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USA Today:

Stars have been belting out the national anthem before each game of the World Series. Country singers Scotty McCreery, Trace Adkins and Ronnie Dunn performed before Games 1, 2 and 3. And last night, Zooey Deschanel of Fox’s new hit show New Girl did the honors.

How do you think she did

Full story here.

“The Bad News Bears” is subversive from the start, its characters realistic and flawed. Of course, the engine driving this train is the late Walter Matthau, whose  Buttermaker was hired to coach a team of misfits who are so bad at baseball they’re only in the elite league because one the parents sued the league. Most of the Bears’ parents are conspicuously absent at practices and are rarely heard or seen at games. Leaving them out of the movie is a stroke of genius – we’re constantly wondering why one of them didn’t step up to coach the team.

The subversive nature of the movie is exemplified in a performance from the late Vic Morrow. As Roy Turner, the coach of the Yankees, he is openly hostile toward Buttermaker and the Bears in general. While his hostility is certainly not commendable, it comes from an honest source: the Bears have no business in this top-notch league, and there are plenty of leagues where the Bears could have played. “Why did Whitewood [the lawyer who sued to get the Bears (read: his son) into the league] choose my league?” Turner seems to be asking throughout the movie. Cementing the Bears’ outcast status is the fact that every other team in the league is named for a Major League one. I love the moment in the first game when one of the Yankee players hits a home run off of the perpetually wild Rudy Stein. Coach Turner applauds, takes off his cap, wipes his brow, and most tellingly, breathes a sigh of relief. Without a single word, we realize how important the league is to him. Over the course of the movie, we learn of course that it’s too important.

After a humiliating season-opening 26 to zip loss at the hands of the Yankees,  most of the team wants to quit. And so does Whitewood. But Buttermaker, for some reason, sees this gig as a potentially redemptive moment for him, and unlike a million times in the past, he decides to stick it out.

As for the other characters, the movie is a demonstration in how to craft three-dimensional personalities regardless of screen time. Director Michael Ritchie, working from a dynamite script by Bill Lancaster (Burt’s son), crafts an economical, fast-moving story where each character has a big moment. There’s the Muslim Ahmad, desperate to equal his brothers’ athletic feats; there’s the fat kid Engelberg (this movie INVENTED that cliché), who turns out to be a pretty good hitter; there’s the little hot-head, Tanner, unafraid of anything; there’s Jackie Earle Haley’s Kelly Leak, the smoking, cussing, motorcycle riding bad boy ringer who really just needs a hug – which is not cheesy at all because not once does another warm and fuzzy character say he only needs a hug.

A clever subplot is that Amanda Whurlitzer (dude, the characters’ names are even awesome) is actually the daughter of Buttermaker’s ex-girlfriend and the all-around symbol of his failures as a human being. Besides the Ted Williams strikeout, Buttermaker’s other claim to fame is teaching Amanda how to throw a wicked curveball, of which he says, “It’s like a scoop of ice cream, it comes up to the plate and just disappears.”

Of course, the movie comes down to the big game, and Buttermaker’s been bitten by the win-at-any-cost bug.  He finds out that he’s no better than Roy Turner, who  commits a shocking and inexcusable act in the finale (though, as it turns out, Turner really ain’t that bad of a guy). This moment aside, Roy Turner is right, at least at the beginning of the movie – why should the league lower their standards to satisfy a do-gooder City Councilman? He never meddles or cheats, he just coaches his boys.  And in Coach Buttermaker, the Bears learn that their standards should be raised, that they shouldn’t accept losing, and that winning only comes when you do your best.

I knew from personal experience that Henry was a fish when it came to poker, but it was some time later that I found out how truly awful he was.  Before being elected to Congress, he had gone to Sacramento as a state assemblyman.  Wherever politicians congregate, you will find two things — poker games and lobbyists.  As you can imagine, lobbyists are not there to win money from those they spend their lives trying to influence.  But it seems that Henry was so inept that, in spite of their best efforts, they kept beating him.  This so embarrassed the lobbyists that they finally banished him from the game. 

Naturally, once Mr. Waxman went to Washington, I saw him less and less frequently.  Periodically, he would return to L.A., but that was in order to spend time  meeting with constituents and holding political fund-raisers.

Over the years, Henry continued to be a liberal.  He continued to think FDR was a combination of Moses and Santa Claus.  I, on the other hand, who had been raised in a similar middle-class Jewish home, spent the intervening years wising up.

So it was that while attending a party a while back, a celebration of Henry’s 30th year in the House, I asked him what he was up to.  When he said that one of his committees was preparing to investigate Fox News for biased reporting, I couldn’t keep my yap shut and maintain my status as a polite guest.  Instead, after telling him that I thought it was a swell idea, I went on to suggest that when he and his colleagues finished investigating Fox, I trusted they would turn their eagle eyes on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post and our own Pravda wannabe, the L.A. Times.

Henry simply gawked at me.  He looked even more than usual like a fish out of water.  It was as if he thought his old school chum had been replaced during the dead of night by a space pod.

I assume he had heard from mutual acquaintances that I was no longer a Democrat, but he was so obviously unprepared for my transformation into a conservative that I almost felt sorry for him.  There was a moment of shocked silence, almost as if he was hoping I was going to laugh and admit I was just pulling his leg.  Then the moment passed, and he moved off to be among those who thought three decades of Waxman in the U.S. Congress was something worth celebrating.

For old times sake, I have generally left Waxman out of my attacks on liberals in the House.  After all, with the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Charles Rangel, John Murtha, Barbara Lee, Linda Sanchez, Bernard Sanders and Barney Frank, taking up space, I didn’t think it was necessary to focus on my old college buddy.

But things have changed.  First there was the totally irresponsible Waxman-Markey cap & trade bill, which would destroy America’s industrial capacity and send energy costs soaring for every American household, while simultaneously providing our competitors in China and India with every possible advantage.

But, for me, the final straw was Waxman’s voting along with 74 other House Democrats to continue funding ACORN with our tax dollars.  Just as there’s no need to catalogue all of ACORN’s crimes and sins at this time, there’s no reason to bother trying to find a good excuse for Waxman’s defending this gang of creeps and thugs.

At this late date, I am not easily shocked, but I was so shocked and disgusted to find Waxman siding with ACORN that I decided I was going to share a piece of information that should add a measure of embarrassment to his well-deserved shame.

A few years ago, Henry garnered a great deal of publicity when he chaired a committee investigating the use of illegal substances in major league baseball.  I suspect there were a lot of people who had never even heard of Waxman prior to the hearings.  For my part, being a lifelong baseball fan, I was glad to see Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Jose Canseco and Rafael Palmeiro, sweating on the hot seat.

Those punks had done everything in their power to destroy the national pastime by cheating, thereby erasing such honorable names as Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron and Roger Maris, from the record book.

Shortly after the hearings, I had lunch with Henry.  He confessed that he knew so little about baseball, he had no real idea who the players were, and that he was amazed to discover they were so famous that members of Congress and their staffs actually crowded into the hallways to collect autographs.

That was bad enough.  But I then asked him, “If a minor leaguer uses steroids or human growth hormones in order to reach the majors, but stops once he gets there, how long will he continue to test positive?”

Henry admitted he had no idea.

So here was a congressman investigating baseball who not only had no idea who its most famous players were, but no pertinent information about the substances they were being condemned for using.

Now, seriously, do you really think that he knows any more about energy than he does about baseball or poker?

Still, I’m generally willing to cut people a reasonable amount of slack.  But it’s quite another thing to pretend that a community organizer with just four years in the Senate, two of which he spent on the hustings, is qualified to be the leader of the free world.  Even if I approved of his left-wing agenda, I’d find it impossible to make a case for him.  Frankly, if it were up to me, I’d send this Napoleon wannabe to Elba. 

I, on the other hand, a mature and seasoned individual who has never set foot in a law school, would make an ideal leader.  However, I’m put off by politics.  Rather than presidential material, I see myself in the role of a benevolent dictator.  

For openers, I’d censor movies.  It used to be great sport for smart people to ridicule the Hays Office and the Breen Office for keeping a jaundiced eye on Hollywood.  But the plain fact is, movies were a lot better in the 1930s and 40s than they’ve been ever since.  They have been particularly lousy these past couple of decades and, as a movie fan, I’d like to see what today’s writers and directors could turn out if they had to rely on their imaginations and on ours. 

Next, I’d clean up baseball. First, I’d remove all the tainted statistics from the record book of every player guilty of having used performance-enhancing drugs.  Next, I’d kick all 105 major leaguers who were found to be using them out of the game.  Then, I’d boot Bud Selig out as Commissioner.  By not policing baseball as he should have, he encouraged players to cheat.  And for that, he was getting paid about $17 million a year.  That’s a lot of moolah for some schmoe who can’t hit, run, throw or catch.  

For many years, Kenesaw Mountain Landis was pictured as a bad guy because, as the first Commissioner of Major League Baseball, he had banished Shoeless Joe Jackson and seven of his Chicago White Sox teammates from the game.  He took a great deal of abuse because Jackson played his heart out in the 1919 World Series and because the players had been found not guilty of taking bribes by an early version of the O.J. jury.  But Landis said they had all sealed their fates when they went to gambler Arnold Rothstein’s hotel room to discuss terms for throwing the Series. 

The Black Sox scandal, as it came to be known, could have destroyed the game if not for Landis’s integrity.  As a sidebar, it should be noted that in spite of looking like a very austere undertaker, Landis was known as a very soft touch.  Every down and out ex-major leaguer knew that Landis was always ready to reach for his wallet. 

After straightening out baseball and Hollywood, I would turn my attention to Washington, D.C.  With me in charge, people like Barbara Boxer, Harry Reid, Charles Schumer, Pat Leahy, Charley Rangel and Chris Dodd, would all be free to go home and play with the grandkids.  Robert Byrd would be free to go home and play with the great-great-great-grandkids, and Barney Frank would just be free to go home and play. 

With no further need of a Supreme Court, we’d no longer have to sit through such spectacles as seeing the likes of Ted Kennedy, John Kerry and Arlen Specter, sitting in judgment of their betters, people such as Clarence Thomas and Charles Pickering. 

People like Bob Beckel and James Carville, who have spent their lives sucking at the teat of the DNC, would have to find honest work, and I’d see to it that Bill Maher, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews and Al Franken, found employment as a barbershop quartet.  After all, they’re already in perfect harmony, so let these bozos sing for their supper. 

As for George Soros, a man who simultaneously manages to give Hungarians, Jews and money-changers, a bad name, he would go on trial for being a Nazi collaborator.  To be fair, he was still a teenager at the time.  But, like Bill Ayers, he is proudly unrepentant.  As he explained to Steve Croft on “60 Minutes,” if he hadn’t helped the Nazis confiscate the belongings of his fellow Jews, someone else would have.  And, no, he went on, he’s never been troubled by bad dreams or a guilty conscience when he watched his friends and neighbors being herded into boxcars. 

Finally, if I were boss, we’d hear no more claptrap about the Fairness Doctrine.  In case anyone is wondering why, after all these years, the Democrats have declared war on Rush Limbaugh, it’s not entirely their clumsy attempt to distract us from the crumbling economy and Obama’s heavy-handed attempt to turn us into the Soviet Union of America, it’s to help gain popular support for the more aptly named Censorship Bill. 

After all, the other side only has the Oval Office, the House, the Senate, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, the New York Times, the L.A. Times, Newsweek, Time and the Washington Post, whereas the all-powerful conservatives have talk radio. As the liberals are so fond of saying, it’s just not fair.