It’s Wednesday night here at BCB After Dark: the coolest club for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Come on in and sit with us for a while. Everyone is welcome. There’s no cover charge. We still have a few tables available. 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 beat the Braves tonight, 3-2. Jameson Taillon came off the injured list and gave the Cubs a solid if short start. But the best part was that the bullpen stepped up and pitched 4.2 innings and allowed just one baserunner, a single by Matt Olson.
The win moves the Cubs win total to 83, meaning they’d have to lose every game the rest of the way to finish with 83 wins again. More importantly, the Giants lost, dropping the Cubs’ magic number to clinch a playoff spot to eight with 16 to play. The Padres also lost, so the Cubs lead over them for home field advantage in the Wild Card round is now four and the magic number to clinch home field is 13.
Last night I asked you who should be the Cubs fourth starter assuming they get past the Wild Card round. The vote wasn’t close as 72 percent of you said it should be Taillon. I’d assume that number would only increase after tonight’s performance.
Here’s the part with jazz and movies. You’re free to skip that. You won’t hurt my feelings.
Tonight we have Chilean saxophonist Melissa Aldana in Switzerland in 2024. She is joined by Lage Lund on guitar, Pablo Menares playing the bass and the drummer is Kush Abadey.
This is “Unconscious Whispers.”
I did watch the new film from director Spike Lee Highest 2 Lowest which is a re-make (or “re-imagining”) of the Akira Kurosawa classic High and Low. I planned to write about it tonight, but I’m under the weather with a bad cold and I want to give it the attention it deserves, which I’m just not physically able to do at the moment.
But quickly, I did like it. Denzel Washington is his normal movie star self, incapable of a bad performance. The film is quite deferential to Kurosawa in the first half—not necessarily stylistically (Lee has a much bigger budget, for example) but certainly plot-wise and thematically. Lee goes off in his own direction in the second half of the film, although he does recreate two famous scenes at the end of High and Low. The shots are almost identical, but the dialog exchanged between the characters differs quite a bit.
I will quickly mention that the music in Highest 2 Lowest is outstanding, with one scene taking place in the middle of a concert by Puerto Rico jazz great Eddie Palmieri, who just left us last month. So it was nice to see Palmieri’s “last gig,” so to speak.
As far as the votes for the science fiction tournament goes, the biggest number went to carry the tournament out to 1999. In second place were those who want to cut it off at 1976. So you see my dilemma.
However, reader BrokeFrog suggested that I make four brackets with 16 films each in it. I shot that idea down immediately, as a 64-film tournament would take way too long to complete. But that might be a good idea anyways that could make everyone happy. What I’m thinking about now is having a 28- or 30-film tournament. (I think 32 would mean we wouldn’t finish until well after Opening Day.) and having four categories. The first 7-film group would be science fiction 1960 and earlier. The second one would be 1961 to 1976. The third one would start with 1977 and go to somewhere in the mid-80s and the fourth bracket would take us to 1999. That way we make sure to get in a lot of classic films that people may not be as familiar with and also include some old favorites from most of our childhoods. And those films won’t be competing head-to-head until the semifinals and finals.
So that’s where my thinking is now. I have no idea where in the eighties to break the two later categories yet. It will be wherever I think I can include the most worthy films.
The plan is now to have a list of films for the tournament sometimes in the next few weeks and you can all debate what I’ve left out or what I shouldn’t have included.
Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies.
Tonight I’m just asking a simple question. With just over two weeks left in the season, who was the Cubs best free agent pickup last winter?
The Cubs didn’t make much of a splash in free agency this past winter. They got Kyle Tucker from the Astros, of course, but that was via a trade. In free agency, the Cubs signed a lot of guys who got the “meh” vote from the majority of you when the deal was announced. In two cases, you didn’t even get the chance to vote because the deal was a minor league one and we don’t put those up for a vote around here.
Just to refresh your memory. the Cubs free agent signings this past winter were;
Left-hander Matthew Boyd—two years, $29 million
Catcher Carson Kelly—two year, $11.5 million
Left-hander Caleb Thielbar—one year, $2.75 million
Right-hander Colin Rea—one year, $5 million
Catcher Reese McGuire—minor league deal
First baseman Justin Turner—one year, $6 million
Right-hander Brad Keller—minor league deal
These players are listed in the order they signed, as best as I can reconstruct it.
I’m leaving off players like Jon Berti and Nicky Lopez, assuming that you’re not going to vote for someone not currently on the major league roster.
You can base your vote on anything you want. You can take the contract into consideration or you can ignore it. If you want to take into account what the other options were, you can, although I don’t quite remember what all of those were. I suppose one of those was signing Tanner Scott, who signed with the Dodgers and has not exactly provided a great return on his investment. The Cubs may have dodged a bullet there.
Thanks to everyone who stopped by this week. A special thanks goes out to everyone who votes and comments. Please get home safely. Don’t forget anything at your table. Recycle any cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again next time for more BCB After Dark.
