dual personalities

Category: baseball

May 10, 2017

Fun facts to know and tell

by chuckofish

Did you know that both Max Steiner and Dimitri Tiomkin were born today?

Steiner (May 10, 1888 – December 28, 1971) was an Austrian-born American music composer for theatre and films. He was a child prodigy who conducted his first operetta when he was twelve and became a full-time professional, either composing, arranging, or conducting, when he was fifteen.  Steiner was referred to as “the father of film music” and played a major part in creating the tradition of writing music for films. He composed over 300 film scores and was nominated for 24 Academy Awards, winning three: The Informer (1935), Now, Voyager (1942) and Since You Went Away (1944). Besides his Oscar-winning scores, you might remember King Kong (1933), Casablanca (1942), The Searchers (1956), a lot of those classic Errol Flynn movies, and Gone With the Wind (1939).

Tiomkin (May 10, 1894 – November 11, 1979) was a Russian-born American film composer and conductor. Musically trained in Russia, he was best known for his western scores, including Duel in the Sun (1946), Red River (1948), High Noon (1952), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Alamo (1960). He received twenty-two Academy Award nominations and won four Oscars, three for Best Original Score for High Noon, The High and the Mighty, and The Old Man and the Sea, and one for Best Original Song for “The Ballad of High Noon” from High Noon.

Well, I thinks that’s interesting–two of the all-time most famous movie composers sharing a birthday!

And, oh, what’s that you say? The Cardinals are in first place?! No kidding, you nay-sayers!

680509666.0.jpg

Don’t let the turkeys (and the haters) get you down, Big Mike!

Mike-matheny.jpg

#THAT’SAWINNER! Go, Cards!

2 Comments
October 4, 2016

“The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way to bet.”

by chuckofish

Today is the birthday of Damon Runyon (October 4, 1880 – December 10, 1946)–American newspaperman and author. He is most remembered today for writing the stories which inspired the broadway musical Guys and Dolls. 

Sportswriter Damon Runyon

Here are some things about him you probably didn’t know:

He was born in Manhattan–but in Manhattan, Kansas. He grew up in Pueblo, Colorado. His father and grandfather were newspaper editors.

In 1898, when still in his teens, Runyon enlisted in the U.S. Army to fight in the Spanish-American War.

He was the Hearst newspapers’ baseball columnist for many years, beginning in 1911, and his knack for spotting the eccentric and the unusual, on the field or in the stands, is credited with revolutionizing the way baseball was covered.

One year, while covering spring training in Texas, he met Pancho Villa in a bar and later accompanied the unsuccessful American expedition into Mexico searching for Villa.

Runyon died in New York City in 1946, at age 66. His body was cremated, and his ashes were illegally scattered from a DC-3 airplane over Broadway by Captain Eddie Rickenbacker. The family plot of Damon Runyon is located at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.

His stories are still in print and I am going to read them. His gangsters seem much more appealing than our 21st-century ones.

4 Comments
August 26, 2016

I’m talkin’ baseball

by chuckofish

Screen Shot 2016-08-25 at 9.48.15 AM

So the Cardinals are doing quite well–despite all the nay-sayers. I am not surprised. The Cardinals always pump up their mojo during the end of the season. We are hitting away and without one big star hitter in particular leading the way.

Screen Shot 2016-08-25 at 10.08.23 AM

I am not worried about that wild card spot.

And, please, all you Matheny-haters, take a chill pill!

mike-matheny-manifesto-youth-sports

(Okay, we lost last night, but we scored 6 runs and gave them a run for their money.)

Go, Cards!

*Photo via Parade Magazine

3 Comments
April 13, 2016

Let me just say this about that

by chuckofish

So we all know that the Cardinals got off to a slow start. They lost their first three games to the Pirates. Immediately the nay-sayers were all, Oh no! And it’s going to be a terrible season! Mike Matheny doesn’t know what he’s doing, yada yada yada.

The Skipper calmly replied that we’re not hitting. We’ll figure it out and fix it.

St. Louis Post Dispatch photo

St. Louis Post Dispatch photo

In the next four games the Cardinals scored 41 runs. Forty-one! Runs! In one game they hit three pinch-hit homeruns–a MLB-record.

The nay-sayers say, So are the Cardinals good? Or are the Braves and Brewers just bad?

Please. The Cardinals will be just fine.

The nay-sayers can sit on a tack.

And here’s a little pep talk for Wednesday:

“Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair. In the central place of every heart there is a recording chamber. So long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer and courage, so long are you young. When your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then, and then only, are you grown old. And then, indeed as the ballad says, you just fade away.”

–Douglas MacArthur

4 Comments
March 29, 2016

Hey, guys

by chuckofish

I just have to say that I get such a kick out of seeing these pictures of the Cardinals’ Skipper sent by my spy down in Jupiter.

Screen Shot 2016-03-28 at 11.31.45 AM

Screen Shot 2016-03-28 at 4.10.55 PM

The Cardinals have not exactly been burning it up in spring training, but I’m not worried. We’ll be awesome when the time comes.

Screen Shot 2016-03-28 at 8.18.13 PM

The Cardinals regular season starts on April 4th with a game against the Pirates in Pittsburgh. The home opener in St. Louis is on April 11th with a game against the Brewers. Since there isn’t much else to be excited about, I think I’ll be excited about this.

4 Comments
March 8, 2016

“O Piece of Bunting, flying high and higher That next October it shall flutter here: This is the end of every fan’s desire.”*

by chuckofish

John Mozeliek, Bill DeWitt and Mike Matheny in Jupiter, FL (photo Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports)

(photo Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports)

Spring is just around the corner. I know this because we see a lot of these guys–the GM, owner and manager of the STL Cardinals–on the local news these days.

Which is okay with me. I much prefer Redbirds to political commentary. And I should mention that our baseball team owners are like gods compared to our former football team owner. I mean really.

Ah, Fans, let not the Quarry but the Chase
      Be that to which most fondly we aspire!
For us not Stake, but Game; not Goal, but Race—
      THIS is the end of every fan’s desire.

*Franklin Pierce Adams, A Ballad of Baseball Burdens

4 Comments