I imagine that in some part of his being, every day Willie Mays said to himself, not in these words, but in his own, I am my own revolution. How did he feel that night in 1963 when in the bottom of the 16-inning scoreless tie with Warren Spahn and Juan Marichal on the mound for every pitch he ended it with a home run? Oh, I feel so fine, I am so lucky to be allowed to play this wonderful game? Or was it, Take that, you fuckers. Go back down in the ground, you Klan killers. You’ll never catch me.
A lot of good questions and comments this mailbag from people who truly feel passionate about their interesting insights. First, I want to follow-up on my own Willie Mays comment. All the black athletes who attended the Cleveland Summit were college educated at a time when athletes actually attended their universities for four years. Baseball players of that era came right out of high school, often right off the farm, whether white or black, and were unsophisticated in their beliefs and behavior. A few evolved into better citizens, but many, to this day do not. Just think of all the furor over bat flips and other overt celebrations a few years ago. Unwritten rules of the game is code for don't mess with our white traditions. However, nowadays players are allowed to be more demonstrative in their on-field enthusiasms and most seem to accept it for what it is and not take it as a personal insult.
Count me as another big fan of Born To Be Bad. Always loved Robert Ryan and in BTBB, he gets to play a cynical romantic writer and not a racist for a change. Zachary Scott, also underrated, makes for a more convincing cad that he does a victim. But check him out in Jean Renoir's The Southerner where he plays a kind of Tom Joad settling down to sharecrop. Joan Fontaine I find sexier than her sister Olivia De Havilland And Mel Ferrer as Gobi steals the movie as the smart, detached gay painter who is sort of the Greek chorus to this melodrama.
Greil's book on The Doors is terrific and overlooked. It always surprised me that Greil could be both a fan of The Band and The Doors because the Next of Kin gatefold on Music From Big Pink seems to be an answer to Jim Morrison's shirtless sexiness of the previous year. I had hoped that AI would take the post-Jim Doors albums like Other Voices and put his late career rumble onto those songs, but the AI vocals are unconvincing and thin. And frankly, the songs aren't that good to begin with either. Better use of AI is Richard Burton's reading of his private journals and there's a YouTube about how Burton hated working with Lucille Ball when he and Liz Taylor guested on Here's Lucy in 1970. Not only does it sound like Burton, but his real self-penned comments about Lucy are scathing enough to have come from his Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf character, George. 'M'Lady Ball can thank her lucky stars that I am not drinking. There is a chance that I might have killed her.' Well worth checking out on YouTube.
I thought the main "unwritten rule of the game" back in the 1960s was: Don't make Bob Gibson mad at you.
One of my favorite Robert Ryan performances is Deke Thornton in The Wild Bunch, snarling "how does it feel to be so goddamn right?" at the railroad boss who is forcing him to chase the outlaw band he once rode with.
This certainly came to mind re: your response about Willie Mays. A great clip (especially around the 5-min mark): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMH2z4lFvZw
YouTube’s right stack prompts only two responses from me: YOU DON’T KNOW ME and YOU KNOW ME ALL. TOO. WELL.
A lot of good questions and comments this mailbag from people who truly feel passionate about their interesting insights. First, I want to follow-up on my own Willie Mays comment. All the black athletes who attended the Cleveland Summit were college educated at a time when athletes actually attended their universities for four years. Baseball players of that era came right out of high school, often right off the farm, whether white or black, and were unsophisticated in their beliefs and behavior. A few evolved into better citizens, but many, to this day do not. Just think of all the furor over bat flips and other overt celebrations a few years ago. Unwritten rules of the game is code for don't mess with our white traditions. However, nowadays players are allowed to be more demonstrative in their on-field enthusiasms and most seem to accept it for what it is and not take it as a personal insult.
Count me as another big fan of Born To Be Bad. Always loved Robert Ryan and in BTBB, he gets to play a cynical romantic writer and not a racist for a change. Zachary Scott, also underrated, makes for a more convincing cad that he does a victim. But check him out in Jean Renoir's The Southerner where he plays a kind of Tom Joad settling down to sharecrop. Joan Fontaine I find sexier than her sister Olivia De Havilland And Mel Ferrer as Gobi steals the movie as the smart, detached gay painter who is sort of the Greek chorus to this melodrama.
Greil's book on The Doors is terrific and overlooked. It always surprised me that Greil could be both a fan of The Band and The Doors because the Next of Kin gatefold on Music From Big Pink seems to be an answer to Jim Morrison's shirtless sexiness of the previous year. I had hoped that AI would take the post-Jim Doors albums like Other Voices and put his late career rumble onto those songs, but the AI vocals are unconvincing and thin. And frankly, the songs aren't that good to begin with either. Better use of AI is Richard Burton's reading of his private journals and there's a YouTube about how Burton hated working with Lucille Ball when he and Liz Taylor guested on Here's Lucy in 1970. Not only does it sound like Burton, but his real self-penned comments about Lucy are scathing enough to have come from his Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf character, George. 'M'Lady Ball can thank her lucky stars that I am not drinking. There is a chance that I might have killed her.' Well worth checking out on YouTube.
I thought the main "unwritten rule of the game" back in the 1960s was: Don't make Bob Gibson mad at you.
One of my favorite Robert Ryan performances is Deke Thornton in The Wild Bunch, snarling "how does it feel to be so goddamn right?" at the railroad boss who is forcing him to chase the outlaw band he once rode with.
"I am my own revolution"--love that. I think it was Mays who stepped between Marichal and John Roseboro during the horrible brawl in 1965.
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