August 5, 2010

August 5, 2010

Brian Mazo congratulates* Alex Rodriguez for becoming the 7th man in the history of Major League Baseball to have hit 600 homeruns.


Now, in other news that will be ongoing and pertinent to this so-called blog, I am starting a new book and will be including excerpts here for the first time. Hell! If doing it that way worked for Dickens for newspapers, maybe it is the new, right track for these current times. I am an analog guy residing in a digital world, so it makes little sense to me, but I will let you and you and well, not you, but yeah the cute girl reading over your shoulder may judge me/this as well.
I have come to the painful yet somehow wonderful conclusion that my experiences writing on the fringe edge of Hollywood should be shared, learned from and, most likely laughed at. I’ll hold the bitter and give the best parts of writing “those other movies” to anyone who will take a moment to read. As the only screenwriter in captivity to have written movies that have included both a woman who won the Best Actress Academy Award and one who won the porn equivalent, I find myself uniquely qualified (most likely and unfortunately over-qualified) to handle this gig. Watch this space; there shall be blood and it shall all be mine…

*Now, the asterisk above may seem like a joke and it is, but it’s more than that. Let’s start with the real king of the homerun- George Herman “Babe” Ruth who never met an asterisk he wouldn’t eat like a hotdog. Babe Ruth was the first, foremost and finest homerun hitter that the game will ever see. Although Barry Bonds probably comes the closest in scaring opposing pitchers and their managers, it was Ruth who really is the basis for the “Chicks Dig the Longball” campaign of some years back. But I am not alone in believing that Babe Ruth was a black man and that his very participation in the MLB starting in the teens (those of nineteen hundred) was against the rules.
But Babe Ruth is not my favorite cheater. That wonderful distinction belongs to Gaylord Perry. Not only was Gaylord a cheater in a time when there were so few in the soon-to-be-sanitized game of baseball, he flaunted it like no one else that ever comes to mind. Did Gaylord Perry throw a spitball? Damn right he did. His great book (that someday I shall make a movie) Me & The Spitter (The Candid Confessions of Baseball’s Greatest Spitball Artist (or How I Got Away With It)) written with Bob Sudyk, and first published in August, 1974 is one of the greatest middle-fingers thrown up to the straight and clean game of baseball. I like cheaters, but especially those that got away with it. Are Mr. Perry’s 300 wins, Cy Young awards in both leagues, strikeouts and image tainted? Dig up Bobby Murcer and he’s probably still cursing Gaylord’s name. But the thing about Gaylord that made it so much fun was that he was, and will most likely remain the pitcher that fucked with the heads of MLB batters more than anyone else has or will. Did he throw “the pitch?” Again: Damn right he did. But his real mastery was making the batter and even the umpire (Mr. Perry’s bald head was bared to many fans and TV cameras by so many umpires trying to find something, anything, but they never, ever did) think that dreaded, drop-off-the-table Spitter was coming. Sometimes it did; most of the time it did not. And if Gaylord Perry needed anything else to confirm him, consider this: When George Brett absolutely lost his mind when his homerun was ruled an out during the infamous Pine Tar Game and the umpires were trying not to have their limbs ripped off and beaten by Mr. Brett, it was Gaylord Perry who snuck onto the field, put the questionable bat under his arm and absconded to the Royals’ clubhouse with it. No body, no crime!
Am I supporting the use of PED’s? Hell no, I am not, but we will never know their actual effect on hitting (or of Roger Clemens’ throwing of said horsehide) the ball. How much did the greenies that Mickey Mantle took help during his career? I dunno. Maybe when you dig up Mr. Murcer, we can dig up Mr. Mantle and ask his corpse as well…