Steelers Requiem

Let the record show that I am writing this monograph a little over eleven hours after the debacle in Baltimore last night, and I have not read any news accounts or columns regarding the game, either (mainly because our local so-called newspaper that was delivered to my door this morning did not have any accounts of the game because it ended "late", but that's another topic entirely).  Neither have I listened to any talk radio or television bloviators, local or national, so these thoughts are my own immediate ponderings regarding the state of our favorite NFL team.

On the night of December 1, the Steelers were 10-3, had a two game lead in the AFC North, and had a shot, albeit a long and outside one, at the overall #1 seed in the AFC.  What followed was a collapse of Pirates-like proportions: four straight regular season losses and a humiliating 28-14 loss to the Ravens in the Wild Card Playoff round last night.  Don't let that final score fool you.  If you watched that first half, you know that this was way, way, WAY worse that a two score defeat.

My immediate thought is that somebody has to be held accountable for this down-the-stretch failure.  

The rabble is screaming for Mike Tomlin to be fired.  That is not going to happen, nor should it, in my opinion.  Why?  Well, Tomlin does win games (you may have heard that he has never had a losing season 😏), and despite what we have seen this December and January, that does count for something.   Also, hiring a coach is not a sure thing in the NFL.  The Steelers were either good or lucky or both in their last three hires (Noll, Cowher, Tomlin), but there is no guarantee that the next guy will be better that Mike Tomlin.  In fact, the odds are greater that the Next Guy will turn out to be a Matt Eberflus or Robert Saleh than he will be a Bill Belichick, Andy Reid, or.....Mike Tomlin.   Plus, players seem to like and respect Tomlin and want to play for him, and that should count for something, too.

All that said, some serious evaluation of the coaching staff needs to take place.  In the end, the Arthur Smith offense wasn't all that more effective than was the Matt Canada Offense, and Teryl Austin's Defense, the highest paid in the NFL, proved inadequate too, as Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry showed us all too well last night.  I'm not smart enough to comment on the performance of other assistants, but the top two lieutenants on the staff should be feeling very warm seats today.

Other off-the-top-of-my-head thoughts.....

Quarterback.  Russell Wilson started strong when he recovered from a camp injury and won six of seven games off the bat, but in the end he looked like what he is - a Hall of Fame bound QB who is 36 years old and past his prime.  Like a crafty veteran once great baseball pitcher, he can occasionally find greatness, but his best days are behind him.  Justin Fields went 4-2 in his four starts, but I'm not sure - and, again, what do I know? - that he's a long term solution.  Both guys are free agents after this season, so some big decisions need to be made by Omar Kahn and the rest of the Brain Trust in regard to the most important position on the field.  Playing in a division with Lamar Jackson and Joe Burrow, this is a grim picture for the Steelers.

George Pickens.  His talent is off the charts.  Every game he plays he seems to make at least one play that makes your jaw drop.  He did it last night on the Steelers second touchdown. Then there are the off the field diva issues, and on the field bonehead plays.  He did one of those last night as well when he was called for offensive pass interference that nullified one of those spectacular catches and runs of his in the first half, a play that might have led to a score at a point in the game when it might have made a difference.

Add Pickens' name to a list that includes Mike Wallace, Martavis Bryant, Antonio Brown, Chase Claypool, and Dionte Johnson.  All good to very good receivers who were all knuckleheads to one degree or another.  Are there no guys like Hines Ward out there anymore?   In fact, Ward is currently coaching wide receivers at Arizona State.  Maybe the Steelers should bring him back to coach these guys and show them how to act.

I think that we have seen the last of Najee Harris as a Steeler.  He is a free agent, and given how fungible running backs seem to be in the modern NFL, I can't see that Steelers signing him to another deal.  He's been a solid guy at the position over the years, but he has never performed in the NFL at the same relative level that he did in college at Alabama.   To compare him to another Crimson Tide RB, he never became Derrick Henry.

There is a lot more that can be said, but I'm going to leave it at that for now.  I'm sure that I'll have more to say as the off-season for Rooney U unfolds.  Let me leave you though with these depressing thoughts that will wrap up 2024 for us Pittsburgh Sports Fans.

• At the trade deadline the Pirates were thick in the chase for a playoff spot.  There then followed a ten game losing streak in early August that led to a collapse that was awful even by the low standards that the Bucs have established for themselves in this century.
• Pitt football got off to a 7-0 start and the proceeded to lose their last five regular season games and a minor league bowl game to finish the season at 7-6
• The Penguins failed to make the NHL Playoffs last season and seem to be on their way to repeating this non-accomplishment in 2025.
• The collapse of the Steelers has been documented above.

HELP!!

To Absent Friends - Bob Veale

Former Pirates pitcher Bob Veale died earlier this week at the age of 89.  When he was in his prime with the Buccos back in the 1960's, radar guns measuring a pitcher's velocity were rare and Next Gen Stats were the stuff of science fiction, but nobody threw harder than Bob Veale.  Well, maybe Koufax and Gibson, but surely no one else had a faster fast ball than the 6'6" lefty of the Pirates.  The speed with which he threw a pitch prompted on of the all-time great lines from broadcaster Bob Prince:  "He can throw a strawberry through a locomotive."

In all, Veale pitched 14 years in the big leagues. eleven of them with the Pirates.  He had career record of 120-95, 116-91 with the Pirates, and career ERA of 3.07. He led the NL in strikeouts once and had four seasons where he notched over 200 K's.  He also led the league in walks four times, which might explain why batters were often fearful digging in against the big bespectacled Veale. He was twice an All-Star, and was a member of the Pirates 1971 World Series Championship team.  In a stretch of four seasons, 1964-67, Veale posted records of 18-12, 17-12, 16-12, and 16-8 for the Pirates. In those years his ERA were 2.74, 2.84, 3.09, and 3.31.  He started 143 games in those years with 46 complete games and 12 shut outs and averaged 254 innings pitched per season.  Would you want a guy like that on your pitching staff today?

RIP Bob Veale

Veale's death means that only twelve members of that 1971 World Series Pirates' roster are still with us.   The chart below lists that roster.  The deceased members have a black box beside their names.

	1971
Pitchers	Steve Blass
	Nelson Briles
	Dock Ellis
	Dave Guisti
	Bob Johnson
	Bruce Kison
	Bob Miller
	Bob Moose
	Bob Veale
	Luke Walker
Catchers	Manny Sanguillen
	Milt May
	Charlie Sands
Infielders	Gene Alley
	Dave Cash
	Jackie Hernandez
	Bill Mazeroski
	Jose Pagan
	Richie Hebner
	Bob Robertson
Outfielders	Roberto Clemente
	Gene Clines
	Vic Davalillo
	Al Oliver
	Willie Stargell
Manager	Danny Murtaugh
	Deceased	14
	Still With Us	12

Book Review - "Charlie Hustle"

Those who know me well would no doubt be surprised, if not amazed, to think that I would ever read, let alone purchase, a book about Pete Rose.  I have never hid my feelings about Ol' Number 14 - great ballplayer, low life human being.

So, what's the story here?

Well, last April Keith O'Brien, author of the book you see pictured here, came to Pittsburgh to address the local SABR chapter.  His address to us about the nature of his book,  the extensive research that he did to write it, plus his responses in the Q&A that followed made me actually want to read this book.  Plus, I figured that if the gentleman makes the effort to come to Pittsburgh to address forty or so SABR members, then, dammit, people should buy his book, so I did.  So did several other members as well.  It sat on my book shelf all baseball season, and I finally pulled it down last month and read it over the holidays.  I can tell you that it is a very good book.

Speaking of the Q&A, my own question to Mr O'Brien was "Did you interview Pete Rose for this book, and if  did so, did you have to pay him?" since I know that Pete would never do anything unless you paid him.  The answer was yes, he did interview Rose, and no, he didn't pay him.   O'Brien made it clear to Rose that this was work of "journalism  and history", that it would reveal all of the warts.  Rose agreed and made no effort to exert editorial control.  Beginning in 2021, O'Brien had extensive telephone and in person interviews with Rose.  He spent three days with him at Rose's home in Las Vegas, and one full day with him at a signing event n Cincinnati.  Soon after, Rose stopped returning O'Brien's phone calls and the personal interviews ended, but Pete gave enough of himself to enable O'Brien to write quite a book.

While this can be considered a biography, it is more a study  of how Rose came to be the person that he became.  His roots in a hard scrabble working class neighborhood in Cincinnati, and his striving to obtain the approval of a demanding father ("always hustle....never stop working") are fully spelled out here.   There is an interesting story about a teenaged Pete taking boxing lessons at a local gym, and getting fight in 1957 with a Cincy amateur fighter named Virgil Cole.  Cole pummeled Rose to the point that his sister feared for his bodily safety, but Pete never went down, and the story became a part of Pete's hometown legend.  Cole never spoke much of the fight, but those who knew him knew the story and when he died in 2003, he rated an obituary in the Cincy paper with the headline "He Once Bested Pete Rose."  Rose never forgot the story either, but the way he told it was that while yes, he lost, but he never went down, he never quit.  "He couldn't knock me out" was how Rose gilded that lily.

O'Brien doesn't spend a lot of time on the runs, hits, and errors of Rose's career.  Whole entire seasons are often covered in two or three pages.  Extensive coverages is given to only three "baseball events"  - the knocking down and injuring of Ray Fosse in the All-Star Game, the terrific 1975 Reds-Red Sox World Series, and the chase leading up to Rose getting hit number 4,192 to break the all-time hits record held by Ty Cobb.  The primary focus of the book, as it should be, was of Rose's gambling and the low life people that he chose to hang out.  (During his various depositions with John Dowd, Pete told him: "John, I was a horse shit selector of friends.")

The last hundred or so pages of the book documents all that went into MLB's and the FBI's investigation of Rose and his downfall.  It is unvarnished and no whitewash job.   Maybe it will allow some people to feel sympathy for Rose, but I don't think that it should.  Rose made his bed, and he slept in it right up until the day he died last last September.

I am not going to get into the should-he-or-shoudn't-he-be-in-the-HOF.  That is a  beaten to to death horse, but I will tell you three things that stood out in this book that tell you all to need about Pete Rose.

One, he had a sexual relationship with a high school girl when he was in his thirties. "She told me she was over 18" was Pete's excuse.

Two, Pete had four children to two wives.  While married to his first wife, he also fathered a child with his mistress at the time. It was a relationship that was flaunted at the time, even Karolyn Rose, his wife, knew of it.  Pete paid support money to the woman, who the author interviewed for this book, for that child, but after a few months, he quit sending her money and never acknowledged her or the child again. Throughout the book, O'Brien always mentions Pete's four kids, but never again mentions that child.  I wish that he would have followed up on that particular odious part of Rose's character.

Three, Rose bet extensively ALL THE TIME.  Multiple bets a day, and each bet for thousands of dollars.  And he lost money.  A lot of money and guess what?  He never paid his bookies for the losses.  When the curtain rang down on the Pete Rose Saga in major league baseball, guys went to jail, and several bookmakers never collected the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands that he owed them.  So in addition to everything else Pete Rose was, he was also a welcher.  The guy had no honor whatsoever.

Rose died a few months after the publication of this book, but nothing needed to be added to the story that Keith O'Brien tells in "Charlie Hustle".   Terrific book.

Three and One-Half Stars from The Grandstander.

The Absent Friends of 2024 - A Final Tribute

2024 was the fifteenth (!!) year that I have been pounding out these Grandstander pieces, and I have come to love the fact that one of the more popular features of this Blog has been my Absent Friends posts.   In all, I recognized 35 Absent Friends in 2024, which brought the total since I began doing this to 519.  For you trivia buffs out there, Absent Friend #500 was actress/stuntwoman Susan Backlinie, who played Chrissy Watkins, the skinny-dipper who got served up as a midnight snack to the great white shark at the beginning of the movie "Jaws" in 1975, and she is the perfect example of why I do this.

The list this year includes a very personal loss to our family caused by the passing of my mother-in-law, Yvonne "Grandma Bonnie" Mulzet.  As I wrote at the time, I only knew her for three years, but the outpouring of remembrances and love that we experienced upon her death told me that I was the one who missed out by not knowing her longer.

2024 was a tough year for sports immortals.  Seven of tis last year's Friends were/are members of various sports Halls of Fame, and that doesn't include non-HOF'ers, but still significant figures like Pete Rose, Fernando Valenzuela, Carl Erskine, and Andy Russell.   I also introduced a new category called Absent Scoundrels for people who for various reason can't be considered Friends, but whose passing bears noting.  There were two of them, O.J. Simson and Cyril Wecht,  this year.  For Rose, I just left the heading blank, because he can be considered both a Friend and a Scoundrel, depending one your point off view.

So below is a list of all those Absent Friends recognized in 2024.  If you want to see what I wrote about these folks at the time of their passing, just type their name in the Search Box at the top of this post.

NOTE: This list does not include President Jimmy Carter who died on December 29.  Holiday busy-ness prevented me from getting a chance to write my tribute to him, but earlier this afternoon, our 39th President became the first Absent Friend of 2025.

Shecky Greene

Cindy Morgan

Joyce Randolph

Melanie Safka

Charles Osgood

Andy Russell

Ed Ott

Chris Mortensen

Randy Sparks

Yvonne Mulzet, aka "Grandma Bonnie"

Larry O'Brien

Carl erskine

Roman Gabriel

O.J. Simpson

Cyril Wecht

Susan Backlinie

Bill Walton

Jerry West

Howard Fineman

Willie Mays

Donald Sutherland

Orlando Cepeda

Bobby Grier

Remo Saraceni

Bob Newhart

Johnny Gaudreau

Matthew Gaudreau

Joe Schmidt

Pete Rose

Fernando Valenzuela

Teri Garr

Quincy Jones

Elwood Edwards

Marshall Brickman

Rickey Henderson

Rest in peace, one and all.

 

To Absent Friends - Jimmy Carter

President of the United States

1977-1981

Nobel Peace Prize Recipient 2004

Lifetime Humanitarian

Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States, died last week at the age of 100.  Carter had a "Former Presidency" of forty-four years, the longest in history, he lived longer than another US President, and had a marriage that lasted longer than any other President, 77 years.  These are just answers to trivia questions, though.

Carter's presidency will probably not be favorably judged by history.  It was beset with problems with inflation, domestic gasoline shortages (remember gas lines and odd/even days when you could gas up your vehicle?), and was surely done in by the Iranian Hostage Crisis.  He was denied a second term in 1980 when he was defeated by Ronald Reagan.

Few will doubt, however, that there never was and may  never be a greater "Former President" than Jimmy Carter.  Retirement for Carter and his wife, Rosslynn, who died in 2023 at the age of 96, did not consist of making speeches for six figures. Instead, he traveled the world monitoring elections in foreign countries, built homes for Habitat for Humanity (and he hands-on built them, he didn't just show up to cut ribbons), and, as he had done all of his life, he continued to teach Sunday School in hs home town of Plains, GA, and he did all of this well into his nineties.

A great President? Perhaps not, but the Presidency may never have been filled by a greater human being.

RIP, Mr. President.

 

A Couple of Movies For Your Consideration

Pictured to my left is the ancient Roman god, Janus, for whom the month January is named, because, as you can see, Janus looked both backward and forward.  He was the "god of beginnings and ends, entrances and exits, change, transition, gateways, doorways, and arches" (per Google). Those Romans were good when it came to naming the months of the year.  The grandstander does a lot of looking forward and backward at this time of the year, so the next several posts will be looks both back and ahead as we have now closed out 2024 and kick-started 2025.

Let's start with a popular Grandstander feature, a couple of movie reviews, plus my 2024 rankings.

"A Complete Unknown"

This of course is the much anticipated Bob Dylan biopic that stars Timothee Chalamet as Dylan, and when I first saw the teasers for this film sometime this summer, it went to the top of my "Must See" list, and I was not disappointed.   Chalamat looks like Dylan, talks like him, and most importantly, sings like him.  His performance will surely garner him an Oscar nomination.  The same goes for Edward Norton who played Pete Seeger in this movie.  Chalamet, Norton, and Monica Barbaro, who plays Joan Baez, all did their own singing and played their own instruments in the movie, and they were terrific.

The movie covers the time period when twenty year old Bob Zimmerman arrived in New York City from Hibbing, Minnesota in 1961 up until his appearance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 when "Dylan went electric".  It captures the time and place of New York and the folk music scene and all of the cultural changes that were taking place in the early 1960's very well.  

I had three scenes that were my favorites in the movie, all at Newport in different years:

• When Dylan sings "The Times They Are A-Changing"
• When Dylan and Baez sing "It Ain't Me, Babe" while a tearful Suze Rotolo (a real life early Dylan girlfriend who is for some reason is named "Sylvie Russo" in the movie) watches from backstage
• The entire "going electric" performance at Newport in 1965

Some Dylan-ologists in the online world are taking issue with the movie for all the usual reasons.....this event didn't happen in the sequence depicted in the film....the actors should not have done their own singing, they should have lip-synched the actual recordings of Dylan, Baez, and Seeger.....the time frame is off.  To all of that, I say what a friend of mine was once told when he served as a consultant on a movie that was being filmed in Pittsburgh years ago and told the movie makers that were were never any steel mills visible from Forbes Field: "This is a movie, not a documentary."  It should also be known that Dylan, while not a formal consultant on the movie, did meet with the screenwriters and the actors as the film was being made and has no problem with any of it.  He did say, however, that if you see the movie, you should then read the book upon which it is based, "Dylan Goes Electric" by Elijah Wald, something that I plan on doing.

I am predicting Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Acting nominations for Chalamet, Norton, and maybe even Elle Fanning who played Sylvie.

Oh, and when you go, stay for all of the credits.  Three classic Dylan songs, sung by Dylan himself play over them as they roll along.

Four Stars form The Grandstander.  I can't wait to see it again.

"Anora"

This is a movie that was a darling of the film festival crowd and is popping up on numerous Ten Best lists.

Mikey Madison plays Ani (she doesn't like being called Anora), a sex worker in New York City.  She works in a strip club, coaxes men into private rooms for lap dances, and will even meet up with men outside of the club and have sex with them for money, but she is not, she insists, a prostitute.  One such customer is Vanya, the twenty year old son of a Russian oligarch who is richer that God.  Vanya takes a shine to Ani, and asks her to spend a week with him in exchange for $15,000.  She agrees, but this is no Julia Roberts-Richard Gere-Pretty Woman deal.  While on a spree in Las Vegas, Ani and Vanya get married.   Word soon gets back to the old man in Russia who then sends three of his goons to pay a visit to the newlyweds and make the whole thing go away.

The movie is in three acts, and I am not sure what to think of them when taken all together.  Act One depicts the lives of these sex workers.  It's gritty and dangerous, not at all glamorous, and, frankly, Linda and I were tempted to quit watching as it unfolded.  Act Two takes place when the three underlings come to the house where Vanya is staying and attempt to convince the couple to get the marriage annulled.  During this time, Vanya bolts from the house and Ani fights off the goons, and it is funny and terrifying at the same time.  Act Three is the search to find Vanya, the arrival of his parents from Russia, and I'll say no more so as to avoid spoilers.

I am not sure what to make of the ending of the movie.  You can go online and find all kinds of opinions as to just what the ending is supposed to mean.  I'm still not sure.  I will say this, though, "Anora" was a movie we talked about for several days after watching it.

Two Stars from The Grandstander.

My 2024 Movie Rankings

I am not a professional movie critic.  I don't have to see every movie that comes down the pike.  I only see the movies that I want to see, and as such,  I am  inclined to like them from the start.  In all I saw twenty-five movies in calendar year 2024.  Some were seen on theaters, some were streamed, and some were older movies that I had seen for the first time.  I rank them as I go along throughout the year, and the rankings are based upon how much I actually liked the movie.

Here they are:

1. A Complete Unknown
2. Wicked
3. Conclave
4. Here
5. The Holdovers*
6. Anatomy of A Fall*
7. Anora
8. It Ends With Us
9. The Fall Guy
10. The Greatest Night in Pop
11. Remembering Gene Wilder
12. In Cold Blood (1967)
13. Past Lives*
14. American Fiction*
15. Poor Things*
16. Maestro*
17. Unfrosted
18. Infamous (2005)
19. Wicked Little Letters*
20. Taylor Swift, The Eras Tour
21. Woman of the Hour
22. The Zone of Interest*
23. Megalopolis
24. Green for Danger (1946)
25. Napoleon Dynamite (2005)

* 2023 Movies seen in 2024

Seven of these were released in 2023 for the purposes of Oscar consideration, but I didn't see them until the calendar turned to 2024.

I will say that I had a hard time deciding whether our not to place Wicked or A Complete Unknown in the Number One spot, and I used this criterion to decide:  What movie am I most likely to see a second time, and that made the choice a simple one.