The late-night/early-morning spot for Cubs fans asks you to grade Dansby Swanson’s time with the Cubs
Welcome back to another week at BCB After Dark: the coolest club for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Please come in and join us. We still have a few tables available. There’s no cover charge. 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, 6-2 as Philadelphia clinched the NL East. I missed all but the final three innings of this game. It doesn’t sound like I missed much.
Last week, I asked you which cities would you pick for an MLB expansion franchise. Since the league would only expand in pairs, first place Nashville with 38 percent and second place Montreal with 21 percent were your choices. Portland (the one in Oregon) and Charlotte tied with 12 percent in third.
Here’s the part where I talk about music and movies. You can skip ahead to the baseball at the end if you’d like. You won’t hurt my feelings.
One of the issues with writing about old art—old music and old movies—is that you end up doing a lot of obituaries. And on Saturday, we lost saxophonist Benny Golson at the age of 95. Golson was most famous for the work he did with the Jazztet alongside trumpeter Art Farmer. Golson was also a prolific songwriter and you are probably familiar with perhaps his most famous tune, “Killer Joe.” At least from the Quincy Jones version if anything.
So here’s the original version of “Killer Joe,” with Curtis Fuller on trombone, McCoy Tyner on piano, Addison Farmer on bass and Lex Humphries playing the drums.
This week, I’m going to do one of my favorite types of movie essays, which is comparing an original film to the re-make. The original, which we’ll look at tonight, is 1949’s The Reckless Moment, directed by Max Ophlüs and starring Joan Bennett and James Mason. The remake is 2001’s The Deep End, which was directed by David Siegel and Scott McGehee and stars Tilda Swinton and Goran Visnjic. We’ll look at that film on Wednesday.
In The Reckless Moment, Bennett stars as Lucia Harper, a mother who lives with her kids and father-in-law in a seaside house on Balboa Island in Newport Beach, California. Lucia’s 17-year-old daughter Bee (Geraldine Brooks) has taken up dating Darby (Shepperd Strudwick), a much older low-life and petty criminal. Lucia’s husband is away on business in Europe for an extended period of time, so Lucia takes it upon herself to travel to Los Angeles to tell Darby to stay away from her daughter.
Bee believes herself to be in love with Darby, but Darby offers to dump Bee for $500. Lucia storms off, telling Darby that once Bee learns that Darby was willing to dump her for money, Bee will want nothing more to do with him.
Bee, of course, doesn’t believe her mother. Later that night, Darby shows up at their house in Newport Beach for a little late-night romance with Bee. Darby readily admits that he offered to dump Bee for money, but that he would have just taken her mom’s money and still seen her secretly. Bee is outraged, she and Darby have a fight on the pier outside the house and she storms off.
Next, Darby leans on the wooden railing on the pier. It breaks and he falls into the water.
(Spoilers ahead)
Lucia learns about the encounter and sees how upset Bee is afterwards. Early the next morning, she goes out to the shore and sees Darby lying dead with an anchor attached to his chest, his corpse revealed by the receding tide.
Lucia immediately assumes that Bee killed Darby in a rage and decides to move the body away from the house. She puts it in her boat and dumps it on another part of the island.
Soon after Darby’s body is discovered, Martin Donnelly (Mason) shows up at Lucia’s door. He explains that Darby owed him and his partner Nagel (Roy Roberts) some money and as collateral, gave them a large trove of love letters that Bee had written to Darby. He tells Lucia that the police would be very interested to see those letters and they will unless she pays $5000 by the next day.
Unable to reach her husband while he’s in Europe, Lucia has no way of raising $5000 on her own. She tries every where she can, but without her husband’s signature, no one will lend her the money. She hocks her jewelry, but it’s not nearly enough money.
Meanwhile, through his repeated attempts to collect the money, Martin has become fond of Lucia and the Harper family. He tries to help Lucia and even offers to forgo his share. Unfortunately, Nagel isn’t nearly as understanding or empathetic.
(End spoilers)
I’ve said in the past that Mason was equally good as a hero or a villain, and that all of his heroes had a bit of villainy in them and his villains usually had some redeeming qualities. Here, Mason gets to play both the villain and hero, as Martin goes from a slick-tongued blackmailer to an ally. He’s a bit hard to believe as a tough guy, but to be fair, Mason’s Martin never threatens to harm the Harper family physically. He does have to make it clear to Lucia that his partner Nagel would have no such qualms and Roberts is quite believable as a man of violence. So while it does stretch things that a guy like Martin would get involved with someone like Nagel in the first place, the film does realistically show Martin as the velvet glove to Nagel’s mailed fist in their crime partnership.
Bennett is solid as a desperate mother willing to do anything to protect her daughter. Brooks plays Bee as the kind of over-dramatic teenager that was common in films of that period. The character seems a bit dated, but that was what was expected, so that’s not Brooks’ fault.
The Reckless Moment checks in at a brisk 82 minutes. and Ophlüs keeps the plot moving. Perhaps too quickly, actually, as Martin’s transformation from villain to hero is a little too easy. (Preview—they handle this better in The Deep End.) There is also some terrific shots of Newport Beach when it was still just a small, quaint seaside town and not a crowded playground for the rich and famous.
Overall, The Reckless Moment is a solid if lightweight noir that’s entertaining enough. Mason’s performance is naturally enough the best thing about the film and Bennett certainly holds her own with him. At best, the two actually have some real chemistry. But if you don’t ask too many questions about the somewhat-nonsensical plot, The Reckless Moment remains an enjoyable watch.
As far as I can tell, The Reckless Moment is in the public domain and there are copies all over the internet. There are two or three copies on YouTube and other video sharing sites have copies as well.
I don’t have an official trailer for The Reckless Moment, but here’s a scene from about midway through the film. As a bonus, it features an uncredited appearance by noted character actor William Schallert.
On Wednesday, The Deep End.
Welcome back to all those who skip the music and movies.
We’re two seasons in to Dansby Swanson’s time with the Cubs. Winter before last, Swanson was one of the four “big” free agent shortstops, and the one whom a lot of people, including some around here, was the “consolation prize” or the fourth-best of after Carlos Correa, Trea Turner and Xander Bogaerts.
Swanson’s 2024 season has been difficult, to say the least. When the Cubs were falling out of the race in May and June, Swanson was having a rough stretch. He went on the injured list with a right knee sprain in May and while he only spent the minimum ten days on the list, he certainly didn’t look right when he returned. He finished the first half of the season with a triple-slash line of .212/.282/.350.
But since the All-Star Break, Swanson’s bat has come alive. He’s hit .283/.353/.439 in the second half and his defense is back at Gold Glove quality.
So overall, we’re looking at a rough first half and a strong second half. Swanson’s bWAR is 3.4, which is off of what he did last year but still pretty strong. Compared to those other three shortstops, he’s second this year only to Correa—although Correa has only played 82 games this year, so what he’s done this year is pretty impressive. On the other hand, Correa’s 2023 season was a bust, so Swanson has a higher bWAR than any of the four over the past two years.
What I’m doing in a roundabout way is ask “Has Swanson been worth it?” It’s something that I’ve seen debated on social media over the past week or so. I’m not going to ask that question directly, because then we get into stupid arguments that if teachers make $60k a year, then no ballplayer should make $28 million a year. (True, but irrelevant.)
So I’m just going to ask you to grade Swanson’s past two seasons with the Cubs. You can take his contract into account if you want. Or you can ignore it. But the question is has the signing earned an “A” or an “F”? Or, most likely, something in between.
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