The late-night/early-morning spot for Cubs fans asks which Cubs prospect will make the biggest mid-season impact.
It’s a new week 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. It’s always good to see a friend, new or old. We still have a few tables available. 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.
Last week I asked you about the Cubs’ brutal schedule to start the season and how many games out of the first 30 the Cubs will have to win before you get worried. Twenty-four percent of you said the Cubs needed to go 13-17 whereas another 21 percent said the Cubs needed to go 14-16. In third place, 19 percent said 12-18 wouldn’t be cause for panic. So basically we got a nice bell curve on this one.
Here’s the part where we listen to music and talk movies. You can skip that if you want. You won’t hurt my feelings.
Tonight we’re featuring pianist Christian Sands playing the Bill Withers classic “Lean on Me.” Joining him are Nick Tucker on bass and Kenny Phelps on drums. This is from 2014.
Billy Wilder was definitely one of the greatest directors in Hollywood history, with such classics as Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, Sunset Boulevard, Stalag 17, The Seven Year Itch, Some Like it Hot, The Apartment and others to his name. But every director has to have a debut film, and in Wilder’s case it was The Major and the Minor (1942), a ridiculous screwball comedy that manages to succeed in spite of itself. Some of that is because of Wilder’s skills in storytelling, but a lot of that was because of the considerable talents of the star of The Major and the Minor, Ginger Rogers.
Rogers stars as Susan Applegate, a young woman from Iowa trying to make it in New York in 1941. Getting sexually harassed on the job by Robert Benchley (well, the character that Benchley plays) is the final straw for her. She decides to take the train home to her mother (played by Rogers’ actual mother, Lela E. Rogers) in Iowa.
Susan had saved an emergency stash for train fare home to Iowa, but when she goes to buy the tickets, she discovers that they’ve raised the prices. She now doesn’t have enough money to get home. But she soon learns that kids 12 and under can take the train for half-price, so she cuts her slacks down to shorts, puts her hair into pigtails and a childish hat and tries to pass herself off as 12-year-old SuSu Applegate.
That’s most of the humor of the movie—the idea that anyone would buy the 31-year-old Ginger Rogers as a 12-year-old. But of course, almost everyone does. But unfortunately for Susan, two people who don’t accept her as 12 are the train’s conductors, who are checking tickets. So Susan/SuSu makes a run for it and hides in the private compartment of Major Philip Kirby (Ray Milland). Major Kirby, of course, completely buys that Susan is a lost 12-year-old named SuSu and gallantly offers to let her stay in his compartment and to help her get home.
The train is delayed by a flooded bridge and Major Kirby is forced to take Susu home, which in this case is a military school for boys where he is the commanding officer. The board of the school is scandalized by this, except Major Kirby explains that SuSu is 12 years old and of course, they all believe it.
The one person who doesn’t believe it is Lucy Hill (Diana Lynn), the teenage sister of Pamela (Rita Johnson), Major Kirby’s financée. Lucy gets the best line in the whole movie when she tells Susan “Stop trying to convince us you’re 12 by acting like you’re six.” Because yeah, Susan is totally doing a Baby Snooks act to pretend to be twelve.
But as luck would have it, Lucy hates her sister and admires Major Kirby a lot. She offers to keep Susan’s secret if she helps her break up Kirby and her sister. You see, Major Kirby knows that the war is coming and he doesn’t want to spend it as the superintendent of a military school for boys in the Midwest. He wants to be transferred somewhere where he can be called into action when the US enters the war, but Pamela is using her family’s wealth and influence with the War Department to keep him at the school. You’d think he’d be grateful for keeping him alive, but no, he wants to get involved in the fighting.
(Left unsaid is why there’s a Welshman in the US Army and why he wouldn’t just go to the British army if he wants to get into the war. But you’re not supposed to ask those questions.)
Of course, all of the boys at the military school are girl crazy and fight among themselves for the chance to woo Susu. Which, thankfully, grosses out the adult Susan, but she has to play along somewhat so as not to blow her cover. There’s a running joke about the Fall of France here and, well, I guess you have to watch it for it to make sense.
The rest of the film is Susan trying to keep her cover and keep her end of the bargain and get Major Kirby transferred to somewhere he’ll see some action when the war comes to America. Meanwhile, she naturally falls for Major Kirby but she can’t tell him that because he still thinks she’s 12-year-old SuSu.
Milland has to play an oblivious idiot for the plot to work. I think he does a good job, but your tolerance for the film is going to depend on how much you’ll accept one character being so utterly clueless—and everyone else going along with it.
But the real star of the film is Ginger Rogers, and she, of course, is terrific. You don’t buy her as a 12-year-old, but you’re not supposed to. You do buy her as a smart, beautiful and resourceful young woman put into an insane situation. Rogers makes The Major and the Minor work and she shows impeccable comedic chops here.
The Major and the Minor was re-made 13 years later as a Martin and Lewis film, You’re Never Too Young. Jerry Lewis naturally plays the person pretending to be twelve and in a nice touch, an all-grown-up Diana Lynn returned in the Ray Milland role.
If you have a tolerance for ridiculousness and an implausible plot in a comedy, you could do a lot worse than The Major and the Minor. No, it’s not one of the great films of Billy Wilder’s resumé, but it’s a funny first effort. And you can certainly see its influence on Some Like it Hot 17 years later.
Here’s the trailer for The Major and the Minor.
Welcome back to those of you who skip the music and movies.
The Cubs have a top ten farm system right now according to most (but not all) of the rankings. The thing that is most unusual about the Cubs system right now is that pretty much all the top prospects are in the upper levels of minors. The system is top-heavy, which is mostly a result of the sell-off (and resulting high draft picks) of 2021 and 2022, which brought in a lot of exceptional talent that was far away from the minors. The problem is that now it’s 2025 and all those prospects are now ready or close to ready for the majors.
It’s a given that Matt Shaw will be starting at third base this year and the rookie made his major league debut in Japan. He’ll have to play well to keep his job, of course, but most observers are reasonably confident that he will.
But tonight, we’re going to ask about the other top prospects who won’t be on the Opening Day roster. Which Cubs prospect (who won’t start the season in the majors) do you think will make the biggest impact in 2025?
In other words, which minor league prospect is going to get the call sometime this season and help the Cubs to what we hope will be a successful season?
All of these players played for Triple-A Iowa last season. The candidates are:
OF Kevin Alcántara
Alcántara made his major league debut at the tail end of last season and held his own in Spring Training. He probably has more upside than anyone in the minors, but he’s also still a raw talent (although not quite as raw as he used to be) and there isn’t an opening in the outfield unless someone gets hurt or Pete Crow-Armstrong struggles.
RHP Brandon Birdsell
Birdsell isn’t the sexiest name in this list, but he may be the one most ready to contribute in the majors. His pure stuff is pretty average, but he has plus command and control which allows his stuff to play up. It seems like we’ve seen a Cubs pitcher with that description do pretty well previously. As a durable starting pitcher, he could easily slot into the number-five starter slot after an injury. And pitchers get injured.
C Moises Ballesteros
Ballesteros’ bat is probably major-league ready right now and it’s a pretty special bat. The issue is his defense behind the plate, which he needs to work on in the minors. Miguel Amaya and Carson Kelly will split time behind the plate this year, but catchers almost always get injured at some point. Will Ballesteros be able to take advantage of the opportunity when it comes?
OF Owen Caissie
Caissie has been dealing with a groin injury all spring, so he had no chance to make the Opening Day roster. But he has tremendous left-handed power, something the Cubs could use badly. His issues include his contact rates (which need to improve) and that he can’t play center field. So unless there’s an injury to Ian Happ, Kyle Tucker or Seiya Suzuki, there’s no room for Caissie in Chicago. Still, if Caissie gets the chance, his power is impressive.
RHP Cade Horton
The Cubs’ top pitching prospect was expected to make his major league debut last season, but he was shut down with a lat strain in June. His stuff in Spring Training looks like it has returned to its 2023 form, at least in short bursts. Again, he could get the call to the majors as soon as there is a vacancy in the rotation. Can he stay healthy long enough to make a big impact?
2B James Triantos
Triantos has a plus hit tool and speed, but little power and defensively, he can’t really play anywhere other than second base or left field. Neither position is open at the moment and the Cubs hope that neither one is.
Of course, I’ll let you vote for “other” if you have someone else in mind to take the North Side by storm at mid-season.
Thanks for stopping by this evening. We hope you had a good time. Please tell your friends about us. Get home safely. Recycle any cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again tomorrow for more BCB After Dark.