “The Terminator” as well).

The Marines are dropped onto the surface of the planet and find the colony seemingly deserted.  The gungho troops, pumped up by Sergeant Apone but led by the soon-to-be-revealed very inexperienced and over-his-head Gorman, have never encountered anything like this.  Their entrance into the colony’s main building is at first executed with typical military precision, but when things start to turn against them, and members are picked off one-by-one by Aliens, Gorman freezes, and Ripley takes over.

A little while later, two living Alien creatures (having hatched from the eggs that had been inside their human hosts) are found in containment tanks in the medical lab, and the only colonist found is a traumatized young girl nicknamed Newt (Carrie Henn).  Henn, no more than eight or nine when the movie was shot, gives a wonderfully nuanced performance.  It is an exquisite look of utter blankness and shock upon her face as she is discovered, initially resists being “captured” by the Marines, and finally allows Ripley to hold her and calm her down.  (Interestingly, this is Henn’s only acting credit in her life . . . she grew up to be a schoolteacher).

Flashing forward a bit, Ripley discovers that Burke hopes to return Alien specimens to the company laboratories where he can profit from their use as biological weapons. She threatens to expose him, but Bishop soon informs the group of a greater threat: the planet’s energy processing station has become unstable and will soon detonate with a catastrophic impact. Now it becomes a race not to save any survivors on the planet, but to just get off the planet.

Ripley, with her maternal instinct dial now at “full”, and Newt fall asleep in the medical laboratory, awakening to find themselves locked in the room with the two facehuggers, which have been released from their tanks. Ripley alerts the marines, who rescue them and kill the creatures. Ripley accuses Burke of attempting to smuggle implanted Alien embryos past Earth’s quarantine inside her and Newt, and of planning to kill the rest of the marines in hypersleep during the return trip. The electricity is suddenly cut off and numerous Aliens attack through the ceiling. An extended and tense battle scene ensues, with Hudson, Burke, Gorman, and Vasquez eventually all killed and Newt captured by the Aliens.

Ripley and an injured Hicks reach Bishop and a rescue dropship, but mama Ripley refuses to leave Newt behind as the countdown to planet extinction nears.  She locates Newt, and torches the Alien queen’s hive of eggs, enraging the queen.  In the film’s climactic scene, we see Ripley’s transformation from simple “employee” to “soldier”. She dons an “exosuit” normally used for loading heavy cargo, and utters to the Alien queen the catchphrase of the movie, summarizing her maternal instincts and pissed-off attitude in six simple words.

“Get away from her you bitch!”

Grab your popcorn, settle on your couch, and hold onto a pillow … tight.   You are in for one scary adrenaline-fueled ride.

It snowed yesterday, big, fat flakes and up here in the Bronx we got a couple of inches and a lot of tree branches down. It is almost surreal this morning because the sun is out, the trees still have green leaves, and yet there is snow on the ground.

Go figure.

[Picture by Bags]

Another season in the books. Congrats to the Cards, the unlikely champs in what proved to be an exciting season. And what an October.

But we do this 365 around these parts and cover so much more than baseball. We’ll have Hot Stove and all sorts of goodness for you. Keep comin’ back.

[Photo Credit: Joe Martz]

This is it, the 2011 season comes down to one last game.

Let’s Go Base-ball!

[Photo Credit: via Running Amuck]

John and Suzyn Waldman will be back calling Yankee games on the radio next year.

[Photo Credit: N.Y. Daily News]

It’s been a quiet off-season so far for the Yankees, and for good reason. Teams are discouraged from making major announcements during the World Series. Free agents cannot declare until after the World Series. CC Sabathia has not yet exercised the opt-out clause in his contract, though he is expected to do so at some point.

It wasn’t until Thursday that I saw the first major rumor pop up, courtesy of ESPN’s Wally Matthews, who reports that the Yankees may replace Nick Swisher with free agent Carlos Beltran. If the Yankees sign Beltran, they’ll either decide not to pick up Swisher’s option (a bad idea) or they’ll pick up the option and then trade Swisher for some pitching help.

I’ve already made it clear that the Yankees should explore the possibility of trading Swisher, but I don’t agree with any plan to sign Beltran. That’s because Beltran is a Scot Boras client, and Boras is going to demand a three-year contract for his aging outfielder. Beltran is 34, running on surgically repaired legs, and will probably have to DH within the next season or two. The Yankees need to get younger, not older, and they need to commit as many DH at-bats as they can to Jesus Montero.

Beltran is a name brand player, possibly a Hall of Famer, but the Yankees should pursue someone who is younger and more versatile. Michael Cuddyer might be that player. He is three years younger than Beltran, can play the outfield and infield corners, and has a history of hitting in the postseason. He’s not as famous as Beltran, but he would be a much better fit for the 2012 Yankees.

If the Yankees don’t like Cuddyer, they will have other free agent options for right field. There’s Cuddyer’s Minnesota teammate, the lefty-swinging Jason Kubel, who is limited defensively but is only 29 and has more power than his 12 home runs indicate. (He’d also find Yankee Stadium to his liking.) Veterans David DeJesus, Cody Ross, and Josh Willingham will also be available, and at prices considerably cheaper than Beltran. I‘d explore all of them before committing three years and millions of dollars to a fragile Beltran…

***

The Yankees did make their first transaction of the off-season last week, though it was hardly of the blockbuster variety. As expected, the Yankees declined their $4 million option on lefty Damaso Marte, instead buying out his contract for $250,000. (It must be wonderful to be a major leaguer, receiving a quarter of a million dollars to do nothing.) Marte hardly pitched for the Yankees over the last two seasons–in fact, he didn’t pitch at all this season because of labrum surgery–so it’s hardly the same as losing Andy Pettitte to retirement.

Yet, I’ll always have good memories of Marte, if only because of what he did during the 2009 postseason. He faced 12 batters during that championship run, retiring all of them. Two of those batters came in the clinching Game Six of the World Series, when Marte struck out Chase Utley and Ryan Howard on six pitches. That set the stage for Mariano Rivera to pitch the final two innings and finish off the Yankees’ 27th world championship.

For the most part, Marte was a bust as a Yankee. He made $12 million over the last three years, despite injury and ineffectiveness. But what he contributed in October of 2009 made it all worthwhile…

***

Last night’s Game Six was so reminiscent of the sixth game of the 1975 Fall Classic that the similarities are eerie. The Cardinals successfully played the role of the Red Sox, facing elimination on their home field. Like the Red Sox, the Cardinals had to come back from a late three-run deficit to earn the right to play a Game Seven.

David Freese decided to combine the roles of both Bernie Carbo and Carlton Fisk, first tying the game with an unlikely triple against the blazing Neftali Feliz and then ending the 11-inning marathon affair with a monstrous home run to center field. That put Mark Lowe in the unenviable role of Pat Darcy, a somewhat unfair predicament given that Ron Washington should never have pinch-hit for Scott Feldman in the top half of the 11th.

On two different occasions, the Rangers came within a strike of winning the first world championship in the history of the franchise. On both occasions, the lead slipped out of their pitchers’ hands, thanks in part to ex-Yankee Lance Berkman, who stalled the celebration with a clutch two-strike single to center field.

Rangers fans have had to wait 39 years to win a World Series. Now they will have to wait at least one more day.

Bruce Markusen writes “Cooperstown Confidential” for The Hardball Times.

For the first time in almost 10 years, the World Series will come down to a game seven. It remains to be seen who will get the big hit or make the big pitch in this winner-take-all scenario, but by the end of the game, new heroes will have emerged, and one of them will be named the World Series MVP.

Had the series ended in six games, the Rangers’ Mike Napoli, whom no one seemed to want this off season, was an almost surefire bet to win the MVP. In fact, even if he is unable to play in game seven, the Rangers’ catcher would still be a near lock to win the award if Texas can pull out a victory. Should the Cardinals win, however, the likely MVP is not as clear. With three hits and three RBIs in game six, including a game tying single with two outs in the 10th inning, Lance Berkman has thrown his hat into the ring. Similarly, David Freese, whose WPA of .953 easily became the highest total in a World Series game, has emerged as a strong MVP candidate. In addition, Allen Craig and Albert Pujols, who have each had memorable moments in the series, could earn the hardware with a big contribution in game seven. Even Chris Carpenter could sneak into the mix if he can match his performance in the final game of the NLDS. In other words, the outcome of the MVP race is in just as much doubt as the game itself.

World Series MVPs by Position (and last recipient)

Note: Players considered at the position where they played the most innings.
Source: Baseball-reference.com

Without a crystal ball, we can’t be sure who will be handed the World Series MVP during tomorrow’s postgame celebration, but at least we can take a look back at those who have won it in the past. In total, there have been 58 honorees since the award was first instituted in 1955. Not surprisingly, the Yankees, at 12, have had the most players named MVP in the Fall Classic, including the only player (Bobby Richardson in 1960) to win the award despite being on the losing team.

Starting pitchers have won 23 World Series MVPs, by far the most of any position. Cumulatively, however, more hitters have been honored. Of the 31 offensive players to be named MVP, third basemen have taken home the most hardware, followed by catchers and shortstops. On the other end of the spectrum, left field and second baseman have almost been shutout, as each position has only featured one honoree.

In terms of batting order, the third and fifth slots have each had six recipients, while, somewhat surprisingly, the seventh and eighth spots have garnered just as many awards as cleanup. Should Mike Napoli win it this year, he would become the fifth seventh place hitter to win the MVP, just one year after Edgar Renteria, who batted eighth, won the trophy for the Giants. At least one player from each slot in the batting order has been named MVP, so come October, just about anyone is capable of being a hero.

World Series MVPs by Batting Order (and last recipient)

Note: Players considered at the lineup slot where they had the most plate appearances. Ninth slot excludes pitchers.
Source: Stats LLC c/o Wall Street Journal

The MVP award isn’t really about positions on the field or slots in the batting order. It is about individuals who rise to the occasion when the games matter most. Normally, when we think about such players, the very best superstars in the game come to mind. And, sure enough, the list of World Series MVPs includes many of these immortal players. From Sandy Koufax, who recorded the highest regular season WAR among all MVPs (10.8 in 1963), to Frank Robinson (8.8 oWAR in 1966) and Mike Schmidt (7.6 oWAR IN 1980), some of the biggest stars in baseball history have shined just as brightly during the Fall Classic.

The World Series MVP has been an All Star 32 times, an MVP five times (Koufax, Robinson, Jackson, Stargell and Schmidt) and Cy Young on seven occasions (Turley, Ford, Koufax (2), Saberhagen, Hershiser and R. Johnson). However, there have been several World Series MVPs who had very little success during the regular season. The most improbable of these was the aforementioned Richardson, who, despite having a negative oWAR and OPS+ of 68, managed to knock in 12 runs, almost half his regular season total, in the 1960 World Series. Bucky Dent, another Yankees’ middle infielder, was also a surprise MVP when he carried the momentum of his three-run homer in the one-game playoff at Fenway Park into the 1978 World Series. In that series, Dent hit .417 with seven RBIs, earning the most valuable player award over Mr. October (2HR, 8RBI, 1.196 OPS).

World Series MVPs by Regular Season WAR*

*Offensive WAR used for batters.
Source: Baseball-reference.com

Among non-Yankees, Renteria (0.6 oWAR), Rick Dempsey (0.6 oWAR in 1983), and Steve Yeager (0.1 oWAR in 1981) rank among the least likely position players to win the MVP in the World Series. The unlikelihood of these players winning the award was summed up best by Dempsey, who while discussing his accomplishment famously joked about his regret over not negotiating a bonus clause into his contract. “Given the odds against that happening, they would’ve given it to me,” Dempsey told reported after the Orioles’ World Series victory.  “I’d have asked for $200,000, they would have said, ‘Here, take $400,000.’”

The average regular season WAR of pitchers who have won the World Series MVP is one full win higher than their position player counterparts, but there have still been more than a few improbable honorees. Johnny Podres, the very first MVP in the Fall Classic, was just a 22-year old kid with little success in the majors when the Dodgers took on the rival Yankees in the 1955 World Series. So, needless to say, no one was expecting him to finally make the difference in Dem Bums’ quixotic attempt to beat the mighty Bronx Bombers. However, that’s exactly what the left hander did by winning two complete games. Thanks to Podres, the Dodgers were finally able to enjoy victory instead of being forced to “wait ‘til next year”.

For 30 years, Podres was the youngest player to win the World Series MVP, but in 1985, a 21-year old right hander claimed the mantle from him. That season, Brett Saberhagen took the American League by storm, winning 20 games and earning the Cy Young award in only his second season. The ALCS wasn’t as kind to the young pitcher, however, as the Blue Jays knocked him out before the fifth inning in both of his starts. Saberhagen rebounded from that disappointment in the World Series, surrendering only one run in two complete game victories to give the Royals their first and only championship to date.

World Series MVPs by Age

*Offensive WAR used for batters.
Source: Baseball-reference.com

So, as the Rangers and Cardinals head into game seven, round up all the usual suspects. One of them is bound to have a big game. At the same time, however, don’t take your eyes off the role players. As the Rangers, and the Brewers before them, have learned, guys like David Freese can be just as dangerous as Albert Pujols, especially when you are one strike away from winning the World Series.

Sasha Frere-Jones has a nice piece about the new Tom Waits record this week in The New Yorker:

“If you break open a song, you’ll find the eggs of other songs,” he told me. “Misunderstandings are really kind of an epidemic and acceptable. I think it’s about one thing, but someone else will say, ‘That song is kind of a rhino in hot pants on a burnt rocking horse with a lariat shouting, “Repent, repent!” ’ I think that’s great.”

…In the past thirty years, Waits, as a songwriter, has tried to retain a sense of craft while finding musical settings that take his compositions out of some nostalgic tar pit. On “Bad as Me,” he sounds like someone who knows the history of pop and uses only the bits he needs to make the hybrid creature that will carry him to safety. “I’m always looking for sounds that are pleasing at the time,” he told me. “The sound of a helicopter is really annoying until you’re drowning, and it’s there to rescue you. Then it sounds like music.”

I love the part about sounds changing their meaning. Wonderful.