The late-night/early-morning spot for Cubs fans asks if Nathan Eovaldi is a good fit with the Cubs.
It’s another week here at BCB After Dark: the coolest spot for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. We’ve been expecting you. Your name is on the guest list. Let us know if we can do anything for you. We’ve saved you a table. 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 Dodgers are going to face the Yankees in the World Series for the first time in 43 years and some people are complaining how this is a sign that MLB is broken. None of them praised MLB last year when the Rangers faced the Diamondbacks.
Last week, I asked you how you would feel if the White Sox left the Chicago area. It seems that while (I assume) most of you don’t like the White Sox, most of you think they are good neighbors as 59 percent of you want them to stay. The other 41 percent said to “kiss ‘em goodbye.”
Here’s the part where I talk about music and movies. You’re free to skip ahead to the baseball stuff at the end. You won’t hurt my feelings.
Tonight we’re going to continue our selections of Halloween jazz with a tune from Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, “The Witch Doctor.” No, this is not the David Seville novelty song from 1958. It’s the title track from the Jazz Messengers’ 1961 album.
Lee Morgan is on trumpet, Wayne Shorter on tenor sax, Bobby Timmons on piano, Jymie Merritt on bass and, of course, Blakey is on drums.
Last week, reader Realist Larry suggested that I check out director John Carpenter’s 1980 film The Fog in my quest for horror films to review this month that don’t turn my stomach. It was a good suggestion. The Fog is violent but it’s not very graphic and the violence that does take place is shrouded in . . . fog. Funny how that worked out. As far as the film itself goes, it’s a mixed bag. There are aspects of it that are excellent and other places where it falls flat. It’s one of those really frustrating films that should have been great but just isn’t. Still, what’s left falls into the “not bad” category.
The Fog is a ghost story. The film starts out with John Houseman telling a group of children a ghost story on a Northern California beach. (Reportedly, Carpenter tacked this scene in post-production to try to get the film to hang together better. Houseman isn’t in the rest of the movie.) The story is about a shipwreck from 100 years ago, where all the sailors died after getting lost in the fog.
That wrecked clipper ship is the ghost at the heart of the film. I’m not really ruining any mystery here, since in the first twenty minutes Father Malone (Hal Holbrook) finds his grandfather’s diary that tells the true story of what happened to that ship in 1880. The owner of the ship was a rich man with leprosy who wanted permission to establish a leper colony outside of the then-small settlement on the Northern California coast. Instead, six locals murdered the lepers and took the rich man’s gold to found the town of Antonio Bay.
As you can guess, it’s now 100 years later and the murdered men are back for revenge. The ghosts are also able to control the local fog to mask their movements.
Every good ghost story needs a spooky atmosphere and that’s where The Fog is at its best. Despite the film’s low budget and some very dated special effects, Carpenter manages to cloud the town with an eerie feel. A lot of fog machines can go a long way. He also picked some great shooting locations on the coast in Marin County. Like in his previous film Halloween, Carpenter contrasts the seemingly idyllic small town life to the great evil that lurks beneath. He aptly captures the beauty of the California coast while setting it up for a story of violence. Carpenter gets top marks for setting the scene.
The cast is also strong. If there is a main character in The Fog, it’s Stevie Wayne (Adrienne Barbeau) a local town leader who runs the radio station from the old lighthouse she lives in. Carpenter mostly relies on a cast he’s comfortable with here. He was married to Barbeau at the time and had made a TV movie with her previously. He brings back Jamie Lee Curtis from Halloween and she brings her mother, Janet Leigh, along for the ride. Charles Cyphers also returns from Halloween as the local weatherman. Nancy Loomis (who was also in Halloween) and Darwin Josten from Assault on Precinct 13 make appearances as well.
The problem is that these actors are split between four storylines that never really come together. Other than her son Andy, Barbeau’s Wayne doesn’t really appear on screen with anyone. She’s talking to the town on the radio and making phone calls, but otherwise she’s isolated in the lighthouse. She’s good at that, but it separates her from the terror that is surrounding the other characters.
Meanwhile, there are three other distinctive storylines. Curtis plays a young woman hitchhiking up the coast on her way to Vancouver and is picked up by Nick (Tom Adkins) and the two of them spend the time investigating what happened to a friend of Nick’s whose boat didn’t return from a nighttime fishing expedition. Leigh plays the town mayor Kathy Williams who is preparing the celebration of the town’s 100 anniversary. She’s also the wife of the missing sailor. Finally, while those other three storylines try to figure out what is going on with the fog, Holbrook’s Father Malone has figured it all out by having read his grandfather’s diary, but no one will listen to him.
And that’s the real weakness of The Fog. Carpenter is constantly switching back and forth between the four storylines. None of them are really the “main” storyline and while three of the groups meet up in the end (Barbeau stays in the lighthouse by herself), they never stop to compare notes and team up. And while this may seem like a fanservice complaint, how do you get Jamie Lee Curtis and Janet Leigh in the same movie and not give them a scene together? The only line of dialog that I caught between the two was Leigh telling Curtis to “shut the door” in the final confrontation with the ghosts. And honestly, she may have been saying it to Nancy Loomis.
There’s also a thematic missed opportunity in The Fog to underline how so many of America’s founding stories are simply lies told to later generations to cover up horrendous atrocities. Leigh’s Mayor Williams is organizing a celebration for the 100th anniversary of the town and the six town founders. Holbrook’s Father Malone warns her that these founders that she’s celebrating were actually murderers, but she doesn’t care. It was a long time ago, she muses. What does it matter now?
But instead of using that as a jumping off point about genocide as a founding principle and what that says about society today that we don’t care, it’s simply window dressing to bring ghosts to a pretty little town.
The Fog is not a bad film by any means, just a missed opportunity. The four disparate storylines don’t really come together. It’s tough to follow them when each storyline is going in its own direction and the film is constantly jumping back and forth between them. As soon as we start to get involved in one story, it’s off to another one. Maybe because of that, I didn’t really get invested in any of the characters, except maybe Barbeau’s Stevie, which is odd because she really doesn’t interact in person with anyone other than her son and his babysitter. But she gets to deliver some cool DJ lines. But the setting and cinematography (cinematographer Dean Cundey—back from Halloween) of The Fog, despite some dated special effects, are really top-notch.
Carpenter himself was reportedly unhappy with the finished product and that was after an early rough cut that he declared a disaster. He remade the film in 2005 with Tom Welling. Selma Blair and Maggie Grace, although he didn’t direct it himself, only serving as producer. And while I haven’t seen that film, the critical appraisal of it has been universally negative. The original has gained cult status over the years and I can understand why. It’s not a bad film at all and the story issues can be papered over with the strong cast and great atmospherics. It gets a “A” for effort and a “C” for execution.
Here’s the trailer for The Fog.
Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies.
Patrick Mooney has a new article in The Athletic today about the Cubs off-season plans. (sub. req.) In particular, he outlines what the Cubs are looking for in a free agent starting pitcher.
One pitcher Mooney mentions is Max Fried, and we discussed him in this space back in August, although that was in the context of whether you’d prefer Corbin Burnes or Max Fried. We may return to Fried later. But another pitcher whom Mooney mentioned as being on the Cubs’ radar is Nathan Eovaldi, who is expected to opt out of his deal with the Rangers this winter.
So how would you feel about Eovaldi? If it seems like he’s been around forever, it’s because he has, at least in baseball “forever.” Eovaldi made his debut with the Dodgers in 2011 and has pitched for the Marlins, Yankees, Rays, Red Sox and Rangers since then. He earned World Series rings with the Red Sox and Rangers.
Eovaldi will turn 36 before Opening Day, so he won’t get a long-term deal, which is probably appealing to the Cubs. He’ll likely be looking for three years and might settle for two and an option. But despite his age, Eovaldi hasn’t really lost a lot. He started out as a flamethrower and while he’s lost a mile or two on his fastball as he aged, he still throws 95 miles per hour on his four-seam fastball. But as he’s gained more experience, Eovaldi is throwing more strikes and relying on his nasty splitter more, which has now become his best pitch. He’s missing just as many bats as he did when he was younger, he’s just doing it differently.
Last season with the Rangers, Eovaldi made 29 starts and went 12-8 with a 3.80 ERA. He was a workhorse with 170 2⁄3 innings. He struck out 166 batters and only walked 42. In fact, his control has been one of the stronger aspects of his game. In 2021 he led the league in fewest walks per nine innings with 1.7. He just walked 2.2 per nine this past season.
Is there anything not to like about Eovaldi? Well, he’s going to be 36 years old and even a luxury car starts to break down with age. He missed 25 days in May last season with a groin strain, although he was fine the rest of the way. He also missed five weeks in 2023 with forearm strain and a month in 2022 with shoulder inflammation. So he is a real injury risk. But he hasn’t missed any extensive time since losing the entire 2017 season to Tommy John surgery. That was his second TJ surgery, after undergoing the procedure in high school in 2007.
On the positive side, Eovaldi probably wouldn’t command such a large salary that the Cubs wouldn’t be able to sign another major free agent. He’s due to make $20 million next season if he doesn’t opt out and I’m sure he wants more than that. But a two-year, $52 million deal with an option? That sounds like something in the neighborhood of what it would take to sign Eovaldi. Maybe the third year comes with a relatively easy to reach vesting threshold.
So what is your take on a possible Nathan Eovaldi signing?
Thanks to everyone for stopping by this evening. I hope we gave you something to do as we wait for the World Series to start on Friday. Please get home safely. Don’t forget any checked items. Recycle any cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again tomorrow evening for more BCB After Dark.