By Bob Gaydos

Shohei Ohtani
… a unique ballplayer

• Four … uh make that five, umm I mean six no-hitters in a month and a half of baseball.  
• A pitcher kept in the game for his bat after pitching seven sterling innings. In the American League, no less.
• That same pitcher leading the major leagues in home runs.
• Future Hall of Famer Albert Pujols is released. Why’d he pick LA over the Bronx?
• Kentucky Derby winner fails drug test. The horse, that is. 
• The New York Knicks — the New York Knicks! — make the playoffs.
• The New York Rangers fire everybody.
• The Ghost of Jimmy Cannon to the rescue.

      As I slogged through the daily ritual of Republican lies and conspiracy theories that make up news reports these days, my eye kept catching a glimpse of other stories that were actual news, interesting, worth noting, especially for a former sports editor. Can I take a (much-needed) break from politics, I wondered. A few readers said go for it

     Then Jimmy Cannon popped up in the middle of a Woody Allen movie I’d never heard of. Well, not Jimmy Cannon himself, but a reference to him. In the middle of a scene in which two young brothers are discussing great writers, the younger brother says, “What about Cannon?“

       What about Cannon? I said, as my ears perked up. I knew instantly. It was my muse telling me in its own subtle way to do the damn sports column, forget politics for a day. Do a Jimmy Cannon style column.

        For those under 60, Jimmy Cannon was a sports columnist for the Journal-American in New York City. His trademark column (and the title of his book) was “Nobody Asked Me, But…“ This device allowed Cannon to write about anything he felt like writing about, including non-sports stories. He could knock off a bunch of topics in one column. I’ve stolen the approach a few times, using my own words, as a salute to the late sports writer.

        So,

• Maybe it’s just me, but …: Six no hitters in less than two months of baseball may say more about the caliber of hitters than the caliber of pitchers. In this era of smash ball, batting averages are down, strikeouts are up and nobody knows the hit-and-run sign. Full disclosure, when I started writing this column there were only four no hitters in baseball. Overnight, a pitcher named Spencer Turnbull through a no-hitter for the Detroit Tigers against the Seattle Mariners. Turnbull let the majors in losses a couple of years ago. For the Mariners, it was the second time in two weeks to go an entire game without getting a hit. The Cleveland Indians have also been no-hit twice this year. Foolishly, I didn’t finish the column and the Yankees’ Corey Kluber threw a no-hitter that night against the Detroit Tigers. Just for good measure, Arizona’s Madison Bumgarner actually threw a complete game no-hitter against the Atlanta Braves as well, but it won’t count officially as a no-hitter. That’s because it came in the second game of a doubleheader, which MLB now has shortened to seven-inning games. The game is official, but the no-hitter isn’t. Figure that one out. Anyway, my takeaway is that, while yes, a lot of pitchers are throwing harder, all the bashers in baseball are more concerned with the speed with which their home runs will be leaving the ballpark and less focused on actually hitting the ball more often. The record for most no hitters in a season is eight. We should hit that by June.
• In this case, I think it’s not just me…: Shohei Ohtani is the most incredible player in baseball today. If he keeps it up, maybe of all time. That’s saying a lot, but the Los Angeles Angels star is doing a lot. Start with the fact that he’s a starting pitcher who is leading baseball in home runs hit (14), not allowed, this season. He has batted second in the lineup in a game in which he was the starting pitcher, something that hasn’t happened in more than a century in baseball. And forget that four days rest between starts – he has also been the leadoff batter in the lineup, as the DH, a day after being a starting pitcher. Again, more than a century since that’s happened. He recently pitched seven innings, striking out 10 batters and then was moved to right field for the rest of the game to keep his bat in the lineup. He’s batting .273, with 33 RBIs. He has also started six games on the mound and has a 1-0 record with a 2.37 ERA. He throws right-handed (and can top 100 mph) and hits left-handed. They call him Sho Time. If he keeps it up they may also call him MVP.
• This column is already getting way too long. Let’s wrap it all up here. Maybe it’s just me, but… : Albert Pujols could’ve been a DH in the Bronx, but his personality is better suited to LA. … How do they let a Kentucky Derby winner taken down for failing a drug test, run in the Preakness two weeks later? By the way, he was beaten soundly in the Preakness. Just sayin’ ,,  The Knicks did something smart in signing Derrick Rose. Derrick Rose did something smart in signing with the playoff-bound Knicks. … James Dolan doesn’t like it when things are too quiet at Madison Square Garden, so firing all the Rangers’ bosses probably made sense to him. I actually forgot they were still playing hockey. 
• Maybe it’s just me, but …: I’d love to see Ohtani pitch a no-hitter and win the game with a walk-off home run in the ninth-inning.

      OK, I feel better. That’s it on sports until next time.

(PS: The Woody Allen movie was “A Rainy Day in New York.“ It was like something he jotted down on notecards while waiting in his therapist’s outer office. A bit of a memoir, if you will. Allen-lite, but with all the usual Manhattan atmospherics . and great musical accompaniment. Maybe it’s just me, but maybe he just needed a paycheck.)

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.

By Bob Gaydos

“You want to go see ‘The Campaign’?”

The caller was my 18-year-old, about-to-leave-for-college son, Zack. So I immediately said yes. These impromptu calls have become too infrequent lately. Zack, of course, loves anything Will Ferrell does. I think he’s a talented actor who constantly takes the easy path to the cheapest joke, the filthier the better, playing dumb to reach the lowest common denominator in his audience — teenaged boys. A classic underachiever. But I thought, what the heck, it’s timely. Maybe he’ll score some political points and I’ll get a few laughs.

Both things happened, but I came away from the movie with a strange sense of sadness. Ferrell did not disappoint. The jokes were crude, sexual and occasionally hilarious. But some of the best ones had been promoted for weeks on TV. (Why do they feel a need to do that?) Mostly, though, on leaving the theater, I realized that I had stopped laughing at some point because the heavy-handed attempt at satire was simply too close to the truth and this movie wasn’t going to change things one iota.

For one thing, teenaged boys don’t vote. For another, the country really is full of the kind fickle, dumb voters portrayed in the movie — people who swear their political allegiance based on phony image, phony religion phony patriotism, phony family values — and switch it just as easily based on phony claims spread with the money of very real filthy rich people who feel they are a country unto themselves, free to do as they please to whomever they please, so long as they can afford it.

And so Ferrell gives us the Motch Brothers, in the bloated persons of Dan Akroyd and John Lithgow. They decide to grab control of a North Carolina congressional district by bankrolling the ineffectual, clueless Zach Galifianakis to run against the incumbent, the philandering, dumb Ferrell. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, slim as it is. Suffice to say, the movie stereotypes of the real-life Koch brothers are ruthless to the core, using their wealth to try to buy a congressional district, and not caring which candidate can deliver that prize. Where’s the humor there? Like the dumb voters stereotyped, that’s the plain truth.

The movie candidates do and say stupid stuff until the end, which is all Hollywood happy, but not convincing. But the real-life candidates in this country do and say dumb stuff all the time, with no Hollywood ending. (Will the would-be senator from Missouri please shut his mouth and go home?) In Texas and Arizona they routinely get elected. The movie presents cardboard characters who could probably run and win somewhere real in America. That’s why the stereotypes, while comically exaggerated, also seem so familiar. We know these buffoons, these liars, these phonies. We vote for them (well, I don’t). We send them back to office because they tell us some cock and bull story and we never bother to call them on it. And if someone does pull their covers, we ignore it. It’s like a whole country addicted to BS. It makes us feel so good, if we hold our noses.

I guess I should have realized that Will Ferrell isn’t sophisticated enough to deliver the kind of satire needed to get people off the political BS crack pipe and I shouldn’t expect him to. And I have little faith in today’s traditional news media. I think more and more that the Internet and social media – also hugely popular with teenaged boys — represent the best hope for getting Americans, at least enough Americans, to recognize what is going on with our political system and make them want to change it.

Yes, there are a lot of liars and buffoons on the Internet, too, but they are being called out and drowned out regularly by voices of logic and reason and compassion. Young voices and old voices and middle aged voices. People who are sick and tired of the BS in American politics, much too sick and tired to think it’s funny anymore. (Did you hear what that idiot in Tennessee said about spreading AIDS?) Maybe Woody Allen could make it a laughing matter: Pass the popcorn. Woody really nailed these guys. But he only makes one movie a year and I can’t wait.

Yes, I realize I’ve been talking about myself here. I never used crack, but I’ve ingested enough political BS to last several lifetimes. Sorry, Will Ferrell, you’ll probably make millions trading on people‘s ignorance (much like the Motch brothers), but politics in America long ago ceased to be a laughing matter. It’s more like a cruel joke.

PS: But hey, Zack, don’t hesitate to call if you want to catch another movie. My treat.

bob@zestoforange.com