Stocks and News
Home | Week in Review Process | Terms of Use | About UsContact Us
   Articles Go Fund Me All-Species List Hot Spots Go Fund Me
Week in Review   |  Bar Chat    |  Hot Spots    |   Dr. Bortrum    |   Wall St. History
Stock and News: Bar Chat
 Search Our Archives: 
  
 


   

 

 

 


Baseball Reference

Bar Chat

AddThis Feed Button

   

08/24/2017

The Big Trade

[Posted Wed. a.m.]

FedEx Cup Quiz: The Cup had its inception in 2007.  Name the winners.  Answer below.

MLB

--The Yankees defeated the Tigers in Detroit on Tuesday, 13-4, but before the game the story was Aaron Judge, who was hitting .169 since the All-Star break, 21 hits in 124 at-bats, with 58 strikeouts and just 7 home runs and 14 RBIs.  He had also struck out in a major-league record 37 straight games.

But Tuesday, Judge was 1-for-1, with three walks and two runs scored, when he was pinch-hit for in the top of the seventh, with the Yanks up 11-1, thereby ensuring the death of the streak.

Manager Joe Girardi said after the decision to remove Judge had nothing to do with the streak and was about giving him some rest, but this is one guy who prepares as much as anyone for each game and Girardi knew what he was doing.

--As for the unwatchable Mets, who after a 7-4 loss to Arizona at Citi Field on Tuesday have lost 8 of 9 to fall to 54-70, we learned that starter Steven Matz, whose troubles I wrote of last time, has now been told he faces season-ending elbow surgery for the second straight season, having been diagnosed Monday with a displaced ulnar nerve on Monday.  Manager Terry Collins, who has seemed ever clueless this season, in what is no doubt his last, had just told us Matz wasn’t dealing with an injury.  Jacob deGrom underwent the same procedure last season and at least he’s been solid this year so there is still hope that once again, Matz, who aside from a previous elbow procedure, also had Tommy John surgery as a minor leaguer and bone spurs removed in 2016, can return to peak form in 2018.

But then there was the report from Newsday’s David Lennon that the much-maligned Mets medical staff, perhaps the worst in professional sports, globally, has been treating Matz with strong anti-inflammatory medication to enable him to stay on the mound, after they told him in the spring his elbow issue was in his head and that it was structurally sound.

Except he was on the disabled list for three months and it wasn’t getting any better.

But Matz pitched through it and, according to Lennon, aside from the pain killers, he was skipping bullpen sessions just to be able to get on the mound every fifth day, which the fans were never told, Matz being partially at fault for that.

Yes, Matz wanted to prove he was tough, and not deserving of the ‘soft’ label many increasingly attached to him, but, geezuz, the Mets treated him like a lab rat, despite knowing that pitchers deGrom and Erik Goeddel had the exact same injury Matz has and it required surgery.

As Lennon writes, in Matz’ case, though, the solution seemed to be “Limit his use of the slider to ease the strain on his elbow and aggressively prescribe anti-inflammatory drugs. What, no Flintstones chewable vitamins?”

So it’s yet another reason to review what was supposed to be the Mets’ strength this season...seven healthy starters in spring training.

Noah Syndergaard, Matt Harvey, deGrom, Matz, Zack Wheeler, Robert Gsellman, and Seth Lugo.

Only deGrom hasn’t spent significant time on the DL, and when we look to next spring, there is little reason for optimism, though it seems we’ll get a look at Harvey and Syndergaard before the season ends.  [As well as Jeurys Familia, one of the better closers in the game who has been out most of the year with a blood clot.]

One thing we do know.  In the offseason, it’s time for management to find at least one innings eater on the free agent market.

--The Indians suffered a potentially big blow on Monday when key reliever, Andrew Miller, aggravated a right knee injury in just his second appearance since spending two weeks on the DL with patellar tendinitis in the same knee. 

Miller is 4-3 in his eighth inning role, with a 1.65 ERA, and 79 strikeouts in 54 2/3 while allowing just 26 hits.

Cleveland, which beat Boston 5-4 on Monday, then lost to the Red Sox 9-1 last night, as Boston’s Doug Fister one-hit the Tribe, Francisco Lindor accounting for the only run, and hit, with a first-inning homer. 

--Some standings....

A.L. East

Boston 72-53
New York 67-57...4.5

A.L. Central

Cleveland 69-55
Minnesota 65-60...4.5

A.L. Wild Card

New York 67-57...+2.5
Minnesota 65-60... ---
Los Angeles 65-61...0.5
Kansas City 63-61...1.5
Seattle 64-63...2
Texas 62-63...3
Tampa Bay 62-65...4
Baltimore 61-65...4.5

N.L. Central

Chicago 67-57
Milwaukee 66-61...2.5
St. Louis 63-62...4.5

N.L. Wild Card

Arizona 69-57...+0.5
Colorado 68-57... ---
Milwaukee 66-61...3

--The Dodgers placed Cody Bellinger and starting pitcher Alex Wood on the 10-day disabled list, but there is little concern with either.  Mild injuries for both and more of a precaution, given the Dodgers’ 21-game lead in the N.L. West.

--The Angels’ Albert Pujols hit home run No. 610 Tuesday, surpassing Sammy Sosa and giving him the most home runs by a foreign-born player, as the surprising Angels beat the Rangers 10-1.

--I thought the Sunday night contest at Williamsport, Pa., tied to the Little League World Series, was a great idea.  Granted, I watched little of the actual game due to “Game of Thrones” being on, and one of the three dragons now becoming part of the army of the dead, but I digress.

But here’s hoping MLB makes this a regular deal, as they seem to be leaning towards after the success of the first one at refurbished 2,500-seat Bowman Field.  The players loved it (Pirates beating the Cardinals 6-3, for the record).

Commissioner Rob Manfred said before the game: “My expectation is that if we do it again, we would use different teams....I know there was a lot of interest throughout the league from teams that wanted to be here and had players that played in the Little League World Series.”

My thought would be that to cut down on travel, you rotate among a combination of Mets, Yanks, Phils, Pirates, Nationals, and Orioles.  MLB is obviously subsidizing the teams involved for missing a home game. 

--Hey, Wake Forest fans...I’m following our minor leaguers and recent seventh-round pick Parker Dunshee, Oakland, has stretched his scoreless innings streak to 31 in the New York-Penn League, allowing just 12 hits, 6 walks, with 36 Ks.  As Ronald Reagan would have said, ‘Not bad, not bad at all.’

NBA

In a huge trade that shakes up the Eastern Conference, the Cleveland Cavaliers accommodated guard Kyrie Irving’s trade request, sending him to Boston for a package including guard Isaiah Thomas, forward Jae Crowder, center Ante Zizic and the Nets’ 2018 first-rounder.

Will this influence LeBron James’ decision on staying or leaving Cleveland after 2018?  It’s way too early for that and LeBron, as I go to post, has been silent on the move.

But I believe Cleveland definitely made the best of a poor situation, even if Thomas, who could also leave after 2018, hasn’t recovered from his serious hip injury.  Crowder is a solid performer, Ante Zizic is a potential star big man, just 20 years old, and while the Nets are sure to improve this year, it is still likely the Cavs will pick up a lottery pick, so very worst case, they begin rebuilding around a good college draftee and Zizic, especially assuming management lets both LeBron and Thomas walk.

At least for this coming season, Cleveland remains in the Eastern Conference title hunt, but, again, Thomas’ health is key.

As for the Celts, they had to do something with Thomas themselves, and they get a superstar guard who is still just 25 and under a reasonable contract for another few seasons. Boston should win the East.

NFL

--New York Giants fans held their breath on Monday night in the team’s exhibition game against Cleveland.  Superstar receiver Odell Beckham Jr. was undercut by Browns cornerback Briean Boddy-Calhoun, no relation to Brienne of Tarth of “Game of Thrones” fame.  Boddy-Calhoun drove his shoulder and helmet into Beckham’s left leg, Beckham’s legs flipping in the air as he hit the turf hard, though it was diagnosed Tuesday as just a sprain and he should be ready for the opener in a few weeks.  [Team officials are being cautious, saying he could miss the it.  He won’t.]

Beckham said the hit wasn’t dirty, but some of his teammates disagreed, so look for Sir Gregor to be hired out after GoT’s final episode of its season on Sunday, Sir Gregor being capable of taking care of Boddy-Calhoun in a unique fashion.

But in the here and now, while the Giants have dreams of the Super Bowl, the facts are that while it made the playoffs last season, it was almost solely the result of a solid, revamped defense, that was second in the NFL in scoring defense (10th in total D).

The offense, however, on display against Cleveland as they lost 10-6, was 25th in the league last year in total O, 26th in scoring.  It’s why Giants fans were for a moment seeing their season flame out before them on the Briean Boddy-Calhoun hit.  Without OBJ, the Giants have nothing.

--Meanwhile, a dozen Cleveland players staged the largest national anthem protest yet in the NFL and were joined for the first time by white players as twelve took a knee and five others stood with their hands on the kneeling players’ shoulders.

Said rookie safety Jabrill Peppers afterwards, “There’s a lot of racial and social injustices in the world that are going on right now. We just decided to take a knee and pray for the people who have been affected and just pray for the world in general.”

Well, I’ve said my piece on the topic.  Whatever floats your boat...just understand your bosses, and the fans, don’t have to agree with the methods employed.

--36-year-old veteran wide receiver, Anquan Boldin, retired just two weeks after signing a one-year contract with the Buffalo Bills, which at the time was viewed as a great move by the Bills to get a veteran presence like Boldin’s.  Even at 36, he could still be effective as a possession receiver, having caught 67 passes for 584 yards and 8 TDs with Detroit last season.

So, assuming he means it, Boldin finishes his career ninth on the all-time receptions list with 1,076 for 13,779 yards and 82 touchdowns.  He was also a three-time Pro Bowl selection.

Why is he hanging it up? Fears over CTE?  Nope.  In a statement to ESPN’s Jim Trotter, Boldin said:

Football in its purest form is what we all strive for as a nation.  People from all different races, religions and backgrounds working together for one shared goal. The core values taught in football are some of the most important you can learn in life. To always be there for the guy next to you and not let your fellow man down.  You do whatever it takes to make sure your brother is okay.  Football has afforded me a platform throughout my career to have a greater impact on my humanitarian work.  At this time, I feel drawn to make the larger fight for human rights a priority.  My life’s purpose is bigger than football.”

College Football

The final preseason poll was released on Monday.

AP Poll

1. Alabama 52 first-place votes
2. Ohio State 3
3. Florida State 4
4. USC 2
5. Clemson
6. Penn State
7. Oklahoma
8. Washington
9. Wisconsin
10. Oklahoma State

--I’m already bemoaning the  fact my Wake Forest Demon Deacons could be better than last year’s respectable team (7-6) that upset Temple in a bowl game.

The Deacs’ schedule, particularly games 5 thru 9 (Florida State, at Clemson, at Georgia Tech, Louisville, at Notre Dame) is a killer.  I’m hoping for 6-6.  But my expert in the know, major booster Chris K., told me this weekend, 4-8 is more likely.

We have a huge second week game at Boston College.  If we don’t win that one, it’s Game Over.  In our fourth game, we also have a toughie at Appalachian State.  I’ve been to Boone and the home town fans will be going nuts to beat an old rival (Wake hasn’t played them since 2001...we’ve been scared to).  The significance of the game for the Mountaineers is this will be the first time ever they have hosted a school from a Power Five Conference.*

*I was reminded after posting this of something I even commented myself on at the time...last year, App State hosted Miami...my apologies.  I was working off the original press release for the Wake game from years ago.  My bad.  Thanks, J. Mac. [Miami blasted the Mountaineers 45-10.]

So Phil W. passed me a note Monday that was kind of comical. The ticket prices for App State-Wake are skyrocketing, while our own ticket prices for the Florida State game at home are comically low on Stub Hub, given the opponent.

Golf Balls

--Some tidbits on the FedEx Cup playoffs that start this week with the Northern Trust Open, the top 125 qualifying.  As you know, the winner after the four playoff tournaments takes home a $10 million bonus, but they also receive a five-year exemption on the PGA Tour.  Bonuses are also awarded to the remaining players in the top 30 that qualify for the final Tour Championship, including $3 million to second place, $2 million to third, $1.5 million to fourth, and $1 million for fifth...and down from there.

What was great about the Wyndham tournament last weekend (though not emphasized enough on the coverage) was that not only were the top 125 qualifying for the playoffs, but since 2013, this has also been for their playing privileges (“tour card”),  for the following season.  I mean that is everything for these guys.

Jerry Lewis

I didn’t have time to write about his life last chat so just a few notes for the archives.

Lewis was a star on the big screen, television, nightclubs, on the Broadway stage, and as a philanthropist, most notably in this last regard as spokesman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

Lewis was born Joseph Levitch on March 16, 1926, in Newark, the son of Danny and Rae Levitch, who were entertainers – his father a song-and-dance man, his mother a pianist – who used the name Lewis when they appeared in small-time vaudeville venues and at Catskills resort hotels.

Lewis was putting together comedy acts when he was 12, and by his 16th birthday, dropped out of Irvington, N.J. High School* (near where your editor lives...a very rough town these days) and adopted the professional name of Jerry Lewis to avoid confusion with the nightclub comic Joe E. Lewis.

*Another obit I read said he was expelled at 15, and then dropped out of vocational school before turning 16.

Having been classified 4F, which kept him out of the war (he had a perforated eardrum and a heart murmur...and would later have multiple medical issues, including two heart attacks), he was performing at a Detroit theater when he met Patti Palmer, a 23-year-old singer.  They married three months later and on July 31, 1945, while Patti was living with Jerry’s parents in Newark and he was performing at a Baltimore nightclub, Patti gave birth to the first of the couple’s six sons, Gary, who we all know became a bit of a star himself with a series of hit records in the 1960s while performing with his group, Gary Lewis and the Playboys.

Around the time of Gary’s birth, Jerry met Dean Martin, a promising crooner in Steubenville, Ohio, and they began hashing out an act on the side.

In the summer of 1946, with Lewis booked at the 500 Club in Atlantic City, and the singer on the program dropping out, Lewis pushed for the club to hire Martin and the two worked on a routine based on Lewis as a bumbling busboy who kept breaking in on Martin – dropping trays, hurling food, cavorting like a monkey – without ever ruffling Martin.

It was the beginning of a relationship that would last ten years, until they split in July 1956.

Dennis McLellan / Los Angeles Times

“Audiences had never seen anything like them: Martin, the handsome Italian crooner with the laid-back style; Lewis, the skinny, animated ‘kid’ with the shrill, adolescent whine.

“On stage together, Martin and Lewis were known as a super-charged mix of jokes, routines, singing, dancing and, most notably, ad-libbing. The wildly unpredictable Lewis thought nothing of cutting off customers’ neckties, flinging food off their plates or setting the musicians’ sheet music on fire.

“ ‘I have been in the business 55 years, and I have never to this day seen an act get more laughs than Martin and Lewis,’ comedian Alan King  once recalled in the New Yorker, decades after seeing the team perform at New York City’s fabled Copacabana nightclub in 1948.  ‘They didn’t get laughs – it was pandemonium.’ 

“Martin and Lewis created pandemonium off stage as well, generating the kind of frenzied mob scene previously reserved for the likes of bobby-soxer heartthrob Frank Sinatra and unheard of for a comedy act.

“At the Paramount Theater in Manhattan in 1951, Martin and Lewis performed six sold-out shows a day (seven on Saturday) for two weeks. With lines forming outside the theater as early as 6 a.m., more than 22,000 people a day flocked to see them.

“On television from 1950 to 1955, the comedy duo regularly hosted ‘The Colgate Comedy Hour.’ And Lewis’ signature lines became national catch phrases, including ‘I like it!  I like it!’ and ‘La-a-a-dy!’”

Martin and Lewis appeared in 16 feature films together – including “My Friend Irma” and “Hollywood or Bust.”

But by 1956, with no one understanding Martin’s “brilliance” as a straight man, as Lewis himself would put it, Martin had grown tired of “playing a stooge,” tired of Lewis being singled out as the “crazy, funny” one, and just plain tired of Lewis himself.

After going solo, Lewis scored a hit with “The Delicate Delinquent” in 1957, and two years later he signed an unprecedented deal with Paramount Pictures: $10 million to appear in 14 films over seven years, during which time he appeared in “The Bellboy,” written by Lewis and set in a Miami Beach hotel, which also marked his film debut as a director.  And he went on to direct, co-write (with Bill Richmond) and star in films such as “The Ladies Man,” “The Errand Boy,” and “The Nutty Professor.”

Critics, though, increasingly called the films he directed “ponderous” and “self-indulging,” with critic Leonard Maltin writing in his book “The Great Movie Comedians”, “There was no longer anyone to veto an idea, so Jerry indulged his every whim...(allowing him to discard) conventional notions of good taste, modesty, continuity and – oddly enough – humor.”

It was not always successful.  In late 1962, ABC signed Lewis to a lucrative deal to host a weekly, two-hour, live Saturday night variety-talk show, but “The Jerry Lewis Show” was a colossal flop, canceled by ABC after just 13 weeks in 1963, after which Lewis took out full-page ads in the show-business trade papers that said simply, “Oops!!! jerry lewis.”

It was a rare admission of failure from a man who seemingly had the biggest ego in Hollywood.  He once told the New Yorker in 2000: “I don’t give a @#$% if people think I have a fantastic ego.  I earned it! I worked my heart out! And you know what? I’m as good as they get.”

Dave Kehr / New York Times

“His career had its ups and downs, but when it was at its zenith there were few stars any bigger. And he got there remarkably quickly.

“Barely out of his teens, he shot to fame shortly after World War II with a nightclub act in which the rakish, imperturbable Dean Martin crooned and the skinny, hyperactive Mr. Lewis capered around the stage, a dangerously volatile id to Mr. Martin’s supremely relaxed ego....

“A mercurial personality who could flip from naked neediness to towering rage, Mr. Lewis seemed to contain multitudes, and he explored all of them. His ultimate object of contemplation was his own contradictory self, and he turned his obsession with fragmentation, discontinuity and the limits of language into a spectacle that enchanted children, disturbed adults and fascinated postmodernist critics....

“(His parents) were frequently on the road and often left Joey, as he was called, in the care of Rae’s mother and her sisters. The experience of being passed from home to home left Mr. Lewis with an enduring sense of insecurity and, as he observed, a desperate need for attention and affection.”

Lewis began his association with the Muscular Dystrophy Association in the 1960s, and beginning in 1966, he served as host of the association’s annual Labor Day weekend telethon.  There were some who criticized the association’s “Jerry’s Kids” campaign as condescending,* but the telethon raised about $2 billion during the more than 40 years he was host, 2010 being his last year (which was shrouded in controversy the following year, because he thought he was doing it...but MDA said the relationship was over).

It’s hard to explain if you’re a lot younger than yours truly, but this was ‘must see’ television, and I recall many years in my youth when I was glued to the last hour or two, to see an emotional Lewis, normally with sidekick Ed McMahon, reveal the final tally for the amount raised.  You were just drawn to it.  It was truly one-of-a-kind television.

And there were some unique acts on the show. In 1976, Frank Sinatra staged an on-air reunion between Lewis and Martin, though neither seemed comfortable. The two, incredibly, hadn’t spoken since the breakup...20 years before.  Lewis was authentically surprised seeing his former partner and after regaining his composure, famously said to Martin: “Ya workin’?”  USA Today said in 2002 that this was “one of the greatest moments in TV history.”

Lewis and Martin hooked up on a more lasting basis, in terms of a relationship, after Lewis attended the funeral of Martin’s oldest son, Dean Paul Martin Jr., a pilot in the California Air National Guard who had been killed in a crash in 1987.  “He called me, and we talked for a couple of hours. He sobbed for the first time I’d ever heard.  He said, ‘Don’t you understand?  I just lost one of the only two male loves I had in my life.  Him and you,’” Lewis recalled years later.  The two continued to speak occasionally until Martin’s death in 1995.

*Washington Post critic Tom Shales wrote at the time that the MDA telethon had become a mawkishly sentimental pop-cultural institution whose “awfulness is enshrined in tradition, like the ‘Miss America Pageant.’”  Later, Lewis came under fire from former MDA poster children who claimed he portrayed them as objects of pity.  In 1973, he was criticized for holding a child in his arms on the air and saying, “God goofed, and it’s up to us to correct His mistakes.”

Jerry Lewis never received an Oscar for his film work, but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences bestowed upon him the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for his charitable work in 2009.  [Lewis never said why he did all the fund-raising work on behalf of MDA.  “The important thing is that I do it, not the why,” he told the Los Angeles Times a number of years ago.]

He also received two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame – one for his movies, the other for television – and an induction into the Legion d’Honneur, awarded by the French government in 2006.  This last one was funny.  The French people for their own reasons just loved Jerry Lewis far more than America did it seemed.  Over there he was considered a cinematic genius and was named best foreign director eight times.

Stuff

--It’s finally here.  Mayweather-McGregor...Las Vegas... Saturday night.

Moi?  For starters, no way was I shelling out for the pay-per-view, and I’ve told you countless times why I don’t care about this one, but I do hope Mayweather kicks McGregor’s butt, though the change to 8-ounce gloves vs. 10-oz. ones maybe gives McGregor a bit more of a shot.

That said, with the fight starting at midnight in my time zone, I won’t even be staying up for the round-by-round recaps that we’ll all find readily available.

--I watched Monday’s Premier League contest, Everton at Manchester City, and Wayne Rooney scored for the second straight contest in his return to Everton, but Man City fought for a 1-1 draw, despite playing with 10 men for more than half the game.

The goal for Rooney, though was No. 200 in the Premier League, thus becoming only the second player in league history to attain this mark, the other being Alan Shearer, whose record 260 seems light years away. Shearer also holds the record with 11 hat-tricks.  He retired in 2006, after spending his career with Southampton, Blackburn and Newcastle United.

--New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said he pulled himself out of the running for any job as a sports-talk radio host on WFAN when he leaves office in January, the strong rumor being he was going to succeed Mike Francesa.

But the New York Daily News reported the day before that the station had informed Christie he was out of the mix, though Christie said the News’ story was “completely incorrect.”

Altogether now.... “Whatever.”

--ESPN has a young play-by-play announcer by the name of Robert Lee, who was to do the upcoming Virginia-William & Mary opener, but the network, given the political climate, and the name Robert E. Lee being very much in the news, decided to switch him to another telecast, Lee giving his permission, only to have the issue explode on social media and elsewhere when it was leaked to reporter Clay Travis of Outkick the Coverage.

Just stupid all around.

--I totally respect all those in our country who got excited by the eclipse.  But the eclipse right where I live was kind of a non-event, though I went outside at the appropriate time more for the slight change in light we had.  I didn’t have the glasses and I was not about to be an idiot.  #----p

Dr. W., though, was in the path of totality in Greenville, S.C., and he left his perch at the hospital there at the anointed time and emailed me this:

“Very strange experience.  When totalis occurred, the cicadas started chirping and bats started flying.  Very weird (for all of two minutes). It is amazing that only a tiny sliver of exposed sun leaves everything still pretty bright...and you sure can’t look at the sun even then without protection.” #----p

Dr. W. didn’t tell me if the person he was performing surgery on at the time was real appreciative of his leaving his post, but then again, he/she was under anesthesia and wouldn’t have known.

[Actually, he’s involved in very delicate issues and wouldn’t have done this.]

As for the bat angle...that’s for later.

We all have heard the stories of how animals act during full eclipses and at the Nashville Zoo, giraffes and zebras were reportedly “freaked out,” and “went running wildly around their enclosures after the sky went dark,” as reported by the AP and others.

The zoo’s two young giraffes “stampeded madly in circles, while some of the nearby rhinos bolted for their pens thinking it was time for bed.” 

And I saw a video where the flamingos fled their pond and huddled together in the darkness, but “their keeper said she wasn’t sure if they were spooked by the eclipse – or by the shrieking crowds who’d come to see how they’d react.”

Bird keeper Kristen Clifft (sic) told The Tennesssean she thought it was a combination of both.

I’d only add that zoo animals are being paid to perform and while Ms. Clifft wouldn’t admit it, she has probably been working with the flamingos for weeks on how to act to juice future crowds.

How zoos really work.  Another free feature of Bar Chat.

--Finally, part II of my mini-Elvis tribute /bio on the 40th anniversary of his death, Aug. 16, 1977.  This is something I wrote 15 years ago.

---

It was at 2:20 PM on August 16 that the King died.  He had stayed up all night, doing his partying and racquetball thing with his buddies.  When you realize he was 250 lbs. at this time and hopelessly out of shape, the latter is hard to believe, but it’s the legend, and that’s also what you are told at Graceland at least when I went there in 1992 or 1993 with a friend from PIMCO.  [To tell the truth, I scheduled a business trip so that John and I could skip out in the afternoon to go. Then we had a few pops at the Peabody Hotel and watched the ducks.  I won’t even begin to explain this if you haven’t been to Memphis.] 

Anyway, so around 6:00 AM on Aug. 16, Elvis began ingesting massive amounts of chemicals and did that until about 8:00 AM, at which point he tried to get some sleep.  But, unable to do so, around 9:00 AM, he told his 20-year-old girlfriend, Ginger Alden, that he was going to read in the bathroom.

Ginger, who told him not to fall asleep, promptly did so herself, and then, awakening around 2:20 PM, was distraught to see the King wasn’t in the bed, but lying on the floor of the bathroom instead. Rigor mortis was already setting in, but Elvis’ aides, Al Strada and Joe Esposito, tried to resuscitate him.  He was then rushed to Baptist Memorial Hospital where he was pronounced dead of cardiac arrhythmia.

What was Elvis reading?  “The Scientific Search for the Face of Jesus.”  It was revealed later that his body contained butabarbital, codeine, morphine, pentobarbital, Pacidyl, Quaalude, Valium and Valmid.  Yup, that’ll do it. Throw in a couple hundred peanut butter and banana sandwiches and you’ve got a truly potent mixture.

Elvis was actually scheduled to marry Ginger on August 27 at his next concert. But one reason for his behavior on the 16th  was the fact that his mind was also on a book that had been published on August 12, written by 3 of his ex-bodyguards, which was the first to chronicle his drug abuse and obsession with firearms, among other things.

President Carter issued a statement: “Elvis Presley’s death deprives our country of a part of itself.  He was unique and irreplaceable (and) changed the face of American pop culture.  He was a symbol to people the world over, of the vitality, rebelliousness and good humor of this country.”

Elvis’ body was placed in a mausoleum alongside his mother in a public cemetery in Memphis, but after an attempted break-in, the two were moved to Graceland.  Father Vernon joined mother and son about two years later.

---

Fast forward to a recent piece in TIME by Jon Meacham on the meaning of Elvis.  He concludes thusly.

“The trappings of the Presley legacy do echo religious ceremonies.  His tribute artists – or priests, if you will – dress in white costumes, re-enact the actions and speak the words of the cultic founder, and make promises. In the Christian worldview, there is salvation, the forgiveness of sin; in the Presley ethos, there is freedom from restraint, affirmation.  ‘His whole existence was to take guilt away from people,’ the psychologist Richard Maddock told [Ted] Harrison [British writer and producer].  ‘He started out that way and ended up that way.  The first phase, on television in the 1950s, he did things that in those days people only did in private. It was like he was saying, O.K., you don’t have to feel guilty about it.  In the second phase of his career, he added something.  In his concerts, he not only did the movements and motions, by that time commonly accepted, but he also added spiritual songs at the end.  In effect he was saying, Not only are your impulses O.K. – now they are blessed.’

Was Leonard Bernstein right? Did the whole ‘60s come from Presley? Surely much of it did, and the ‘70s too, and the ‘80s, up to our own day.  Presley’s life is a kind of American tragedy – a talent of epic proportions cut short by indulgence and appetite – but if his story is personally tragic, it’s a story that is not yet over. Shawn Klush, a Presley tribute artist who was on HBO’s Vinyl, will be at Graceland this month for the anniversary of the King’s death.  ‘I believe Elvis remains so popular 40 years after his death mainly in part due to the kind of man he was,’ Klush says.  ‘People love him, not only for his talent, but because he was a great, humble, kind manHe loved God. He loved his parents. He loved his country.’ And his country loved him – for his voice, for his spirit and because it saw in him, for better and for worse, what it was and what it hoped to be.”

Top 3 songs for the week 8/26/72:  #1 “Brandy” (Looking Glass)  #2 “Alone Again (Naturally)” (Gilbert O’Sullivan...one of the most depressing songs of all time...)  #3 “Long Cool Woman (In A Black Dress)” (The Hollies)...and...#4 “I’m Still In Love With You” (Al Green)  #5 “Hold Your Head Up” (Argent)  #6 “(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want To Be Right” (Luther Ingram)  #7 “Goodbye To Love” (Carpenters)  #8 “Coconut” (Nilsson)  #9 “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim” (Jim Croce)  #10 “Baby Don’t’ Get Hooked On Me” (Mac Davis...went on to be #1 for three weeks)

FedEx Cup Winners (inception 2007): Tiger Woods (2007, 2009); Vijay Singh (2008); Jim Furyk (2010); Bill Haas (2011); Brandt Snedeker (2012); Henrik Stenson (2013); Billy Horschel (2014); Jordan Spieth (2015); Rory McIlroy (2016).

Next Bar Chat, Monday.



AddThis Feed Button

 

-08/24/2017-      
Web Epoch NJ Web Design  |  (c) Copyright 2016 StocksandNews.com, LLC.

Bar Chat

08/24/2017

The Big Trade

[Posted Wed. a.m.]

FedEx Cup Quiz: The Cup had its inception in 2007.  Name the winners.  Answer below.

MLB

--The Yankees defeated the Tigers in Detroit on Tuesday, 13-4, but before the game the story was Aaron Judge, who was hitting .169 since the All-Star break, 21 hits in 124 at-bats, with 58 strikeouts and just 7 home runs and 14 RBIs.  He had also struck out in a major-league record 37 straight games.

But Tuesday, Judge was 1-for-1, with three walks and two runs scored, when he was pinch-hit for in the top of the seventh, with the Yanks up 11-1, thereby ensuring the death of the streak.

Manager Joe Girardi said after the decision to remove Judge had nothing to do with the streak and was about giving him some rest, but this is one guy who prepares as much as anyone for each game and Girardi knew what he was doing.

--As for the unwatchable Mets, who after a 7-4 loss to Arizona at Citi Field on Tuesday have lost 8 of 9 to fall to 54-70, we learned that starter Steven Matz, whose troubles I wrote of last time, has now been told he faces season-ending elbow surgery for the second straight season, having been diagnosed Monday with a displaced ulnar nerve on Monday.  Manager Terry Collins, who has seemed ever clueless this season, in what is no doubt his last, had just told us Matz wasn’t dealing with an injury.  Jacob deGrom underwent the same procedure last season and at least he’s been solid this year so there is still hope that once again, Matz, who aside from a previous elbow procedure, also had Tommy John surgery as a minor leaguer and bone spurs removed in 2016, can return to peak form in 2018.

But then there was the report from Newsday’s David Lennon that the much-maligned Mets medical staff, perhaps the worst in professional sports, globally, has been treating Matz with strong anti-inflammatory medication to enable him to stay on the mound, after they told him in the spring his elbow issue was in his head and that it was structurally sound.

Except he was on the disabled list for three months and it wasn’t getting any better.

But Matz pitched through it and, according to Lennon, aside from the pain killers, he was skipping bullpen sessions just to be able to get on the mound every fifth day, which the fans were never told, Matz being partially at fault for that.

Yes, Matz wanted to prove he was tough, and not deserving of the ‘soft’ label many increasingly attached to him, but, geezuz, the Mets treated him like a lab rat, despite knowing that pitchers deGrom and Erik Goeddel had the exact same injury Matz has and it required surgery.

As Lennon writes, in Matz’ case, though, the solution seemed to be “Limit his use of the slider to ease the strain on his elbow and aggressively prescribe anti-inflammatory drugs. What, no Flintstones chewable vitamins?”

So it’s yet another reason to review what was supposed to be the Mets’ strength this season...seven healthy starters in spring training.

Noah Syndergaard, Matt Harvey, deGrom, Matz, Zack Wheeler, Robert Gsellman, and Seth Lugo.

Only deGrom hasn’t spent significant time on the DL, and when we look to next spring, there is little reason for optimism, though it seems we’ll get a look at Harvey and Syndergaard before the season ends.  [As well as Jeurys Familia, one of the better closers in the game who has been out most of the year with a blood clot.]

One thing we do know.  In the offseason, it’s time for management to find at least one innings eater on the free agent market.

--The Indians suffered a potentially big blow on Monday when key reliever, Andrew Miller, aggravated a right knee injury in just his second appearance since spending two weeks on the DL with patellar tendinitis in the same knee. 

Miller is 4-3 in his eighth inning role, with a 1.65 ERA, and 79 strikeouts in 54 2/3 while allowing just 26 hits.

Cleveland, which beat Boston 5-4 on Monday, then lost to the Red Sox 9-1 last night, as Boston’s Doug Fister one-hit the Tribe, Francisco Lindor accounting for the only run, and hit, with a first-inning homer. 

--Some standings....

A.L. East

Boston 72-53
New York 67-57...4.5

A.L. Central

Cleveland 69-55
Minnesota 65-60...4.5

A.L. Wild Card

New York 67-57...+2.5
Minnesota 65-60... ---
Los Angeles 65-61...0.5
Kansas City 63-61...1.5
Seattle 64-63...2
Texas 62-63...3
Tampa Bay 62-65...4
Baltimore 61-65...4.5

N.L. Central

Chicago 67-57
Milwaukee 66-61...2.5
St. Louis 63-62...4.5

N.L. Wild Card

Arizona 69-57...+0.5
Colorado 68-57... ---
Milwaukee 66-61...3

--The Dodgers placed Cody Bellinger and starting pitcher Alex Wood on the 10-day disabled list, but there is little concern with either.  Mild injuries for both and more of a precaution, given the Dodgers’ 21-game lead in the N.L. West.

--The Angels’ Albert Pujols hit home run No. 610 Tuesday, surpassing Sammy Sosa and giving him the most home runs by a foreign-born player, as the surprising Angels beat the Rangers 10-1.

--I thought the Sunday night contest at Williamsport, Pa., tied to the Little League World Series, was a great idea.  Granted, I watched little of the actual game due to “Game of Thrones” being on, and one of the three dragons now becoming part of the army of the dead, but I digress.

But here’s hoping MLB makes this a regular deal, as they seem to be leaning towards after the success of the first one at refurbished 2,500-seat Bowman Field.  The players loved it (Pirates beating the Cardinals 6-3, for the record).

Commissioner Rob Manfred said before the game: “My expectation is that if we do it again, we would use different teams....I know there was a lot of interest throughout the league from teams that wanted to be here and had players that played in the Little League World Series.”

My thought would be that to cut down on travel, you rotate among a combination of Mets, Yanks, Phils, Pirates, Nationals, and Orioles.  MLB is obviously subsidizing the teams involved for missing a home game. 

--Hey, Wake Forest fans...I’m following our minor leaguers and recent seventh-round pick Parker Dunshee, Oakland, has stretched his scoreless innings streak to 31 in the New York-Penn League, allowing just 12 hits, 6 walks, with 36 Ks.  As Ronald Reagan would have said, ‘Not bad, not bad at all.’

NBA

In a huge trade that shakes up the Eastern Conference, the Cleveland Cavaliers accommodated guard Kyrie Irving’s trade request, sending him to Boston for a package including guard Isaiah Thomas, forward Jae Crowder, center Ante Zizic and the Nets’ 2018 first-rounder.

Will this influence LeBron James’ decision on staying or leaving Cleveland after 2018?  It’s way too early for that and LeBron, as I go to post, has been silent on the move.

But I believe Cleveland definitely made the best of a poor situation, even if Thomas, who could also leave after 2018, hasn’t recovered from his serious hip injury.  Crowder is a solid performer, Ante Zizic is a potential star big man, just 20 years old, and while the Nets are sure to improve this year, it is still likely the Cavs will pick up a lottery pick, so very worst case, they begin rebuilding around a good college draftee and Zizic, especially assuming management lets both LeBron and Thomas walk.

At least for this coming season, Cleveland remains in the Eastern Conference title hunt, but, again, Thomas’ health is key.

As for the Celts, they had to do something with Thomas themselves, and they get a superstar guard who is still just 25 and under a reasonable contract for another few seasons. Boston should win the East.

NFL

--New York Giants fans held their breath on Monday night in the team’s exhibition game against Cleveland.  Superstar receiver Odell Beckham Jr. was undercut by Browns cornerback Briean Boddy-Calhoun, no relation to Brienne of Tarth of “Game of Thrones” fame.  Boddy-Calhoun drove his shoulder and helmet into Beckham’s left leg, Beckham’s legs flipping in the air as he hit the turf hard, though it was diagnosed Tuesday as just a sprain and he should be ready for the opener in a few weeks.  [Team officials are being cautious, saying he could miss the it.  He won’t.]

Beckham said the hit wasn’t dirty, but some of his teammates disagreed, so look for Sir Gregor to be hired out after GoT’s final episode of its season on Sunday, Sir Gregor being capable of taking care of Boddy-Calhoun in a unique fashion.

But in the here and now, while the Giants have dreams of the Super Bowl, the facts are that while it made the playoffs last season, it was almost solely the result of a solid, revamped defense, that was second in the NFL in scoring defense (10th in total D).

The offense, however, on display against Cleveland as they lost 10-6, was 25th in the league last year in total O, 26th in scoring.  It’s why Giants fans were for a moment seeing their season flame out before them on the Briean Boddy-Calhoun hit.  Without OBJ, the Giants have nothing.

--Meanwhile, a dozen Cleveland players staged the largest national anthem protest yet in the NFL and were joined for the first time by white players as twelve took a knee and five others stood with their hands on the kneeling players’ shoulders.

Said rookie safety Jabrill Peppers afterwards, “There’s a lot of racial and social injustices in the world that are going on right now. We just decided to take a knee and pray for the people who have been affected and just pray for the world in general.”

Well, I’ve said my piece on the topic.  Whatever floats your boat...just understand your bosses, and the fans, don’t have to agree with the methods employed.

--36-year-old veteran wide receiver, Anquan Boldin, retired just two weeks after signing a one-year contract with the Buffalo Bills, which at the time was viewed as a great move by the Bills to get a veteran presence like Boldin’s.  Even at 36, he could still be effective as a possession receiver, having caught 67 passes for 584 yards and 8 TDs with Detroit last season.

So, assuming he means it, Boldin finishes his career ninth on the all-time receptions list with 1,076 for 13,779 yards and 82 touchdowns.  He was also a three-time Pro Bowl selection.

Why is he hanging it up? Fears over CTE?  Nope.  In a statement to ESPN’s Jim Trotter, Boldin said:

Football in its purest form is what we all strive for as a nation.  People from all different races, religions and backgrounds working together for one shared goal. The core values taught in football are some of the most important you can learn in life. To always be there for the guy next to you and not let your fellow man down.  You do whatever it takes to make sure your brother is okay.  Football has afforded me a platform throughout my career to have a greater impact on my humanitarian work.  At this time, I feel drawn to make the larger fight for human rights a priority.  My life’s purpose is bigger than football.”

College Football

The final preseason poll was released on Monday.

AP Poll

1. Alabama 52 first-place votes
2. Ohio State 3
3. Florida State 4
4. USC 2
5. Clemson
6. Penn State
7. Oklahoma
8. Washington
9. Wisconsin
10. Oklahoma State

--I’m already bemoaning the  fact my Wake Forest Demon Deacons could be better than last year’s respectable team (7-6) that upset Temple in a bowl game.

The Deacs’ schedule, particularly games 5 thru 9 (Florida State, at Clemson, at Georgia Tech, Louisville, at Notre Dame) is a killer.  I’m hoping for 6-6.  But my expert in the know, major booster Chris K., told me this weekend, 4-8 is more likely.

We have a huge second week game at Boston College.  If we don’t win that one, it’s Game Over.  In our fourth game, we also have a toughie at Appalachian State.  I’ve been to Boone and the home town fans will be going nuts to beat an old rival (Wake hasn’t played them since 2001...we’ve been scared to).  The significance of the game for the Mountaineers is this will be the first time ever they have hosted a school from a Power Five Conference.*

*I was reminded after posting this of something I even commented myself on at the time...last year, App State hosted Miami...my apologies.  I was working off the original press release for the Wake game from years ago.  My bad.  Thanks, J. Mac. [Miami blasted the Mountaineers 45-10.]

So Phil W. passed me a note Monday that was kind of comical. The ticket prices for App State-Wake are skyrocketing, while our own ticket prices for the Florida State game at home are comically low on Stub Hub, given the opponent.

Golf Balls

--Some tidbits on the FedEx Cup playoffs that start this week with the Northern Trust Open, the top 125 qualifying.  As you know, the winner after the four playoff tournaments takes home a $10 million bonus, but they also receive a five-year exemption on the PGA Tour.  Bonuses are also awarded to the remaining players in the top 30 that qualify for the final Tour Championship, including $3 million to second place, $2 million to third, $1.5 million to fourth, and $1 million for fifth...and down from there.

What was great about the Wyndham tournament last weekend (though not emphasized enough on the coverage) was that not only were the top 125 qualifying for the playoffs, but since 2013, this has also been for their playing privileges (“tour card”),  for the following season.  I mean that is everything for these guys.

Jerry Lewis

I didn’t have time to write about his life last chat so just a few notes for the archives.

Lewis was a star on the big screen, television, nightclubs, on the Broadway stage, and as a philanthropist, most notably in this last regard as spokesman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

Lewis was born Joseph Levitch on March 16, 1926, in Newark, the son of Danny and Rae Levitch, who were entertainers – his father a song-and-dance man, his mother a pianist – who used the name Lewis when they appeared in small-time vaudeville venues and at Catskills resort hotels.

Lewis was putting together comedy acts when he was 12, and by his 16th birthday, dropped out of Irvington, N.J. High School* (near where your editor lives...a very rough town these days) and adopted the professional name of Jerry Lewis to avoid confusion with the nightclub comic Joe E. Lewis.

*Another obit I read said he was expelled at 15, and then dropped out of vocational school before turning 16.

Having been classified 4F, which kept him out of the war (he had a perforated eardrum and a heart murmur...and would later have multiple medical issues, including two heart attacks), he was performing at a Detroit theater when he met Patti Palmer, a 23-year-old singer.  They married three months later and on July 31, 1945, while Patti was living with Jerry’s parents in Newark and he was performing at a Baltimore nightclub, Patti gave birth to the first of the couple’s six sons, Gary, who we all know became a bit of a star himself with a series of hit records in the 1960s while performing with his group, Gary Lewis and the Playboys.

Around the time of Gary’s birth, Jerry met Dean Martin, a promising crooner in Steubenville, Ohio, and they began hashing out an act on the side.

In the summer of 1946, with Lewis booked at the 500 Club in Atlantic City, and the singer on the program dropping out, Lewis pushed for the club to hire Martin and the two worked on a routine based on Lewis as a bumbling busboy who kept breaking in on Martin – dropping trays, hurling food, cavorting like a monkey – without ever ruffling Martin.

It was the beginning of a relationship that would last ten years, until they split in July 1956.

Dennis McLellan / Los Angeles Times

“Audiences had never seen anything like them: Martin, the handsome Italian crooner with the laid-back style; Lewis, the skinny, animated ‘kid’ with the shrill, adolescent whine.

“On stage together, Martin and Lewis were known as a super-charged mix of jokes, routines, singing, dancing and, most notably, ad-libbing. The wildly unpredictable Lewis thought nothing of cutting off customers’ neckties, flinging food off their plates or setting the musicians’ sheet music on fire.

“ ‘I have been in the business 55 years, and I have never to this day seen an act get more laughs than Martin and Lewis,’ comedian Alan King  once recalled in the New Yorker, decades after seeing the team perform at New York City’s fabled Copacabana nightclub in 1948.  ‘They didn’t get laughs – it was pandemonium.’ 

“Martin and Lewis created pandemonium off stage as well, generating the kind of frenzied mob scene previously reserved for the likes of bobby-soxer heartthrob Frank Sinatra and unheard of for a comedy act.

“At the Paramount Theater in Manhattan in 1951, Martin and Lewis performed six sold-out shows a day (seven on Saturday) for two weeks. With lines forming outside the theater as early as 6 a.m., more than 22,000 people a day flocked to see them.

“On television from 1950 to 1955, the comedy duo regularly hosted ‘The Colgate Comedy Hour.’ And Lewis’ signature lines became national catch phrases, including ‘I like it!  I like it!’ and ‘La-a-a-dy!’”

Martin and Lewis appeared in 16 feature films together – including “My Friend Irma” and “Hollywood or Bust.”

But by 1956, with no one understanding Martin’s “brilliance” as a straight man, as Lewis himself would put it, Martin had grown tired of “playing a stooge,” tired of Lewis being singled out as the “crazy, funny” one, and just plain tired of Lewis himself.

After going solo, Lewis scored a hit with “The Delicate Delinquent” in 1957, and two years later he signed an unprecedented deal with Paramount Pictures: $10 million to appear in 14 films over seven years, during which time he appeared in “The Bellboy,” written by Lewis and set in a Miami Beach hotel, which also marked his film debut as a director.  And he went on to direct, co-write (with Bill Richmond) and star in films such as “The Ladies Man,” “The Errand Boy,” and “The Nutty Professor.”

Critics, though, increasingly called the films he directed “ponderous” and “self-indulging,” with critic Leonard Maltin writing in his book “The Great Movie Comedians”, “There was no longer anyone to veto an idea, so Jerry indulged his every whim...(allowing him to discard) conventional notions of good taste, modesty, continuity and – oddly enough – humor.”

It was not always successful.  In late 1962, ABC signed Lewis to a lucrative deal to host a weekly, two-hour, live Saturday night variety-talk show, but “The Jerry Lewis Show” was a colossal flop, canceled by ABC after just 13 weeks in 1963, after which Lewis took out full-page ads in the show-business trade papers that said simply, “Oops!!! jerry lewis.”

It was a rare admission of failure from a man who seemingly had the biggest ego in Hollywood.  He once told the New Yorker in 2000: “I don’t give a @#$% if people think I have a fantastic ego.  I earned it! I worked my heart out! And you know what? I’m as good as they get.”

Dave Kehr / New York Times

“His career had its ups and downs, but when it was at its zenith there were few stars any bigger. And he got there remarkably quickly.

“Barely out of his teens, he shot to fame shortly after World War II with a nightclub act in which the rakish, imperturbable Dean Martin crooned and the skinny, hyperactive Mr. Lewis capered around the stage, a dangerously volatile id to Mr. Martin’s supremely relaxed ego....

“A mercurial personality who could flip from naked neediness to towering rage, Mr. Lewis seemed to contain multitudes, and he explored all of them. His ultimate object of contemplation was his own contradictory self, and he turned his obsession with fragmentation, discontinuity and the limits of language into a spectacle that enchanted children, disturbed adults and fascinated postmodernist critics....

“(His parents) were frequently on the road and often left Joey, as he was called, in the care of Rae’s mother and her sisters. The experience of being passed from home to home left Mr. Lewis with an enduring sense of insecurity and, as he observed, a desperate need for attention and affection.”

Lewis began his association with the Muscular Dystrophy Association in the 1960s, and beginning in 1966, he served as host of the association’s annual Labor Day weekend telethon.  There were some who criticized the association’s “Jerry’s Kids” campaign as condescending,* but the telethon raised about $2 billion during the more than 40 years he was host, 2010 being his last year (which was shrouded in controversy the following year, because he thought he was doing it...but MDA said the relationship was over).

It’s hard to explain if you’re a lot younger than yours truly, but this was ‘must see’ television, and I recall many years in my youth when I was glued to the last hour or two, to see an emotional Lewis, normally with sidekick Ed McMahon, reveal the final tally for the amount raised.  You were just drawn to it.  It was truly one-of-a-kind television.

And there were some unique acts on the show. In 1976, Frank Sinatra staged an on-air reunion between Lewis and Martin, though neither seemed comfortable. The two, incredibly, hadn’t spoken since the breakup...20 years before.  Lewis was authentically surprised seeing his former partner and after regaining his composure, famously said to Martin: “Ya workin’?”  USA Today said in 2002 that this was “one of the greatest moments in TV history.”

Lewis and Martin hooked up on a more lasting basis, in terms of a relationship, after Lewis attended the funeral of Martin’s oldest son, Dean Paul Martin Jr., a pilot in the California Air National Guard who had been killed in a crash in 1987.  “He called me, and we talked for a couple of hours. He sobbed for the first time I’d ever heard.  He said, ‘Don’t you understand?  I just lost one of the only two male loves I had in my life.  Him and you,’” Lewis recalled years later.  The two continued to speak occasionally until Martin’s death in 1995.

*Washington Post critic Tom Shales wrote at the time that the MDA telethon had become a mawkishly sentimental pop-cultural institution whose “awfulness is enshrined in tradition, like the ‘Miss America Pageant.’”  Later, Lewis came under fire from former MDA poster children who claimed he portrayed them as objects of pity.  In 1973, he was criticized for holding a child in his arms on the air and saying, “God goofed, and it’s up to us to correct His mistakes.”

Jerry Lewis never received an Oscar for his film work, but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences bestowed upon him the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for his charitable work in 2009.  [Lewis never said why he did all the fund-raising work on behalf of MDA.  “The important thing is that I do it, not the why,” he told the Los Angeles Times a number of years ago.]

He also received two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame – one for his movies, the other for television – and an induction into the Legion d’Honneur, awarded by the French government in 2006.  This last one was funny.  The French people for their own reasons just loved Jerry Lewis far more than America did it seemed.  Over there he was considered a cinematic genius and was named best foreign director eight times.

Stuff

--It’s finally here.  Mayweather-McGregor...Las Vegas... Saturday night.

Moi?  For starters, no way was I shelling out for the pay-per-view, and I’ve told you countless times why I don’t care about this one, but I do hope Mayweather kicks McGregor’s butt, though the change to 8-ounce gloves vs. 10-oz. ones maybe gives McGregor a bit more of a shot.

That said, with the fight starting at midnight in my time zone, I won’t even be staying up for the round-by-round recaps that we’ll all find readily available.

--I watched Monday’s Premier League contest, Everton at Manchester City, and Wayne Rooney scored for the second straight contest in his return to Everton, but Man City fought for a 1-1 draw, despite playing with 10 men for more than half the game.

The goal for Rooney, though was No. 200 in the Premier League, thus becoming only the second player in league history to attain this mark, the other being Alan Shearer, whose record 260 seems light years away. Shearer also holds the record with 11 hat-tricks.  He retired in 2006, after spending his career with Southampton, Blackburn and Newcastle United.

--New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said he pulled himself out of the running for any job as a sports-talk radio host on WFAN when he leaves office in January, the strong rumor being he was going to succeed Mike Francesa.

But the New York Daily News reported the day before that the station had informed Christie he was out of the mix, though Christie said the News’ story was “completely incorrect.”

Altogether now.... “Whatever.”

--ESPN has a young play-by-play announcer by the name of Robert Lee, who was to do the upcoming Virginia-William & Mary opener, but the network, given the political climate, and the name Robert E. Lee being very much in the news, decided to switch him to another telecast, Lee giving his permission, only to have the issue explode on social media and elsewhere when it was leaked to reporter Clay Travis of Outkick the Coverage.

Just stupid all around.

--I totally respect all those in our country who got excited by the eclipse.  But the eclipse right where I live was kind of a non-event, though I went outside at the appropriate time more for the slight change in light we had.  I didn’t have the glasses and I was not about to be an idiot.  #----p

Dr. W., though, was in the path of totality in Greenville, S.C., and he left his perch at the hospital there at the anointed time and emailed me this:

“Very strange experience.  When totalis occurred, the cicadas started chirping and bats started flying.  Very weird (for all of two minutes). It is amazing that only a tiny sliver of exposed sun leaves everything still pretty bright...and you sure can’t look at the sun even then without protection.” #----p

Dr. W. didn’t tell me if the person he was performing surgery on at the time was real appreciative of his leaving his post, but then again, he/she was under anesthesia and wouldn’t have known.

[Actually, he’s involved in very delicate issues and wouldn’t have done this.]

As for the bat angle...that’s for later.

We all have heard the stories of how animals act during full eclipses and at the Nashville Zoo, giraffes and zebras were reportedly “freaked out,” and “went running wildly around their enclosures after the sky went dark,” as reported by the AP and others.

The zoo’s two young giraffes “stampeded madly in circles, while some of the nearby rhinos bolted for their pens thinking it was time for bed.” 

And I saw a video where the flamingos fled their pond and huddled together in the darkness, but “their keeper said she wasn’t sure if they were spooked by the eclipse – or by the shrieking crowds who’d come to see how they’d react.”

Bird keeper Kristen Clifft (sic) told The Tennesssean she thought it was a combination of both.

I’d only add that zoo animals are being paid to perform and while Ms. Clifft wouldn’t admit it, she has probably been working with the flamingos for weeks on how to act to juice future crowds.

How zoos really work.  Another free feature of Bar Chat.

--Finally, part II of my mini-Elvis tribute /bio on the 40th anniversary of his death, Aug. 16, 1977.  This is something I wrote 15 years ago.

---

It was at 2:20 PM on August 16 that the King died.  He had stayed up all night, doing his partying and racquetball thing with his buddies.  When you realize he was 250 lbs. at this time and hopelessly out of shape, the latter is hard to believe, but it’s the legend, and that’s also what you are told at Graceland at least when I went there in 1992 or 1993 with a friend from PIMCO.  [To tell the truth, I scheduled a business trip so that John and I could skip out in the afternoon to go. Then we had a few pops at the Peabody Hotel and watched the ducks.  I won’t even begin to explain this if you haven’t been to Memphis.] 

Anyway, so around 6:00 AM on Aug. 16, Elvis began ingesting massive amounts of chemicals and did that until about 8:00 AM, at which point he tried to get some sleep.  But, unable to do so, around 9:00 AM, he told his 20-year-old girlfriend, Ginger Alden, that he was going to read in the bathroom.

Ginger, who told him not to fall asleep, promptly did so herself, and then, awakening around 2:20 PM, was distraught to see the King wasn’t in the bed, but lying on the floor of the bathroom instead. Rigor mortis was already setting in, but Elvis’ aides, Al Strada and Joe Esposito, tried to resuscitate him.  He was then rushed to Baptist Memorial Hospital where he was pronounced dead of cardiac arrhythmia.

What was Elvis reading?  “The Scientific Search for the Face of Jesus.”  It was revealed later that his body contained butabarbital, codeine, morphine, pentobarbital, Pacidyl, Quaalude, Valium and Valmid.  Yup, that’ll do it. Throw in a couple hundred peanut butter and banana sandwiches and you’ve got a truly potent mixture.

Elvis was actually scheduled to marry Ginger on August 27 at his next concert. But one reason for his behavior on the 16th  was the fact that his mind was also on a book that had been published on August 12, written by 3 of his ex-bodyguards, which was the first to chronicle his drug abuse and obsession with firearms, among other things.

President Carter issued a statement: “Elvis Presley’s death deprives our country of a part of itself.  He was unique and irreplaceable (and) changed the face of American pop culture.  He was a symbol to people the world over, of the vitality, rebelliousness and good humor of this country.”

Elvis’ body was placed in a mausoleum alongside his mother in a public cemetery in Memphis, but after an attempted break-in, the two were moved to Graceland.  Father Vernon joined mother and son about two years later.

---

Fast forward to a recent piece in TIME by Jon Meacham on the meaning of Elvis.  He concludes thusly.

“The trappings of the Presley legacy do echo religious ceremonies.  His tribute artists – or priests, if you will – dress in white costumes, re-enact the actions and speak the words of the cultic founder, and make promises. In the Christian worldview, there is salvation, the forgiveness of sin; in the Presley ethos, there is freedom from restraint, affirmation.  ‘His whole existence was to take guilt away from people,’ the psychologist Richard Maddock told [Ted] Harrison [British writer and producer].  ‘He started out that way and ended up that way.  The first phase, on television in the 1950s, he did things that in those days people only did in private. It was like he was saying, O.K., you don’t have to feel guilty about it.  In the second phase of his career, he added something.  In his concerts, he not only did the movements and motions, by that time commonly accepted, but he also added spiritual songs at the end.  In effect he was saying, Not only are your impulses O.K. – now they are blessed.’

Was Leonard Bernstein right? Did the whole ‘60s come from Presley? Surely much of it did, and the ‘70s too, and the ‘80s, up to our own day.  Presley’s life is a kind of American tragedy – a talent of epic proportions cut short by indulgence and appetite – but if his story is personally tragic, it’s a story that is not yet over. Shawn Klush, a Presley tribute artist who was on HBO’s Vinyl, will be at Graceland this month for the anniversary of the King’s death.  ‘I believe Elvis remains so popular 40 years after his death mainly in part due to the kind of man he was,’ Klush says.  ‘People love him, not only for his talent, but because he was a great, humble, kind manHe loved God. He loved his parents. He loved his country.’ And his country loved him – for his voice, for his spirit and because it saw in him, for better and for worse, what it was and what it hoped to be.”

Top 3 songs for the week 8/26/72:  #1 “Brandy” (Looking Glass)  #2 “Alone Again (Naturally)” (Gilbert O’Sullivan...one of the most depressing songs of all time...)  #3 “Long Cool Woman (In A Black Dress)” (The Hollies)...and...#4 “I’m Still In Love With You” (Al Green)  #5 “Hold Your Head Up” (Argent)  #6 “(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want To Be Right” (Luther Ingram)  #7 “Goodbye To Love” (Carpenters)  #8 “Coconut” (Nilsson)  #9 “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim” (Jim Croce)  #10 “Baby Don’t’ Get Hooked On Me” (Mac Davis...went on to be #1 for three weeks)

FedEx Cup Winners (inception 2007): Tiger Woods (2007, 2009); Vijay Singh (2008); Jim Furyk (2010); Bill Haas (2011); Brandt Snedeker (2012); Henrik Stenson (2013); Billy Horschel (2014); Jordan Spieth (2015); Rory McIlroy (2016).

Next Bar Chat, Monday.