Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

  The screenplay of a recent Amazon release, "Being the Ricardos," features a brief mention of the unfortunate Wally Pipp, discussed yesterday. Desi and Lucille are speaking.  At this point in the plot, Lucille has continued to work within the movie studio system looking for her big break. The decision to try working within the maw of the new technology, television, as an alternative route to stardom is still ahead of them.  Lucille is frustrated because she has been stuck getting bit parts -- just a couple of words beyond being an extra. For example, in one Astaire-and-Rogers movie she played an unnamed hairdresser, seen fixing up Ginger's hair backstage. She had one dispensable line.  To the point: in a key scene in Being the Ricardos Desi and Lucille are speaking. She is excited. A famous actress has taken ill, and will have to back out of a leading role in a big studio project. She thinks she is going to get the part.  So she tells Desi this, but she starts...

Meanwhile, in the baseball world, the Orioles/Yankees played a truly epic five-game series to determine which of them would get into the League Championship. [Can include usual grousing here about how the seasons have gotten too long, going into November is ridiculous, remember tjhe lyrics from a certain Broadway show, etc.] Game three of the series went 12 innings, and ended in a Yankee victory, putting them up two ganes to one. Raul Ibanez was the hero. Game four was another marathon. This one went 13 innings, and this time the Birds eeked it out, on a RBI double from the bat of J.J. Hardy, to make the final score 2 to 1, and to tie the series at 2 games each. It is fair to surmise that after those two back-to-back marathons, both bullpens were exhausted. Something had to give. Unfortunately (for my personal biases) it was Baltimore that "gave." I grew up a Boston Red Sox fan, so my natural reaction in such situations is that the team to root for is the team tha...