Now that he’s on the Yankees Anthony Rizzo would normally be included on the list of players I do not care for — it’s just in my DNA, there’s nothing I can do about it.
But he’s a tremendous teammate and leader, and on his off days from the day job he personally visits sick and dying children through his foundation, with no fanfare or advance publicity. That’s a strong clue to his character.
Plus he lives forever immortalized in Cubs history for catching the final out of the 2016 World Series, and has saved countless errors for his teammates with some of the best glove work at first base that you will ever see.
And then on top of all that he is an extremely smart professional hitter.
Seems to me there are many major league hitters too stubborn and wedded to their particular approach, preventing them from making such mid-AB adjustments, even though that limits your opportunities to grow individually and help your team in important situations.
Rizzo is also known for choking up with two strikes, especially with runners on base or with two outs, a common sense move that nearly all hitters were coached to use for decades but rarely use today. This is not progress. It should be standard practice, because it’s a team-first approach.
He ended up 3 for 4 with 3 HR, a walk and 6 RBI in the game in the video above, a great week for any player at any level.
Okay fine he may be a Yankee but I still love the guy … please don’t let this get around.
After several years on the road playing stadiums she got restless and decided to try show tunes, and auditioned for a Broadway play in 1981, “Pirates of Penzance” with Kevin Kline. She got the role and was nominated for a Tony award, because of course she was.
Then in the mid-80s she got restless and pivoted again — pivot #4 by my count — and recorded some high quality pop/jazz standards with Nelson Riddle and his Orchestra.
Here’s a good example, “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” from her first such album. Not quite Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughn — very few singers are, of course — but still really good.
“Am I Blue”, the type of song Frank Sinatra made famous, and she’s fantastic on it.
Listening to these two tunes makes it obvious that she had the voice to have made a whole career in that vein, which is saying something, because such songs rely heavily on pure vocal chops.
Very few singers have ever made this transition successfully, after starting in a pop/rock style and being hugely successful there and filling stadiums, rather than starting with gospel/jazz/show tunes — I cannot think of a single one. Can you?
But she was not done pivoting yet — she released country/bluegrass/Americana albums as a trio with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris, and traditional Mexican music which was part of her family heritage, and duets with Aaron Neville and Cajun musician and singer Ann Savoy.
She says that everything she sang professionally was something she heard often, and sang with her family, before she was 10 years old.
This tells us that she was authentic to the core, because her entire career was a tribute to her love of singing instilled by her entire family as a young child. Could there be a better better way to create warm lasting memories from childhood than to sing traditional cultural music in harmony with your parents and siblings, and extended family? I cannot imagine one.
Sadly she was diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy after discovering that her voice was deteriorating, sometime in the 2000s. She’s still with us, and can talk, but stopped performing in 2009. She turns 76 this year on July 15.
A very good 2019 documentary “The Sound of My Voice” about her career — and the substantial career risks she took by going solo, then to arena rock, then to Broadway, then to torch songs, then to the trio with Dolly and Emmylou, then to traditional Mexican music — is very much worth watching, and she is immensely likeable in it.
Over these last few weeks as I have learned so much about her, my respect for her has grown quite a lot, as not just an unbelievably great singer but as an artist who refuses to be confined to one style of music and is driven to stretch and take chances, over and over and over again — and yet is somehow nearly perfect at all of it. I really cannot think of anyone else quite like her, male or female.
Thirty years ago Chicagoans learned all about this forgotten tunnel system on April 13, 1992 when the Chicago River would start draining into it after a crew installing wooden pilings in the riverbed accidentally punched a hole through the ceiling of the tunnel system.
First rate musicianship across the board … guitars, drums, and bass especially.
Plus Walter Becker’s overall vibe, with the jacket and tie and the way he moves while he plays guitar, and those background singers sound great and look even better.
The Q&A with the audience is pretty funny, especially when the entire audience laughs at the question about where the band’s name came from, since they were already in on the joke. This band has always had a unique bond with their audience and it shows here, it comes across like a group of old friends who all get all the jokes and obscure references.
The first two tunes are among my favorite Dan records, Peg (4:05) and Kid Charlemagne (9:50)
