It’s another week here at BCB After Dark: the grooviest gathering of night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Come on in and join us for a while. Your name is on the guest list. Let us know if we can do anything for you. The hostess will seat you now. 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 were one strike away, with two outs and no one on, from beating the Marlins. But Daniel Palencia melted down at that point, gave up a double, a walk and a triple to lose the game, 8-7. That stinks, but there’s nothing to do but forget about it and win the next two games. And hope Craig Counsell can find a closer. That Ryan Pressly looked good tonight.
Last week, I asked if you thought the Rockies were going to lose 122 games this year. To the dismay of Rockies fans, 56 percent of you said “yes.”
Here’s the part where we listen to music and talk movies. You’re free to skip that part. You won’t hurt my feelings.
Tonight we’re featuring one of those NPR Tiny Desk concerts with Lalah Hathaway, daughter of the great Donny Hathaway. Lalah sings a fusion of soul, heavily influenced by her father, and jazz.
Lynnette Williams in on keyboards, Eric Smith plays bass and Varo Johnson is the drummer.
This is from 2018.
I watched two different films that were loosely inspired by the same incident: director Fritz Lang’s first US film Fury (1936) and director Cy Endfield’s Try and Get Me! (originally titled The Sound of Fury) from 1950. Both films were loose adaptations of a 1933 lynching in San Jose of two men accused of the kidnapping and murder of department store heir Brooke Hart. Despite allegedly being about the same incident, the two films take very different approaches to the subject matter. Neither film is great and neither film is bad, but together they’re a very interesting look at how Hollywood changed over 14 years.
Fury was a big deal from MGM starring Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sidney and, as noted, was the American debut of the celebrated German director Lang. Try and Get Me! was a B-movie starring Frank Lovejoy and Kathleen Ryan that was the last film that Endfield directed in the US before being forced to flee to England after having been placed on the blacklist.
The lynching of the accused, Thomas Harold Thurmond and John M. Holmes, was a particularly horrific incident that naturally gets left out of the history books. (It should be noted with the history of lynching in America, both Thurmond and Holmes were white.) Brooke Hart was the heir to the owner of a popular San Francisco department store. After Thurmond and Holmes’ arrest, Bay Area newspapers and radio stations began sensational cries for revenge and mob justice. When the planning of a lynching began to spread around San Jose, California governor Jim Rolph not only refused to call out the National Guard to protect the two accused men like the Sheriff’s Department asked, he openly said he’d pardon anyone who took part in the lynching. When the lynching happened, radio stations from as far away as Los Angeles covered the event live.
(Newspapers were there too, and you can see pictures of the lynching here, but beware. They are rather gruesome.)
Obviously Fury had the big name, the big studio and the bigger budget, albeit a small one for MGM at the time. It was also a departure from MGM’s usual fare of light musicals and romances and something closer to what Warner Brothers was doing with crime pictures in the thirties. But as such, MGM very much neuters the experience of a lynching. Tracy plays Joe Wilson, an innocent gas station owner who just happened to be passing through town when the murder happened. He’s arrested based on finding peanuts on him, as the victim was found with peanut dust on him.
The outraged public starts gossipping about Wilson and a movement to lynch him starts among the townsfolk. The lynching takes place in the middle of the film and the mob thinks they’ve done their job when they set fire to the building and it all burns to the ground. But, in the confusion about the fire, Joe actually escapes. He lets the world think he’s dead as he plots his revenge against those who tried to kill him.
So Fury is a movie about a man searching for revenge against the mob and how in his obsession, he is willing to destroy his relationship with the love of his life, Katherine (Sidney).
Lang’s famous German-language film M (1931) is also about a lynching, of sorts, and Fury falls far short of M. Fury cheats to make a more “MGM” film. It’s easy for the audience to be against lynchings when the subject is innocent. It also tacks on a Hollywood happy ending. But of course, Tracy and Sidney are terrific and while the plot may shy away from anything that might challenge the audience, it’s still a well-written script.
The Sound of Fury or Try and Get Me! (the film was re-released under the second title and that’s the title you’ll most likely find it under) goes a tougher route. Lovejoy plays Howard, an unemployed family man who, out of desperation for money, gets involved with Jerry (Lloyd Bridges), a small-time stickup artist. Howard soon gets over his reluctance to commit small-time robberies of gas stations and such, but Jerry decides to go for a big payday with a kidnapping. The kidnapping goes awry and ends up with Jerry killing the victim so that he can’t identify them.
So The Sound of Fury makes the lynching victim guilty, although it’s a sympathetic guilty. Howard only gets involved in crime out of desperation and he really didn’t agree to the kidnapping and murder plot. It’s his guilt over the murder that causes the two of them to get caught. (Stage actress Katherine Locke turns in a terrific performance as a desperate woman who gets caught up with Howard.) There is no happy ending at the conclusion of the lynching in Try and Get Me!
Try and Get Me! takes much greater aim at the newspapers for fanning the flames of that led to the lynching. Whereas in Fury the lynching happens because of gossip, in Try and Get Me!, the crowd is actively whipped into a fury by yellow journalism that demonizes the pair. The newspaper also claims that Jerry and Howard could get off on an insanity defense, which is used to justify the extra-judicial violence.
The film also uses the lynching as a metaphor for the Red Scare that was going on at the time. That the papers, whom Enfield felt should have been standing up for his free speech rights, actually fans the flames in Try and Get Me! is not an accident.
The best part of Try and Get Me!, besides the horrifying climax, is Bridges’ Jerry. Bridges plays Jerry as a cool psychopath and by the end, he’s chewing so much scenery that you can see the set stuck between his teeth. It’s an over-the-top performance, but it’s an entertaining one. Lovejoy’s Howard is just a sad-sack loser without much appeal, but at least that seems to fit in with what the film is trying to say. He’s fine, but mostly you sympathize with him after his stupid decision to get involved with Jerry.
The one thing that both films capture well is the absolute horror of mob violence, but Try and Get Me! is truly harrowing. You really have to see it to understand it.
Fury is the better movie. It’s got better actors and a better script, even if it shys away from trying to make us sympathize with a guilty man. Try and Get Me! is a much greater condemnation of society and the media in particular, but it doesn’t have Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sidney and it just isn’t as well written. At least it does have Lloyd Bridges as a psychopath and that terrifying ending.
Here’s the trailer for Fury.
I don’t have a trailer for Try and Get Me!, but here’s the kidnapping scene.
Here’s the entire film of Try and Get Me! on YouTube if you’re interested [VIDEO]
Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies.
Bob Nightengale causes a stir over the weekend when he wrote that the Cubs were one of several teams “closely monitoring Colorado Rockies infielder Ryan McMahon in case he’s traded this summer.”
Now the way that the internet overreacts to everything, you’d think that Moisés Ballesteros was on his way to Denver for McMahon. But of course, that’s not how it goes. All Nightengale said was that the Cubs were “closely monitoring” McMahon. He also wrote that the Dodgers and “several teams” were doing the same. It would be malpractice for the Cubs not to keep an eye on a third baseman who might be available at the trade deadline. That doesn’t mean they’re going to trade for him.
But tonight’s question is not whether or not the Cubs will trade for McMahon, it’s whether or not you think they should.
McMahon is a 30-year-old third baseman who has spent the entirety of his career in relative anonymity in Colorado. He’s considered an excellent defensive shortstop. Although he’s never won a Gold Glove, that’s probably more the voters’ fault than McMahon’s. His glove is even good enough to play second base and he has in about one-quarter of his games at the major-league level.
On offense, it’s tougher to judge. Playing half his games at Coors Field has made it hard to judge how good a hitter he is. He has a career-line of .241/.324/.420 and has hit at least 20 home runs in each of the last four seasons. This year he’s only hitting .206/.333/.374 with six home runs in 45 games, but if you look underneath the hood, there’s more to like. His walk rate has gone up this year as has his barrel rate. It looks like he’s been the victim of a lot of bad hitting luck, as his batting average on balls in play has been a career-low .286, despite those hard-hit and barrel rates going up.
Of course, there is another issue when you trade for anyone from Colorado and that’s how their offensive numbers translate outside of Coors Field. McMahon’s road numbers throughout his career are flat-out ugly—.216/.304/.360 with only 48 of his career 130 home runs coming on the road. Now you can’t just look at the road numbers and say that’s McMahon’s “true” offensive output. There is good evidence that going from playing at altitude to going down to sea level affects athletic performance until the body adjusts to the new pressure level, and vice-versa. But it is fair to say that McMahon’s offense is inflated overall because of Coors Field. How much is difficult to say, although I’m sure the Cubs analytics people have an idea.
There’s one more “problem” with McMahon, although maybe it’s not a problem. McMahon is under contract for two more seasons at $16 million a year. So he isn’t a two-month rental that the Cubs can let walk at the end of the season. I’m sure that if the Rockies decide to trade McMahon, they’d be willing to eat a significant part of that contract. But how much? I wouldn’t know. I guess it would depend on the quality of prospects coming back to the Rockies.
So if you think McMahon could be the kind of player the Cubs would want as an infielder for the next 2½ seasons, then that contract would be a bonus. If you just want someone to get the Cubs through October, then it’s a bit of an albatross, depending on how much money the Rockies are willing to chip in.
So would getting Ryan McMahon be a good move for the Cubs? To be clear, I don’t think that McMahon would cost Ballesteros or any other top Cubs prospect. It would mostly be salary relief for Colorado and, knowing the Rockies, they wouldn’t do it unless McMahon came to them and asked to go somewhere he could win. I’m thinking it would take someone in the 11 to 15 range from the Cubs prospect list. Or maybe two lottery tickets from the twenties.
Poll
Should the Cubs try to trade for Ryan McMahon?
I’ll try to ask something not related to the Rockies tomorrow night.
Thank you for stopping by this evening. We hope you were able to blow off some steam and feel better. Please get home safely. Let us know if you need us to call you a ride. Recycle any cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again tomorrow evening for more BCB After Dark.