It’s another week here at BCB After Dark: the hippest spot for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Come on in and sit with us. We’re waiving the cover charge. The dress code is casual. There are still a few good 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.
Last week I asked you for your opinion of the ABS system, so far. You were mostly positive about it as 45 percent of you would leave it exactly as it is. Another 32 percent think two challenges are too few and would add some more.
Here’s the part where we listen to music and talk movies. You’re free to skip ahead if you’d like.
This week we’re continuing to remember the career of Miles Davis, who was born 100 years ago tomorrow, May 26. So far we’ve looked at Miles’ bebop origins with Charlie Parker and the way he branched out from that with “the birth of the cool” in the late-forties.
I’m very hesitant to talk about music theory because my knowledge of it is definitely elementary and limited. I can’t say I understand a lot of it. But I’ll make a go of it anyway but warn you that if this stuff interests you, you should seek out other sources on it.
The “cool jazz” and “hard bop” (which added rhythm and blues and gospel elements) music that emerged in the fifties tweaked rather than revolutionized jazz music. They all still belonged to the tonal music family that emphasized chord progression and the soloist improvising to keep up with the chords.
Modal jazz turns that on its head. The chords no longer follow a natural progression and are instead usually simplified down. The soloist then improvises over the chords rather than with them. The analogy that makes sense to me is that tonal jazz was “vertical” (in that the soloist was playing with the chords that are written vertically on the page) and modal jazz is “horizontal” (in which the notes are played over the ground laid by the chords). This gives the soloist a lot more freedom to do their own thing, although there are some rules, unlike in free jazz.
Anyways, Miles was always looking for the next big thing and was fascinated by this new, avant-garde approach to music. He found a similar kindred soul in pianist Bill Evans (no relation to pianist Gil Evans, who helped Miles create “the cool”) and began to experiment with modal jazz in his 1958 album Milestones. Miles was pleased enough with the results that he decided to do an entire album of modal jazz: Kind of Blue.
It helped that by this point, Miles had assembled one of the greatest jazz combos ever, which would become known as the first great Miles Davis Quintet or Sextet. Beside Evans on piano, John Coltrane played tenor sax and Julian “Cannonball” Adderley was on alto sax. Paul Chambers was the bassist and Jimmy Cobb was the drummer. Evans already had one foot out the door into his own career so Wynton Kelly replaced Evans on “Freddie Freeloader” and would serve as the final member of that great group.
Kind of Blue revolutionized jazz in 1959. Pretty soon almost everyone was following along with the revolution that brought forth modal jazz. There’s some dispute over this, but most sources claim that it’s still the best-selling jazz album of all time. It’s the album I’d recommend as a first step for anyone interested in getting into jazz.
If you only know two or three jazz songs, you probably know the first song on Kind of Blue, “So What.” There are basically only two chord patterns played repeatedly throughout the tune. The magic comes from what those soloists are able to do over those chords.
Adderley is missing from this performance and Kelly is firmly in as the pianist
And here is an interesting performance of “All Blues.” a song from the Kind of Blue album. I find this interesting because while it’s the music of the first Great Miles Davis Quintet, by the time of this performance in 1964, those musicians had all moved on. Instead, this is the second Great Miles Davis Quintet—Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams—playing the music of the first one.
For Memorial Day, we’re going to do a war movie.
War films have been a part of the art form since the beginning of cinema and few of them are ever better than 1930’s All Quiet on the Western Front. The original is far better than the much-praised (far too much, in my opinion) 2022 version by Edward Berger. The original film was directed by the Moldovan emigré Lewis Milestone (né Leib Mendelevich Milstein). While Milestone directed many other films in many other genres, and his films The Front Page, Of Mice and Men and The Strange Love of Martha Ivers are rightly considered masterpieces, All Quiet earned him the reputation of someone to hire if you wanted to make a great war picture. Twenty-nine years after All Quiet, Milestone made his final war picture, the Gregory Peck-vehicle Pork Chop Hill (1959). While Pork Chop Hill is not in the same class as All Quiet on the Western Front, it combines the earlier film’s well-shot combat scenes with a similar cynicism about the men who make war, although sympathetically portraying the poor ordinary men who are forced to fight it. While not a classic, Pork Chop Hill is a strong portrait of America’s “Forgotten War” in Korea.
Peck had read the account of the Battle of Pork Chop Hill in a book by military journalist S.L.A. Marshall and thought it would make a great movie. Peck bought the rights for his own Melville Productions and cast himself as Lt. Joe Clemons, who was a platoon commander in K Company assigned to take what the Americans called Pork Chop Hill in Korea. It’s a curious order as the hill was of little military importance. Additionally, the peace talks are in full swing and a ceasefire could be agreed to at any time. In fact, soldiers get warned not to be the last person to die in this war.
Peck plays Clemons as a kind of war movie stereotype—the hyper-competent junior officer who is frustrated with the army, the war and his men, but heroically carries out his orders to the letter, although not without a little grumbling first. Because he’s played by Peck, Clemons is not overly-demonstrative about anything, but that kind of stoic heroism works in a film like this.
There isn’t a lot of time for character development in Pork Chop Hill. Most of the film is dedicated to the action scenes, However, the film does feature Woody Strode as Private Franklin, a soldier who has no intention of dying in a battle that he doesn’t care about for a country that doesn’t treat Black men like himself well. Along with James Edwards as a more traditional corporal who keeps Franklin in line, Pork Chop Hill at least nods at racial issues and the newly-integrated U.S. Armed Forces in the Korean War. But it really only nods at it, as Pork Chop Hill is not at all interested in giving Franklin or any other Black soldier an excuse to not to fight. In the end, Clemons wins the battle of wills with Franklin, just in time to win the actual battle with the Chinese.
Pork Chop Hill also highlights the newly-integrated army by casting George Shibata as Lt. Suki Ohashi, who ends up in command of a different platoon tasked with taking Pork Chop Hill. Shibata wasn’t an actor. In fact, he was the first Japanese-American to ever graduate from West Point and was a Korean War veteran, although he served as a pilot and was not involved with taking Pork Chop Hill. By 1959, he was a law student at USC and got cast because the real Joe Clemons thought he looked like his own Japanese-American executive officer at Pork Chop Hill. Shibata is a natural at the part, which makes sense considering his military background. He would go on to finish law school and pass the bar but would act occasionally on the side from his legal work.
In fact, Pork Chop Hill made a conscious decision to hire unknowns, other than Peck. Strode, a former professional football player who had been playing bit parts in Hollywood for five or six years, got his big break in Pork Chop Hill. Other actors who show up as soldiers read like a who’s who of seventies television: Rip Torn, George Peppard, Norman Fell, Robert Blake, Gavin McLeod, Harry Guardino, Harry Dean Stanton and Clarence Williams III are all in this film. Martin Landau made his screen debut in Pork Chop Hill. It can be fun seeing how many future stars you can spot.
But neither the acting nor the dialogue are the reasons to watch Pork Chop Hill. Instead, the film goes from one well-done action war scene to another. Milestone truly captures the brutal, violent chaos of the battlefield. Communication is constantly breaking down and it gets people killed. There are friendly-fire incidents. There was a reason Milestone was known for his war pictures because most of the film is dedicated to those battle scenes and they don’t disappoint.
Pork Chop Hill isn’t a revisionist war movie. It questions the heroic narrative of war stories but in the end, kind of unconvincingly comes down on a pro-war side. There’s a Chinese propaganda broadcaster who asks the soldiers over some loudspeakers why they are willing to die for such a pointless piece of land. Honestly, it’s a good question that the film only unconvincingly answers by saying it’s a test of wills between freedom and communism. But the film never questions the heroism of the men actually fighting the battle, except maybe Strode’s character. Like Lt. Clemons, these men aren’t born heroes. Most of them would rather not be. But the Battle of Pork Chop Hill thrust heroism upon them, which was, according to the filmmakers, why it was important.
Here’s a battle scene from Pork Chop Hill. The trailer itself that’s online is kind of boring, with Gregory Peck spending a lot of time just explaining to you why it’s an important movie that you should see. Here you get a good look of the best reason to watch Pork Chop Hill.
Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies.
I don’t really know what to say about the Cubs at the moment. They clearly aren’t playing well. They clearly are getting more than their fair share of bad luck. But to be honest, they were getting more than their fair share of good luck during the two ten-game winning streaks, when they were playing well.
Tonight I’m going to ask you about rookie C/DH Moisés Ballesteros. He was one of the bright spot of the first month of the season. For his first 25 games of the season, he was hitting .387 with a .435 OBP and five home runs. Even as a pure DH, those kinds of numbers are special.
Over his last 18 games, things have turned around and not in a good way. Not counting today when he went 2 for 2 with a walk, Ballesteros is hitting .057/.177/.133 with just one home run. Ballesteros was 3 for 53 over that span, although today moves it up to 5 for 55. That’s still a .091 batting average.
So should Ballesteros get sent down to the minors to get his groove back? I think there’s a good argument that you learn to hit major league pitching in the major leagues. Sending someone down to Triple-A doesn’t help with that. On the other hand, the Cubs are still trying to win games and a guy with little to no defensive value who isn’t hitting isn’t helping the team win. He might also be able to work out whatever is wrong with his swing right now better down in Iowa.
The current problem with sending Mo Baller back to Iowa is who to call up in his place. The logical situation would be to send him down once Matt Shaw comes off the injured list. We hope that’s soon, like in the next week, but we don’t know.
The only position players in Iowa currently are second baseman/center fielder James Triantos and outfielder Justin Dean. Dean is hitting .226, albeit with a .366 OBP, but that doesn’t seem like he’d be much of an improvement over Ballesteros, other than he can play the outfield. Triantos is hitting .284/.317/.420 with four home runs and 11 steals would seem the more logical option. Both players could pinch-hit and pinch-run. Dean has a lot more defensive value than Triantos, who is just playable at both of his positions.
The other option would be corner infielder BJ Murray, who is hitting .315 with a .404 OBP and six home runs. He’d require a move on the 40-man, but if the Cubs aren’t planning on calling up Dean, he’d be an easy choice for being designated for assignment.
Of course, anyone called up now could be sent back down when Shaw comes off the IL.
So now it’s your turn. Do you think it’s time to shake things up by sending Ballesteros down to Iowa? Or do you think today is a sign he’s breaking out and will be a productive hitter again any time now?
Thank you for stopping by tonight. We really need to stick together in times like this. Please get home safely. Recycle any cans and bottles. Don’t forget any personal items. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again tomorrow evening for more BCB After Dark.