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Let’s remember Casey Stengel, who retired on this day in 1965.
Along the way, he managed the Brooklyn Dodgers (1934-1936), Boston Braves (1938-1943) and took over the New York Yankees in 1949 when he replaced the retiring Joe McCarthy.
It was his time with the Yankees that reminds me of my late father and his generation sitting around watching the TV or catching the sports pages about those great teams of the 1950’s. Casey won 1, 149 games (696 losses) over 12 seasons with the Yankees, including 10 AL pennants and seven World Series rings. Back then, my father would tell me that you were either a Yankee fan or cheer for whoever they were playing in “La Serie”.
He was quite a character as well as an amazing manager. Stengel’s critics say that he was a “button pusher” because of great teams. In fact, he was the first manager to use the platoon system (lefty batter vs right handed pitcher) and was a great judge of talent.
As my father said, Casey managed great teams but he was also a great manager. He was also the author of a lot of wonderful lines that transcend baseball such as this: “There comes a time in every man’s life, and I’ve had plenty of them.”.
So we remember Casey today and baseball conversations that I had with my late father over the years.
Thomas Sean Connery was born in the Fountainbridge area of Edinburgh on 25 August 1930, the son of a Catholic factory worker and a Protestant domestic cleaner.
His father’s family had emigrated from Ireland in the 19th Century; his mother traced her line back to Gaelic speakers from the Isle of Skye.
The area had been in decline for years. Young Tommy Connery was brought up in one room of a tenement with a shared toilet and no hot water.
He left school at 13 with no qualifications and delivered milk, polished coffins and laid bricks, before joining the Royal Navy. Three years later, he was invalided out of the service with stomach ulcers. His arms by now had tattoos which proclaimed his passions: “Scotland forever” and “Mum & Dad”.
In Edinburgh, he gained a reputation as “hard man” when six gang members tried to steal from his coat. When he stopped them, he was followed. Connery launched a one-man assault which the future Bond won hands down.
He scraped a living any way he could. He drove trucks, worked as a lifeguard and posed as a model at the Edinburgh College of Art. He spent his spare time bodybuilding.
I guess that bodybuilding probably boosted his chances to play James Bond. His first movie was in 1963, and you know the rest of the story.
Yes, he was my favorite James Bond, but it was the movie Hunt for Red October that always comes to mind when I think of Connery. I’m sure you remember the story of the Soviet submarine captain trying to defect to the West. It was a great book and fabulous movie.
I remember this movie so well because I watched it one Sunday night, loved it, went to bed, and then woke up with the story of the coup and arrest of Gorbachev in the USSR. Watching those Soviet Politburo members explaining the coup reminded me too much of the movie, especially when the official at the Kremlin got the news that the submarine was defecting.
RIP, Sean Connery. Loved you as Bond but will forever remember you as Soviet naval officer Marko Ramius!
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Mason Williams & others had a big hit on the radio this week in August 1968:
1. People Got to Be Free - The Rascals (Atlantic)
2. Classical Gas - Mason Williams (Warner Brothers)
3. Turn Around, Look at Me - The Vogues (Reprise)
4. Light My Fire - Jose Feliciano (RCA)
5. Hello, I Love You - The Doors (Elektra)
6. Sunshine of Your Love - Cream (Atco)
7. Stoned Soul Picnic - The 5th Dimension (Soul City)
8. Hurdy Gurdy Man - Donovan (Epic)
9. Born to Be Wild - Steppenwolf (Dunhill)
10. Dream a Little Dream of Me - Mama Cass (Dunhill)
11. Pictures of Matchstick Men - The Status Quo (Cadet Concept)
12. Love Makes a Woman - Barbara Acklin (Brunswick)
13. Soul-Limbo - Booker T. & the MG's (Stax)
14. You're All I Need to Get By -
Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell (Tamla)
15. Journey to the Center of the Mind -
The Amboy Dukes (Mainstream)
16. I Can't Stop Dancing - Archie Bell & the Drells (Atlantic)
17. Stay In My Corner - The Dells (Cadet)
18. The House that Jack Built - Aretha Franklin (Atlantic)
19. Mr. Businessman - Ray Stevens (Monument)
20. The Fool On the Hill - Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 (A&M) P.S. You can listen to my show. If you like our posts, please look for ”Donate” on the right column of the blog page.
John Lennon and Cynthia Powell were married on this day in 1962. They eventually divorced in 1968. John was killed in 1980 and Cynthia died in 2015.
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In 1896, John Wesley Hardin is released from a Texas prison after serving sixteen years of his sentence. His first act as a free man is to bring the manuscript of his life story to local publisher Henry Johnson.As Johnson reads the book, the story of Wes’s life unfolds: At the end of the Civil War, Wes, a young gambler and sharpshooter, rebels against the abuse of his rigid preacher father, J. G. Hardin.Although Wes’s sweetheart, Jane Brown, who is also being reared by J. G., urges him to be patient, Wes is anxious to make enough money to buy a cattle ranch. He leaves to make his fortune, starting out at the local saloon, where barmaid Rosie McCoy tries to engage his interest. Wes joins a poker game, but when he correctly accuses player Gus Hanley of cheating, Gus draws a gun and Wes shoots him in self-defense. Realizing that the Hanley brothers, Ike, Dirk and Ben, will soon be after him, Wes flees to his uncle John Clinton’s house. John takes Wes along on as he herds cattle to Abilene, but Wes is recognized along the way and the Hanley brothers set chase. Before they can catch up to him, however, Wes reaches Abilene and wins a fast horse in a poker game.Determined to buy a wedding dress for Jane, he refuses to leave until he has won the money for the dress, even though everyone, including local marshal Wild Bill Hickok, insists that he leave town. With only seconds to spare before Hickok jails him, Wes wins the dress money and races away. When he arrives home, his father demands that he stand trial for Gus’s murder.Although Wes is suspicious, J. G. promises to secure an excellent lawyer and marry him to Jane as soon as his name is cleared. Soon after, however, Ike pays local sheriff Charlie Webb to shoot Wes and claim that he resisted arrest. Charlie pulls his gun and shoots Wes in the shoulder, but Wes kills him. He runs home again but this time, neither J. G. nor Jane believes that he killed in self-defense. A posse gathers outside, and when Wes flees out the back door, Jane is killed as she runs after him. Wes is shot but escapes when John hides him under some brush.Later, Rosie and John return for him and nurse him back to health. Six years later, Wes is still on the run and being blamed for murders throughout Texas. The reactivated Texas Rangers have made tracking him down their top priority. Wes and Rosie flee the Rangers to a small farm in Alabama, where they assume the name of Swain. Rosie is unhappy there, worried that she can change but Wes never will, and that he will grow bored with her and farm life.To convince her of his devotion, Wes brings home a parson and marries Rosie. Soon after, she becomes pregnant and writes to J. G., who is secretly pleased at the thought of a grandson. Rosie admits to Wes that she was wrong about his ability to change, and that she feels safe with him. That day, however, Wes is caught in town by the Rangers.In Austin, he is found guilty of murdering Webb and sentenced to twenty-five years of hard labor. As he bids goodbye to his father, wife and new son, Wes continues to insist that he is not a murderer. In the present, Wes returns to the ranch, where Rosie, who has waited for him faithfully, embraces him joyously and sends him to the barn to meet his son, John.As John proudly spins his father’s gun, horrific scenes of his own outlaw background flash before Wes’s eyes. Like his own father, Wes snaps and hits his son, who runs off. Despondent, Wes explains to Rosie that he cannot let his son follow in his footsteps. He finds John in a saloon, about to enter a gunfight with a man who is insulting Wes. Wes discourages his son from shooting and escorts him to the door, but as they leave, the other man shoots Wes in the back. John holds Wes and promises his father he will not become a criminal. Later, Rosie and John take a recovered Wes home to his ranch.
