It’s Wednesday evening 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. There’s no cover charge. Let us know if we can do anything for you. The hostess will seat you now. 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 Phillies tonight 7-2. I didn’t see much of this game and I’m glad.
Last night, I asked you if you had the chance to do it all over again, would you still trade prospects Zyhir Hope and Jackson Ferris for Michael Busch? I guess I shouldn’t have bothered to ask, because 95 percent of you said you’d still do it. To be clear, I didn’t just see comments snarking on the Cubs giving up Hope and Ferris on this site. But I saw it enough that I was wondering if it was a more widespread belief than I thought. Turns out, it’s not.
Here’s the part with the music and the movies. You’re free to skip that. You won’t hurt my feelings.
I can’t tell you how I feel about the death of Brian Wilson at the age of 82. I’m a huge Beach Boys fan and more to the point, I’m a Brian Wilson fan. I’d argue, in baseball terms, that no musical group had a higher “peak value” than the Beach Boys did in their Pet Sounds/Good Vibrations/SMiLE period. Yes, the group put out a ton of junk after Brian’s mental and physical health forced him to withdraw from the band in the seventies, but at their peak, there was no one better than the Beach Boys.
I lost my own father to dementia 15 years ago and having gone through that with him, I know that we actually lost Brian Wilson a few years ago. So hearing that he passed today wasn’t quite the devastating blow to me that it could have been. But it bums me out that we had to say goodbye to two of the biggest musical geniuses of American music of all time in Sly Stone and Brian Wilson in the same week.
So tonight I’ve featuring guitarist Bill Frisell playing “Surfer Girl.” The performance is sufficiently mournful that it fits the occasion. But do me a favor and go and listen to Pet Sounds or The SMiLE Sessions (which shows that SMiLE was about 95 percent completed when Brian scrapped it) and remember that there is beauty in the world despite (looks around) all this.
Greg Leisz is on pedal steel guitar, Tony Scherr on bass and Kenny Wollesen on drums.
This performance is from 2014 and in Nevers, France. And I can’t think of Nevers without thinking of director Alain Resnais’ 1959 classic Hiroshima mon amour; which reminds me that I should write something about that film. I actually think I haven’t because subconsciously it intimidates me.
You probably already knew this, but I watch a lot of Turner Classic Movies. It’s my default channel when baseball isn’t on. They sometimes bring in celebrity programmers to present films that mean something to them. Just this past weekend, Paul Giamatti was on to present Carnival of Souls and Rosemary’s Baby. He said that he first watched Carnival of Souls when he was four and it had a big impact on him. My first thought was “Bart Giamatti let his four-year old son watch Carnival of Souls?” How the hell did he get named President of Yale and Commissioner of Baseball after pulling a stunt like that?
Anyway, I tried to think of what films I would present if I ever got asked to be a guest programmer. (And no, this will never happen in a million years.) Too many of my favorite films are stuff like Double Indemnity, Casablanca, In A Lonely Place or a bunch of other films that are played constantly on TCM or that they just don’t have the rights to show. Maybe I could get them to shell out a few bucks for Mad Max: Fury Road, but that’s something that shows up on other cable channels anyways.
One film that I thought of that I could present had a huge impact on me when I saw it when I was a teenager. It’s 1979’s Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, directed by Allan Arkush and starring P.J. Soles, Vincent Van Patten, Clint Howard, Dey Young and the Ramones. This low-budget Roger Corman Production was the right combination of absurdist humor and satire of teenage movies that it hit just the right spot for me as a young, impressionable adolescent. Plus, it’s got the Ramones.
It’s hard to believe that the movie wasn’t written with the Ramones in mind, since they’re pretty much perfect for the part of the superstar rock group in the film. I wish the Ramones were as popular at the time in real life as they were in the film, but hey, the film is a complete fantasy in other ways as well.
Soles stars as Riff Randall, a popular but rebellious kid at Vince Lombardi High School. Her goal in life is to meet Joey Ramone and write songs for the Ramones. In fact, she’s already written one—”Rock ‘n’ Roll High School.”
Joining Randall is her best friend Kate Rambeau (Young), who is a shy, nerdy girl whose hobbies include “splitting protons.”
Kate wishes she could be as outgoing and popular as Riff and she has a crush on the captain of the football team, Tom Roberts (Van Patten). Tom may be a big jock, but he’s as socially awkward as Kate and also incredibly boring, as he starts every conversation with a girl with talk of the weather. But Tom has a crush on Riff, so he goes to Eaglebauer (Howard) for help. Eaglebauer runs an “anything for money” service out of the boys’ room at the high school and his character has a lot of Milo Minderbinder from Catch-22 in him. Anything you need in high school, you can buy from Eaglebauer. And what Tom wants is a date with Riff Randall, despite Eaglebauer telling him that Kate is actually the perfect girl for him.
Meanwhile, Vince Lombardi High has a new principal in Evelyn Togar (Mary Woronov), who is dedicated to a law-and-order approach to the school and that includes cracking down on rock ‘n’ roll. Woronov is the unsung hero of the film alongside her longtime collaborator Paul Bartels, who plays the music teacher Mr. McGee. Togar is a completely over-the-top villain and Woronov plays her with a delicious glee. (And by the way, it’s not a bad idea to watch Woronov and Bartels in later films such as Eating Raoul or Scenes From the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills. Especially Eating Raoul.)
Plus, Woronov and Bartels get the two most memorable lines in the film: Miss Togar’s “Do your parents know you’re Ramones?” and McGee’s “People say that your music is loud and destructive and lethal to mice, but I think you’re the Beethovens of our time.” The mice comment is a reference to a running joke throughout the film—that Ramones music causes laboratory mice to explode.
That running joke is a taste of how deliciously silly Rock ‘n’ Roll High School is. There isn’t any real message in the film other than an underlying taste of anti-authoritarianism embodied by rock music and a skewering of the conventions of teen movies. Will Riff get her song to the Ramones? Will Tom end up with Riff, Kate or neither? Will principal Togar, with the help of her devoted hall monitors Fritz Hansel and Fritz Gretel, bring law and order to Vince Lombardi High? WIll the kids get to see the Ramones in concert? All of these plots are just excuses to bombard us with absurd jokes.
If you’re a Ramones fan, you’ve most likely already seen the film. Their music is featured prominently throughout the film alongside a lot of terrific high school-themed rock, including a Paul McCartney rarity “Did We Meet Somewhere Before?” that was written for the Warren Beatty movie Heaven Can Wait but got cut from that one and recycled for this film.
Here’s the trailer for Rock ‘n’ Roll High School.
And hey, if you’ve got a film that you would present if somehow TCM asked you to be a guest presenter, share it with us.
Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies.
There’s no question that the Cubs are looking to add starting pitching by the trade deadline. Even the famously tight-lipped Cubs president Jed Hoyer said today that:
I think we’ll be looking for pitching, for sure. I think our guys have done a really good job at stepping up…But yeah, I think we’ll be looking for pitching, both rotation and in the bullpen. And that’s not a secret.
I would think that starting pitching is a bigger concern than the bullpen, although I guess you can never have too many relievers. There no telling when another reliever will go down injured or when one or more might turn into a pumpkin. The current batch is pretty darn good though.
I think there’s little question that most of you would like the Cubs to acquire Chris Sale or Framber Valdez if they were to become available. There’s been some talk of Valdez being on the market because he’s a free agent at the end of the year, but the Astros are in first place. Why would they be selling? You can never really tell with the Astros, but even that seems a little crazy even for them.
This year has been a nightmare for the Braves, but Sale won the Cy Young last year and he’s got a rather team-friendly option for 2026. The Braves trading Sale would not only mean giving up on 2025, but on 2026 as well. I can’t see Atlanta doing that.
The two pitchers who have been most associated with the Cubs are Marlins right-hander Sandy Alcantara and Diamondbacks right-hander Zac Gallen. We’ve discussed both of these pitchers in this space before, but tonight I’m going to ask you directly which one you would rather the Cubs trade for?
Alcantara was the 2022 NL Cy Young Award winner, but since then has struggled. He ended up missing all of 2024 with Tommy John surgery and his return this year has been shaky. He’s 3-7 with a 7.14 ERA. His strikeouts are down and his walks are way up since he pre-surgery days. Now he has thrown two quality starts the last two times out—two runs over six innings and no runs over six. He struck out ten in those two games and walked just two. I feel bad pointing out that those two outings came against the Rockies (at home) and the Pirates, two of the worst hitting teams in the majors.
The other thing about Alcantara is that he’s under contract for two more seasons, or rather one more season and a team option with a buyout. So trading for Alcantara wouldn’t be a pure rental. That’s good news if Alcantara returns to being a quality pitcher. It’s bad news if he continues to put up an ERA over seven.
Gallen, in contrast, is a pure rental as he’s a free agent at the end of the year. He hasn’t been injured recently, although maybe it would be a little more reassuring if he had been. Gallen is 4-8 with a 5.15 ERA so far this season. His strikeouts are also down and his walks are up—in fact, he’s leading the league in walks issued (although not walk rate). There isn’t any real good recent indicators either. He had a quality start at Atlanta in his second-most recent start—three runs, one earned over seven—but his last time out he allowed four runs in 6.2 innings at Cincinnati.
The other advantage of Gallen is that because he’s a free agent at the end of the year, the cost to acquire him in terms of prospects is likely to be much less. The Diamondbacks have to trade Gallen or lose him for nothing at the end of the year. The Marlins can hold Alcantara and trade him this winter or next season if they don’t get an offer they like.
So between these two pitchers, which one would you rather the Cubs trade for? There is probably room in the Cubs’ starting rotation for both of them, but I don’t know if the Cubs have the salary room or prospect capital to get both. I don’t know that they don’t either, to be clear. But tonight, I’m asking you to pick one or the other. Or neither. I’ll give you that option.
Poll
Which pitcher would you rather the Cubs trade for?
50%
Sandy Alcantara
(2 votes)
4 votes total
Thanks so much for stopping by. It’s always tough on the last night of the week and it’s good to have some people around to make things easier. Please get home safely. Recycle any cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again next week for more BCB After Dark.