It’s Wednesday night here at BCB After Dark: the grooviest gathering of night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Come settle in with us. We’ve got a few tables still available. Let us know if we can do anything for you. There’s a two-drink minimum, but it’s bring your own beverage.
BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party
started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.
The Cubs lost to the Royals today 8-4 and I don’t want to talk about it. Other than to say the team needs another starting pitcher.
Last night I asked you what you would do about third base for the Cubs, assuming that they can’t swing a deal for Diamondbacks slugger Eugenio Suárez. The vote wasn’t close with 66 percent of you saying if the Cubs can’t land Suárez, they should just stick with what they’ve got. Another 18 percent of you like Twins’ utility player Willi Castro.
Tonight we’re featuring Canadian vocalist Sophie Milman performing a song by another Canadian artist, The Guess Who. This is “Undun.”
Before I get to today’s film Intruder in the Dust, I just wanted to give a heads up to anyone who has a provider subscription that gets Turner Classic Movies. This weekend, maybe the greatest heist film ever made, director Jules Dassin’s Rififi, will be airing on Saturday night at 11:15 Central time and Sunday morning at 9 am Central. (Check your listings in your area.) It’s also one of the great French noirs although Dassin, of course, was a blacklisted American. So if you have any interest in heist films or noirs, you should set your DVR now. As far as I can tell, Rififi is not currently available for streaming anywhere (not even to rent), so this may be your only chance to watch it for a while.
In case you missed the background on Intruder in the Dust, I handled that on Monday. I intended to just write one piece on the film, but by the time I finished the background, I thought “Man, this is already long” and decided to split it into two parts.
But director Clarence Brown’s 1949 adaptation of the William Faulkner novel of the same name is really an overlooked gem. The story is set in small-town Mississippi where a Black farmer, Lucas, is arrested for the murder of a white man. Chick is a teenager whose life Lucas had once saved when he fell through the ice on Lucas’ property. After that they had a weird relationship, as Chick keeps trying to pay back Lucas for saving his life and Lucas, who is proud to a fault, refusing all attempts at compensation. But now Lucas is willing to ask Chick to ask his uncle John, a local attorney, to represent him.
The biggest thing that Brown got right was the cast. For the lead role of Chick, a 16-year-old white kid from Mississippi with an awkward relationship with Lucas, Brown cast Claude Jarman Jr. Brown had already worked with Jarman in The Yearling, for which Jarman had won a Juvenile Academy Award. (That’s something they gave out back then.) Jarman handles the Chick very well. Chick doesn’t know how to act, as a white teenager, around a Black man who doesn’t defer to him. Jarman’s performance makes Chick seem confused, which is exactly what he’s supposed to be. Chick can’t square Lucas killing a man in cold blood with the man who had saved his life. But he also doesn’t know how he’s supposed to behave as white kid in Mississippi around a Black man. The rules of Jim Crow confuse him. He likes and respects Lucas, but he knows he’s not supposed to.
David Brian ably plays Chick’s uncle John, and he’s portrayed as a clueless white moderate. John knows the rules of Jim Crow and he knows that the family of the murdered man is planning a lynching from the moment of the murder. He assumes Lucas is guilty (he knows the murdered man and figures he provoked Lucas) and only agrees to take the case because as a lawyer, the idea of an extrajudicial lynching offends his understanding of justice. His “defense” is to get a change of venue to another county where Lucas will be out of the reach of the lynch mob. There he plans to have Lucas plead guilty and hope he can talk the judge out of the death penalty.
But above all, Juano Hernandez turns in the best performance of all as Lucas, the man accused of the murder. Hernandez was a Black Puerto Rican actor who had been working in “race” films since the silent era, but he’d never been in a Hollywood film before. His work as Lucas is excellent. As I noted, Lucas is proud to a fault, but he also understands white people and what he can and cannot get away with. He never pleads his innocence to his lawyer John, figuring as an adult white man he’d never believe him. Instead, he puts Chick and Miss Habersham (Elizabeth Patterson) and Chick’s young black friend Aleck on the case to prove his innocence. (I will say that if there’s a racial misstep in Intruder in the Dust, it’s Aleck.)
Hernandez’s Lucas is proud and defiant, but he never picks a battle he can’t win. Lucas is highly intelligent. He never loses his temper, knowing that’s not something he as a Black man in Mississippi can afford. He never confronts or argues with the white men, only letting them think they realize by themselves that he’s an innocent man. Hernandez did turn his performance in Intruder in the Dust into a solid and well-deserved career as a character actor in Hollywood over the next decade.
I should also note that Elizabeth Patterson is great as the elderly Miss Habersham. You’ll never forget her staring down a lynch mob in her rocking chair, armed with nothing but needle and thread.
Brown insisted that the film be shot in Faulkner’s hometown of Oxford, MS, where there had been a lynching of a Black man in 1935 that inspired Faulkner’s novel. He used the townsfolk as extras and as TCM’s Eddie Muller noted, some of those extras almost certainly participated in that lynching 14 years earlier. But the city is used well to set the scene of the film. The whole thing looks “real,” so to speak. Of course, Hernandez was not allowed to stay in the nice hotel with the rest of the cast.
Jarman just died earlier this year, and he always said Intruder in the Dust was the film that he was most proud of. He went to every film festival showing it that he could to talk about the film and his experience there.
The novel Intruder in the Dust was Faulkner’s only real dip into crime fiction and the movie version does it justice. You can write whole books on Faulkner’s troubled relationship with Hollywood, but he did say he loved the film version of Intruder in the Dust and singled out Hernandez in particular for his strong work.
Intruder in the Dust is a strong film with a solid plot about a murder, but what makes it special is the performance of the cast and director Brown’s attention to detail and his use of the town of Oxford, MS. It was a film that was forgotten for quite a while, but we are fortunate that it’s been rediscovered in recent years.
Here’s the trailer for Intruder in the Dust. Be aware that there is use of the “n-word” in this clip, so maybe don’t play it at work.
If you have Turner Classic Movies, the film can still be seen on demand for a few more days. It’s also on the Criterion Channel.
Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies.
So Buster Olney dropped this bombshell earlier today that has tongues wagging.
A surprise name has emerged in the starting pitcher market: Dylan Cease, who will be eligible for free agency at year's end. Perception of other teams is that the Padres are intent on making a push for the playoffs, and would use Cease to help fill other roster needs. Mets, AL…
— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) July 23, 2025
For those who can’t see that.
A surprise name has emerged in the starting pitcher market: Dylan Cease, who will be eligible for free agency at year’s end. Perception of other teams is that the Padres are intent on making a push for the playoffs, and would use Cease to help fill other roster needs. Mets, AL East teams, Cubs among teams that have talked about him.
So let’s break this down a little.
Cease, superficially, is having a down year heading into free agency this winter. If we still care about win-loss records, Cease was 3-9 with a 4.64 ERA. That doesn’t seem like the guy who finished fourth in Cy Young Award balloting last season.
But if you look at the underlying numbers, not much has actually changed. Cease’s velocity is actually up a touch this year. His strikeouts are also up a little bit and his walks are down a touch. The biggest difference appears to be that more of the fly balls he’s giving up are going for home runs. That’s generally considered to be luck. Cease’s fly ball rates are pretty much unchanged from last year.
However, Cease’s batting average on balls-in-play is also way up, from .266 last year to .328 this year. That’s either bad luck or bad defense from the Padres. Cease’s career numbers for BABIP is .295, so it seems like he was lucky last year and unlucky this year and his true ability lies somewhere in between.
If you really want to nitpick, Cease is giving up a touch more hard contact (and more soft contact—medium contact is down) and barrels. I’m not sure that’s enough of a trend for it to be anything other than statistical noise, especially since he appears to be missing just as many bats.
So Cease is the type of pitcher the Cubs would love to go into the playoffs with. The fact that he’s a free agent at the end of the season limits how much the Cubs would be willing to give up for him, but they could probably put together a package that they’d be comfortable with.
There are problems with the Padres trading Cease to the Cubs, however. The first is that if the season ended today, the Padres would be the third Wild Card team. San Diego is not looking to sell and prepare for next season. They want players for Cease that they can play now. In particular, they’d like a left fielder, as that position has been a complete whirlpool of suck for the Padres this season. They could also use someone as a designated hitter, particularly from the right side to platoon with Gavin Sheets.
The Cubs don’t have one of those players, at least not one that they’re going to trade to San Diego. The Cubs aren’t trading Seiya Suzuki, Kyle Tucker or Ian Happ. They certainly aren’t trading Pete Crow-Armstrong. So unless the Padres think Owen Caissie is ready to step in and be a productive left fielder right now, the Cubs don’t have anything to offer San Diego. In any case, team president Jed Hoyer has indicated that the Cubs aren’t willing to deal Caissie for just a two-month rental.
What might be possible, however, is for the Cubs to put together a package of minor leaguers that would then allow the Padres the prospect capital they need to acquire an outfielder, such as the Guardians’ Steven Kwan or the Orioles’ Cedric Mullins. There have also been rumors forever about the Red Sox and Padres working out a deal that would send Jarren Duran to San Diego, but the Red Sox are also still trying for a playoff spot and would be unlikely to deal Duran for a rental. Maybe not Owen Caissie high, but certainly two top-ten Cubs prospects would at least be required. The Padres might ask for Jefferson Rojas and Jaxon Wiggins, for example, hoping that that would give them enough minor league talent to spare to bring in an outfielder.
The other problem is that if the Padres do agree to trade Cease, the Cubs won’t be the only team interested. The cost could get very high for a rental.
I’m guessing that most or all of you would like for the Cubs to get Dylan Cease back after the 2017 trade that sent him to the South Side for Jose Quintana. So asking you if you’d agree to a trade for Cease seems silly.
Instead, I’m going to ask you for your thoughts about this rumor. Do you think the Padres are serious about trading Dylan Cease? Do you think the Cubs can put together a package that is acceptable to both teams? Or do you think that a team with a spare major league outfielder (like Boston) would always be able to outbid the Cubs?
And tell us what you’d offer for Cease in the comments.
Thank you for stopping by tonight and all week. A special thanks goes out to everyone who commented. Please get home safely. Tell us if you need us to call a ride for you. Check around so you don’t forget anything. Recycle any cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again next week for more BCB After Dark.
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- BCB After Dark: What would it take to trade Owen Caissie?
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