In addition to Aidan turning seven …
Bill Medley is 70 today. Medley was the Righteous Brother with the deep voice. It was he who sang the opening verse in the great, great classic “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’.” It was the late Bobby Hatfield, the tenor, who generally took the lead on Righteous Brother songs.
Hall of Fame ballplayers Duke Snider and Joe Morgan were born on this date — Snider is 84, Morgan 67. When I think of Morgan I think of an interview during a World Series in the early 1970s. Howard Cossell asked Morgan, “What does it feel like to know you are the best person in the world at what you do?”
Unfortunately for Joe — and us — he’s not the best person in the world at what he does now, which is comment during baseball broadcasts.
A graceful center fielder with a picture-perfect swing, Duke Snider was the biggest bat in the Brooklyn Dodgers’ potent lineup of the 1950s. He hit 40 or more homers five consecutive times and led all batters in home runs and RBIs during the ’50s. The Duke of Flatbush hit four homers in two different World Series (1952 and ’55), clouting a total of 11 Series home runs and 26 Series RBIs.
A fierce competitor renowned for his baseball smarts, Joe Morgan could single-handedly beat opposing teams with his multifaceted skills. A two-time National League MVP in 1975 and ’76, he was a terror on the basepaths, topping the 40-steal plateau nine times during his career. His skilled batting eye enabled him to lead the National League in on-base percentage and walks four times each. Morgan also packed considerable power into his compact frame, hitting 449 doubles and 268 home runs.
Roger Angell, the wonderful writer known foremost for his essays on baseball in The New Yorker — at which he too has often been the best in the world at what he did — is 90 today.
And [Angell] said: “The stuff about the connection between baseball and American life, the Field of Dreams thing, gives me a pain. I hated that movie. It’s mostly fake. You look back into the meaning of old-time baseball, and really in the early days it was full of roughnecks and drunks. They beat up the umpires and played near saloons. In Field of Dreams there’s a line at the end that says the game of baseball was good when America was good, and they’re talking about the time of the biggest race riots in the country and Prohibition. What is that? That dreaminess, I really hated that.”
Adam West, TV’s Batman, is 80. David McCallum, Man from U.N.C.L.E’s Illya Kuryakin and NCIS’s Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard, is 77. Randolph Mantooth of Emergency is 65.
Trisha Yearwood is 46.
Ellen Naomi Cohen was born on September 19th in 1941. Raised in Baltimore and Alexandria, Virginia, we came to know her as Cass Elliot. (Cohen attended the same Alexandria high school as Jim Morrison, Scott McKenzie and John Phillips, George Washington High School. GWHS became a middle school when Alexandria integrated its schools and TC Williams High School was opened — you know, the Titans, remember them?)
The first thing you noticed about Cass was her face. It was an amazing face: fast and funny and beautiful. She was a big, eat the world, pass the bourbon, soft kind of woman who came to New York to make it on Broadway, but to quote Cass: “There wasn’t much call for a three hundred pound ingenue”, and when Barbara Streisand started showing up at the same auditions, Cass started singing the blues.
[W]e’re all just lying around vegging out watching TV and discussing names for the group. “The New Journeymen” was not a handle that was going to hang on this outfit. John was pushing for “The Magic Cyrcle”. Eech, but none of us could come up with anything better, then we switch the channel and, hey, it’s the Hell’s Angels on this talk show . . .
And the first thing we hear is: “Now hold on there, Hoss. Some people call our women cheap, but we just call them our Mamas.” Cass jumped up: “Yeah ! I want to be a Mama.” And Michelle is going: “We’re the Mamas! We’re the Mamas!” OK. I look at John. He’s looking at me going : “The Papas ?” Problem solved. A toast ! To The Mamas and The Papas. Well, after many, many toasts …
Above two quotes from Denny Doherty, Dream A Little Dream.
Mama Casa died in 1974. Keith Moon of The Who died in the same flat four years later.
(Been listening to Mama Cass sing while writing this. She was a wonderful singer. Try Dream a Little Dream of Me.)
The Mary Tyler Show debuted on this date 40 years ago.
213 years ago today (1777) Continental soldiers under General Horatio Gates defeated the British at Saratoga, New York. A second battle was fought at Saratoga on October 17, 1777. American victory in the battles turned the war in the colonists favor and helped persuade the French to recognize American independence and provide military assistance.