The Warmth Of The Sun

Having just returned from southern California this is particularly appropriate.  THC stumbled upon this gem while searching for something else on YouTube.  Released by The Beach Boys in 1964, written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love and arranged by Wilson, this version features Willie Nelson backed up by The Beach Boys.  Recorded sometime in the 1990s.

The song has a lovely melody, lush harmonies and an unusual chord structure for its time.  Then you add Willie Nelson's distinctive voice which is beautifully unbeautiful and so effective in evoking the aching longing of the lyrics and the result is something special.You can find the original Beach Boys recording here.

Watching the video and realizing that Brian Wilson turns 73 this year, THC remembers his well-publicized problems in the late 1960s and 1970s and is surprised he's still around, outliving his brothers Dennis (d. 1983) and Carl (d. 1998).

Stan Musial: 1947

In past posts we've reconstructed an imagined injury-free performance for Ted Williams and, more recently, examined the careers of longtime consistently high performing players (Eddie Collins, Willie Mays).  THC also looked at Stan "The Man" Musial, became aware of a one-season aberration in a lengthy sequence of outstanding seasons and decided to take a closer look.
(from Sporting News)

Stan reached the majors with the St Louis Cardinals in September 1941, hitting .426 at the age of 20.  He had a terrific rookie season in 1942, becoming one of the  best players in the league the following season.  From then through 1954 he was consistently the best, or among the top four or five players in the league every year with two exceptions; 1945 when he was in the military and 1947.

Below is a summary of Musial's performance over that period, using Batting Average, On-Base Percentage, Slugging, On-Base+Slugging; Park Adjusted and Wins Above Replacement.  The numbers to the right of each indicate where he ranked in the league that year.

A couple of notes on the last two metrics.  For OPS+ 100 is the league norm.  Anything above that is good, above 150 is excellent and 200 extraordinary.  For WAR, 5.0 is considered All-Star quality while anything around 8 puts a player in the running for Most Valuable Player.

	BA		OBP		SLG		OPS+		WAR
1943	357	1	425	1	562	1	177	1	9.4	1
1944	347	2	440	1	549	1	174	1	8.8	1
1946	365	1	434	2	587	1	183	1	8.6	1
1947	312	5	398	8	504	8	134	7	4.6	8
1948	376	1	450	1	702	1	200	1	11.1	1
1949	338	2	438	2	624	2	177	2	9.3	1
1950	346	1	437	1	596	1	164	1	7.3	1
1951	355	1	449	2	614	2	183	2	9.1	1
1952	336	1	432	1	538	1	167	1	8.0	2
1953	337	3	437	4	609	2	169	2	7.7	3
1954	330	4	428	4	607	4	167	4	6.9	5

1947 is clearly his worst season between 1943 and 1954.  What happened?

The first thing THC did is go to Baseball-Reference.com to look at Stan's day by day performance and was surprised to find that as of June 6, 1947, 44 games into the season he was only hitting .196 with a miserable OBP of .292 along with a pathetic .338 slugging percentage.

Further research revealed that he'd not felt well since spring training and had been diagnosed with an inflamed appendix and tonsillitis.  At some point early that season he underwent a procedure to "freeze" his appendix.  THC can find no further detail on the ailments or the treatment.  Whatever occurred it seemed to provide benefits because on June 7, Stan finally began to hit.

From that point to the end of the season, Musial hit .351, slugging .560 with an OBP of .429, all of which look like normal Stan Musial performance if extended over a full season and would have placed him first or second in all five measurements that season giving him nine consecutive seasons finishing first or second in all five categories.

Musial's illness may have cost the Cardinals the pennant.  After winning the World Series the prior year, as of June 6 their record was 18-25.  From then until the end of the season the Cards were 70-39, 2 1/2 games better than the pennant winning Brooklyn Dodgers who had rookie Jackie Robinson (who later wrote that Musial and Hank Greenberg were the two opposing players who did the most to encourage him that year).

After the 1947 season ended Stan had his appendix and tonsils removed and went on to have his greatest season in 1948.  For more about what kind of man Stan The Man was see Earl And The Man.

Wasn't New York Cool In The 70s?

You never knew who you'd run into!  Need a taxi driver?  Lots of grime and crime. Too bad they cleaned it up. (Via ratak-monodosico)

That Voodoo That You Do So Well

Let me live 'neath your spell
Do do that voodoo that you do so well

You Do Something To Me.  Composed by Cole Porter, sung by Frank Sinatra with a snappy arrangement by Nelson Riddle from the Chairman of the Board's 1960 album Swingin' Session!!! (yes, the album had three exclamation points).


And, from Blazing Saddles, Hedley Lamarr's "Voodoo That You Do So Well Speech":
And speaking of Lamarr, let's not forget Hedy Lamarr. Here's a piece on her patent for radio frequency skipping which is the basis for cellphone communication today.

The Animal House - Josey Wales Connection

 
It's actor John Vernon who played Dean Wormer in Animal House (1978) and Fletcher in The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976).  Two very different characters; Dean Wormer, the fierce and dictatorial college president at war with Delta House in the smash comedy hit and Fletcher, the soulful moral center of Clint Eastwood's much praised and very violent Western epic.  One thing both characters had in common was that unmistakable voice full of somber or pompous gravitas, depending upon the movie in question.

John Vernon (1932-2005) was a Canadian actor who began appearing in stage and TV roles in the late 1950s.  THC wishes he'd kept his real name: Adolphus Raymondus Vernon Agopsowicz.  Clint Eastwood got to know him when he played the Mayor of San Francisco in Dirty Harry (19171).  Vernon later went on to do a lot of voice work in animated films.

From Animal House; "The time has come for someone to put their foot down, and that foot is me."

And, of course, we cannot forget "No more fun, of any kind!"

In Josey Wales, Vernon plays a Union man tasked with helping a cavalry detachment hunt down the renegade Confederate, Josey Wales, after the Civil War has ended.  The twist is that the Union cavalry commander led a massacre of Wales' fellow soldiers after they surrendered and Fletcher, Vernon's character, is conflicted about what he's been asked to do.

This is the movie's closing scene with Vernon and Eastwood.  Keep in mind as you watch it that Fletcher knows very well what Josey Wales looks like.

And look!  THC found a Josey Wales - Animal House mashup on YouTube.

Josey Wales is full of set-piece classic scenes.  Here is one where Eastwood meets with the Comanche chief, Ten Bears, played by Will Sampson, a Creek Indian who also starred in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.Another Indian with a bigger role was the great Chief Dan George, a chief of the Tsleil-Waututh nation of British Columbia.  George didn't begin acting until he was 60 years old and a decade later received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the 1971 film, Little Big Man, starring Dustin Hoffman.

In Josey Wales, Chief George plays a Cherokee chief, Lone Watie, which illustrates the complexity of Civil War allegiances.  Some Cherokees owned African slaves and during the first two years of the war, most of the tribe aligned itself with the Confederacy.  The Principle Chief of the Cherokee Nation during the war was Stand Watie who attained the rank of Brigadier General in the Confederate States Army and led an Indian cavalry brigade.  Here's a clip of George and Eastwood.And this brings us to the final twist in Josey Wales.  The movie was based on a 1972 novel by Forrest Carter.  It was only later revealed to be an alias and the real author as Asa Earl Carter, a former KKK leader and a contributor to George Wallace speeches, who later broke with Wallace, running against him for Governor of Alabama in 1970 on a white supremacist platform (he received only 1.5% of the vote).  Not least of all, he led a campaign in the late 1950s to ban rock n roll from jukeboxes because of what he saw as its immoral Negro influence.

Sometimes There's A Man

(from Tech Noir)