Month: September 2004

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We Recommend We Recommend

thursday, 9

Ah ha. Now here s a little known news story that barely made it into the papers during the GOP convention in New York last week. While there was a distinct lack of lack of racial diversity at the elephant fest and no, don t say there was, because this was a show of mean, mean old white men, and that s all there is to it someone got smart and sent those beautiful, smart Bush twins out on the road campaigning with a rabbi and a representative from the American Hindu Association. I don t know why this didn t get more coverage. Especially when their bus broke down. Yeah, they were in a rural county in the battleground state of Missouri when this happened and had to approach a farm house for help late at night. When they asked if they could all spend the night there, the farmer told them they were more than welcome, but that he only had two extra beds and that one of them would have to stay in the barn. The rabbi quickly offered to sleep in the barn and everyone settled in. But about an hour later, the rabbi knocked on the door and said to the farmer, I am so very sorry, but I just cannot sleep in the same space with a pig. It s just my religion, you know? So the Hindu man quickly offered to give the rabbi his bed and sleep in the barn. Well, as the news account goes, about an hour later the Hindu man knocked on the farmer s door, saying, Oh, I am so, so very sorry. It s just that I can t sleep in the same space with cow. For me, too, it s a matter of my religion. The Bush girls, Barbara and Jenna, heard this and begrudgingly offered to give him their bed and headed out to sleep in the barn. About one minute later, the farmer heard the knock on the door. Wondering what the hell was up this time, he answered the door. It was the pig and the cow. AAAAAAAAA ahahaha. Okay, so I am working at the level of a third-grader here. So what? Nothing could be any worse than the speech those little redneck brats tried to deliver at the white man-fest in New York last week. I loved it when the girls said that after graduating college, they were going to just goof off for four years like their dad. Did Michael Moore write their speech? And how dare they say that about their illustrious diddy? I know he s been on vacation more than any United States president in history, but he s working. Just a few months ago I mentioned on this page that he d been too lazy to take his mother s picture off of the one-dollar bill, but I see he s gotten busy and taken care of that. I saw her face on a box of Quaker Oats just the other day, looking just as jolly as ever. And whoever finally gave W. something to slick down the fuzz on his little head needs to tell Laura that The Joker look is not working this season. Yes, she did a decent job of reading the monitor while delivering that cover-all-the-bases speech someone wrote for her and made it seem like every horrible thing her husband has done was the right thing to do, but she still came off as just a wee bit smarmy like the rest of her clan. Oops! Did I say, clan? I feel certain, for some reason, that the Bush family still has slaves tucked away somewhere on that ranch in Crawford, Texas. Oh, sure. They trot out Condi and Colin now and then, but I still say those daughters have lifted waaay more beers than they have a finger to do any work. And God love em for being drunks. If they would just not be so mean to their Secret Service people and would stop sticking their tongues out at news crews, they might someday be remotely likeable. In the meantime, a brief look at some of what s going on around town this week. Tonight, the only place to be is at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music for a closing reception (6-8 p.m.) for The Beatles! Backstage and Behind the Scenes. The exhibit leaves on the 13th for Milan, Italy, and tonight s throw-down includes live music by the David Brookings Band along with food and drinks. After that, stop by the Blue Monkey Midtown for those wild and wacky Jumpin Chi-Chi s.

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News The Fly-By

HERCULES IN NEW YORK

“I finally arrived here in 1968. I had empty pockets, but I was full of dreams. The presidential campaign was in full swing. I remember watching the Nixon and Humphrey presidential race on TV. A friend who spoke German and English translated for me. I heard Humphrey saying things that sounded like socialism, which is what I had just left. But then I heard Nixon speak. He was talking about free enterprise, getting government off your back, lowering taxes and strengthening the military. Listening to Nixon speak sounded more like a breath of fresh air.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger at the RNC, September 1, 2004

Listening to Nixon speak may have been a “breath of fresh air” in 1968. But now it’s almost 30 years to the day since Tricky Dick resigned in shame. And the Governator’s political action hero said a lot of things that just weren’t true. Nixon was a known liar and a certifiable crook, and when it came to political pool, Nixon liked to play dirty. As the star of Kindergarten Cop suggests, “Nixonian is an adjective” to which we can all proudly aspire.

Perhaps for his next big stump-thumper Arnold can insert a line about the good old days, when he used to play dress up in his daddy’s Nazi uniform and obsessively listen to recordings of Hitler.

Plante: How It Looks

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Film Features Film/TV

Culture Clash

It would be difficult to find a drearier way to spend two-and-a-quarter hours than with Vanity Fair the Reese Witherspoon vehicle that is generating Oscar buzz for the actress whose trademark contribution to her films is zest and spunk. Vanity Fair, a bloated but hollow, gaudy antique of a movie based on the 1848 classic novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, is zest-free and spunkless and feels every bit of the book s 900 pages.

Vanity Fair, the novel, was a biting social satire of high society, and by 1848, England was overdue for a little introspection. It was then a somewhat gentler version of a caste system, with mostly impenetrable divisions and few opportunities to ascend from, say, orphan to duchess.

In the film, Becky Sharp (Witherspoon) is a poor orphan. The child of a starving artist and a French-opera chorus girl, she has the good fortune of landing a governess job, thanks to her command of the French language. While she doesn t much care for her employers a family of downtrodden semi-nobles led by the unshaven Sir Pick Crawley (rumpled, mischievous Bob Hoskins) she cunningly manages to work her way through the family to its richer side in the form of Pick s spinster sister, Matilda (Eileen Atkins, who strikes the same profound balance between wit and worry she brought to the role of healing crone in Cold Mountain). A secret elopement with Matilda s dashing but ne er-do-well favorite nephew, Rawdon (James Purefoy), estranges Becky once again from opportunity, leaving her to her own devices. (Husband Rawdon is too busy gambling to do much work, and he s not a good gambler.)

Meanwhile, Becky s sole childhood friend, Amelia (Romola Garai), has found romance of her own in the form of handsome but fickle soldier George (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers). George wants what he can t have and doesn t want what he s got, and Becky s irrepressible spirit are alluring and annoying to him all at once. Becky dodges George s advances and continues her social climb, but she lands again in treacherous territory: the lust of the rich but restless Marquess of Steyne (Gabriel Byrne). Only then does Becky realize that there is a price for the many jaunts she has taken up the social ladder and that her own choices may have been poorer gambles than even the luckless Rawdon has taken. War with France escalates, and all around her, Becky finds that there are greater concerns than getting invited to tea parties. But still she climbs.

Part of the joy of watching period films is the exoticism of the past: Did people really wear that? Is that really how people brushed their teeth back then? Look at those sideburns! In that regard, Vanity Fair satisfies. There is plenty of curiosity. We look in on a particular time when the English too suffered a yen for exoticism that of colonized India. Britons were fascinated by all things Indian dress, dance, curry and so Vanity Fair is chock full of images, references, and cutaways to the influence of Indian culture on England and vice versa. So, in some ways it s intriguing to look in on people who are looking in on people. But the people we are looking in on are drawn out in all the detail of a novel, not a film. Scenes are mercilessly episodic in nature; there is no momentum from one scene or moment to the next, no glue, no push.

Compounding this is the fact that key plot points are revealed as exposition after the fact: the elopement, an important death near the end. You can do this in a novel, but in film we must see. The essential axiom of good story-crafting, Show, don t tell, is ignored in favor of a literal, dusty, page-by-page approach. Vanity Fair is, in all fairness, sumptuous to look at and its performances are inarguably well-acted. Witherspoon proves again that she can rise (or descend) to whatever occasion is required (be it the hoity-toity Importance of Being Earnest or the white-trashy Freeway). But Vanity Fair suffers too badly from the Who cares? to impress anyone of high or low society.

Bo List


In this election season, are you weary of the he-said/she-said ineffectuality of American media, which too often offers a balanced depiction of what opposing sides say about real situations rather than an honest evaluation of the situations themselves? If so, then check out Control Room for a reminder of how important a free press can be.

Directed by Jehane Noujaim, an Arab-American filmmaker who also co-directed the popular business documentary Startup.com, Control Room is a glimpse at the inner-workings of Al Jazeera, the Arab CNN, as it covers the U.S.-Iraq war.

Broadcasting out of Doha, Qatar (also the location of U.S. Central Command during the war), Al Jazeera boasts an audience of more than 40 million and offers an independent alternative to the government-run stations in most Middle Eastern countries.

Noujaim s camera follows Al Jazeera from March 2003, on the eve of the war, through the U.S. siege of Baghdad, never leaving Doha and never making judgments.

Demonized by officials within the Bush administration, particularly Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, yet also condemned by the notorious Iraqi information minister for promoting American propaganda, the hard-working, multinational crew of Al Jazeera comes off as less self-deluded (or self-righteous) about its supposed objectivity than American news sources while being just as, if not more, reliable. That the Bush administration accuses Al Jazeera of being a propaganda tool while cozying up to something as Orwellian as Fox News is telling, especially in light of a respected publication like The New York Times having to apologize for misleading pre-war coverage after buying into the administration s own argument for the war.

This word objectivity is almost a mirage, an Al Jazeera producer tells one accusatory and uncomprehending American reporter, before turning the tables on her to question the detachment of the U.S. media. The implication seems to be that objectivity is impossible and that truth, honesty, and fairness are higher callings. To the chagrin of the U.S. military leadership, Al Jazeera s coverage of the war focuses on the human cost. They show graphic depictions of casualties on both sides of the conflict and seem puzzled by their American counterparts refusal to do the same.

If Rumsfeld thinks Al Jazeera is an instrument of anti-Americanism, then he might be surprised to see Control Room and meet some of the journalists he s demonized. Iraqi-born senior producer Samir Khader rhapsodizes over the American dream. He says that if he were offered a job by a U.S. network, he would take it. He yearns for his children to go to college in the U.S. and stay there.

More compelling is Al Jazeera producer Hassan Ibrahim, a Sudanese national formerly of the BBC. Ibrahim has a wry, sharp wit and doesn t hide his bemused contempt for the American actions in Iraq, which he describes as democratize or we ll shoot you. Editing footage of angry Iraqis greeting American troops, Ibrahim deadpans, These are the Shi a of southern Iraq, receiving Americans with flowers.

Yet when some of his frustrated colleagues yearn for an equal military power to stand up to the U.S., Ibrahim defends the essential goodness of the American enterprise. The United States is going to stop the United States, he insists, perhaps thinking of Election Day. I have absolute confidence in the American Constitution and the American people.

Over the course of Control Room, we see Ibrahim sparring with Marine Lt. Josh Rushing, a media-relations specialist at CentCom who is often perplexed by the questions and attitudes of Arab journalists. Ibrahim tells Rushing that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at the core of Arab attitudes about U.S. intervention. Rushing tells Ibrahim that for Americans, these are separate issues. And you can see pretty clearly how one man s propaganda can be another man s truth.

Rushing comes across as a profoundly decent man perhaps the most sympathetic figure in the film attempting to represent his country without misrepresenting the truth. As the film, and the war, progresses, Rushing and Ibrahim develop a mutual respect and then a friendship. Perhaps after the war they will sit down together for coffee and Rushing can meet Ibrahim s wife, who lives in Israel.

Rushing says that he s learned a lot about Arab attitudes, and after the war he wants to work to bridge Arab and American perspectives. Here s the hopeful ending befitting an American movie. But, as always, things aren t so simple: Salon.com reported earlier this summer that Rumsfeld s Pentagon forbade Rushing from reacting publicly to the film. In response, the 15-year military career man quit the service. n

Chris Herrington

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News The Fly-By

HERCULES IN NEW YORK

“I finally arrived here in 1968. I had empty pockets, but I was full of dreams. The presidential campaign was in full swing. I remember watching the Nixon and Humphrey presidential race on TV. A friend who spoke German and English translated for me. I heard Humphrey saying things that sounded like socialism, which is what I had just left. But then I heard Nixon speak. He was talking about free enterprise, getting government off your back, lowering taxes and strengthening the military. Listening to Nixon speak sounded more like a breath of fresh air.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger at the RNC, September 1, 2004

Listening to Nixon speak may have been a “breath of fresh air” in 1968. But now it’s almost 30 years to the day since Tricky Dick resigned in shame. And the Governator’s political action hero said a lot of things that just weren’t true. Nixon was a known liar and a certifiable crook, and when it came to political pool, Nixon liked to play dirty. As the star of Kindergarten Cop suggests, “Nixonian is an adjective” to which we can all proudly aspire.

Perhaps for his next big stump-thumper Arnold can insert a line about the good old days, when he used to play dress up in his daddy’s Nazi uniform and obsessively listen to recordings of Hitler.

Plante: How It Looks

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

POLITICS: Hatful of Names

HATFUL OF NAMES

The decision by Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton to fill a staff vacancy with county commissioner Linda Rendtorff has set off abundant speculation as to who might be appointed by her colleagues to fill her seat when she leaves the commission to become , Wharton’s director of community services, probably next month.

In the next several days, there are quite likely to be both adds and drops to the current list of those thinking about the Rendtorff seat (or being thought about by others).

But, for the record, here — in no particular order — are some of the names:

George Flinn, the politically active doctor who ran unsuccessfully for county mayor in 2002 and for the District 5 city council seat last year;

Billy Orgel, a well-known developer and communications entrepreneur;

Mike Carpenter, president of the West Tennessee chapter of Associated Builders and Contractors and a sometime Republican campaign professional;

Wyatt Bunker, former member of the county school board and recently unsuccessful candidate for a city council seat;

Jim Strickland, a lawyer, Democratic activist, and another recently unsuccessful city council candidate;

Mary Harvey Gurley, widow of the late Paul Gurley, a top aide to former city mayor Dick Hackett, and a respected political activist in her own right;

Karla Templeton, an unsuccessful candidate for Rendtroff’s seat in the 2002 election and the daughter of current commissioner John Willingham;

Karen Hill, former Shelby County school board member.

Joe Cooper, veteran pol, former county office-holder in various capacities, and frequent candidate for political office;

Mike Ritz, real estate developer.

Jay Sparks, pharmacist’s aide and Democratic activist.

All except Strickland, Cooper, and Sparks are established or presumed Republicans. District 1, which contains the inner ring of county suburban areas as well as outlying city areas, is considered a heavily Republican district. Besides Rendtorff, it is currently served by Willingham and current chairman Marilyn Loeffel.

As of now, no one candidate is thought to have a lock on enough commission votes to guarantee appointment. Whoever gets the nod will ultimately have to stand in a special election, the date of which remains highly uncertain. One variable is the fate of a proposed referendum on a city charter commission — which, if called by enough qualified signatories and deemed to be both constitutional and legal, could happen as early as December. Other scenarios call for an election next year or even the year after.

Rendtorff had long been restless in her commission seat and had sounded out her fellow commissioners last year about a possible interim appointment to the legislature when District 89 state representative Carol Chumney was elected to the council. That plan ran afoul of a legal ruling that she would have to resign her commission seat in order to serve the two or three months remaining in Chumney’s term until the newly elected Beverly Marrero could be installed.

Rendtorff, who once served as state human resources director in the administration of former governor Lamar Alexander, is chairman of the commission’s community services committee. Ironically, she assumed office a decade ago as an appointee, following the death of then commissioner Mike Tooley.

She has indicated she will remain in office long enough to vote on the commission’s next chairman — who is expected to be current vice chair Michael Hooks.

The other surprise Wharton appointment last week, that of state Senator Roscoe Dixon to become assistant chief administrative officer, hasn’t yet encouraged the same degree of speculation. Dixon will succeed the retiring Earnest Gunn, who will temporarily serve as Wharton’s executive assistant, a position held until recently by veteran mayoral aide Bobby Lanier.

Lanier , who had served each of the last several Shelby County mayors, was forced to resign following disclosures that he had intervened to secure an enhanced pension arrangement for former mayoral aide Tom Jones, now doing a one-year term in federal prison in Arkansas after pleading guilty to improper use of county credit cards.

Dixon has indicated he will resign his senate seat in January. Governor Phil Bredesen will then have 90 days to order a special election to determine his successor.

Isaac Hayes and David Porter should be proud. The two vintage Memphis tunesmiths have set many a rocker in motion, but one of their compositions last week exceeded even its previous lofty heights.

Janice Bowling, the arch-conservative candidate for Congress in Tennessee’s 4th District and avid spokesperson for traditional morality, was conspicuous improvising a hard-rocking boogie from her delegates’ row during one of the musical interludes played by a band on the floor of the Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden in New York. The song that had her moving and shaking? “Soul Man.”

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News News Feature

CITY BEAT: First Impressions

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Between them, Kevin Kane, Dave Woloshin, John Elkington, and Rick Spell have witnessed hundreds of sporting events and concerts– in Memphis and in other cities. That’s part of what they do as spokesmen for, in order, Memphis tourism, Memphis Tigers football and basketball, Beale Street, and the Tigers’ booster club.

They’ve seen smash hits and duds and everything in between, including the 1983 opening of Beale Street and the 1991 opening of The Pyramid. Their jobs are secure and not dependent on the success of the Grizzlies or FedExForum. So it’s encouraging for the future of Memphis that each of them sees generally good things ahead for FedExForum, which opened last week to the media, moguls, and the masses.

“All the mistakes that were made at The Pyramid have been corrected on this one,” said Kane, head of the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau. “The luxuries and fan-friendly stuff that were cut out of The Pyramid have not been shortchanged at FedExForum.”

He was at The Pyramid’s grand opening for a concert by the Judds.

“The bathrooms flooded, and the acoustics were awful,” he recalled. “That was the public’s first experience with their new building, and I witnessed the whole thing. Within 30 days of the opening, it had a reputation as the worst-sounding shed in the music business.”

He expects FedExForum to enjoy a honeymoon that should last three or four years and make it as much of a defining feature for Memphis as the Superdome once was for New Orleans.

“My only concern is how all that traffic is going to work together in a four-block area on a busy weekend for Beale Street when there is a sold-out event at FedExForum and something else at The Orpheum,” he said. “With The Pyramid you had people spread out.”

He would like to see The Pyramid mothballed if necessary but not torn down.

“I still say The Pyramid is to Memphis what the Gateway Arch is to St. Louis, in a city where we basically have a pretty nondescript skyline,” he said.

Woloshin, who’s also a host of a sports-talk show for WMC, was at The Pyramid in a tuxedo for the opening game in 1991, when Memphis lost to DePaul on a controversial call in the last minute.

“A facility does create buzz,” he said. “But I don’t think The Pyramid was a negative for the University of Memphis by any means. For fans, though, it was never finished and was more spartan than they thought it would be. But on the outside The Pyramid is a better-looking building than FedExForum and a landmark.”

As he toured the new building, Woloshin was impressed by the fancy tile floors, the copper highlights and polished wood in the restaurants, the video scoreboard, and the luxury suites. And he thinks the lower ceiling will make FedExForum louder than The Pyramid, where the ceiling is nearly 300 feet above the floor.

“You got a palace,” he said. “Very few things in life that have incredible expectations ever live up to them. This building, in my mind, surpasses them.”

Spell, past president of the Tiger Club board of directors and season-ticket holder for several years, agrees.

“It’s the best basketball arena I’ve ever been in,” he said. “You can just sense how close to the court everyone is. Everybody with U of M is worried about their seats, but there are three seating bowls, and the two lower bowls are better than the lowest bowl in The Pyramid.”

His only concern is that concession prices could drive fans away.

Elkington, the developer of Beale Street, was an early proponent of the new arena’s location south of Beale, instead of on Union Avenue. Beale Street tenants face higher maintenance fees for street upkeep and security, but some are already seeing a boost in business. Elkington said Wet Willie’s did $75,000 in business last weekend.

“It’s been a long and winding road, but this has really worked out great, and this arena makes it better,” he said.

When the media toured FedExForum last week, a Grizzlies executive used the expression “price-insensitive” to describe the patrons of the premium seats and restaurants. As a price-sensitive casual fan and one of The Pyramid’s few defenders, FedExForum seems to me to be built with an eye on Tunica as much as that red-headed stepchild on Front Street. The lavishness, extravagance, $250 million price tag, and glitz are exactly the point. Food is an attraction, albeit a lot more expensive than the subsidized casino buffets. Stores, video screens, and restaurants are supposed to make fans part of an interactive “experience” instead of passive spectators. There’s enough luxury to make the rich feel like they’re, well, rich.

Facing a future of losing at least $300 million a year in entertainment spending to Tunica, Memphis finally will compete with the casinos on their terms.

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News

BREDESEN NAMES McLIN TO APPEALS BENCH

Governor Phil Bredesen on Wednesday appointed Criminal Court Judge J.C. McLin of Memphis to the state Court of Criminal Appeals. Judge McLin’s elevation fills a vgacy created by the retirement of Judge Joe Riley, who assumed a role as chief disciplinary counsel for the Court of the Judiciary on July 15..

The 57-year-old McLin, a native of Gibson County, was elected to the Criminal Court bench in a special election in 2000. He had previously been an assistant District Attorney and had pursued a private practice in criminal law. He is a graduate of Lane College of Jackson and holds a master’s degree from the University of Tennessee at Martin, as well as a doctor of jurisprudence degree from UT-Knoxville.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Busy Bodies

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were

not the only Republicans running for office in New York this week. Several more were on hand in the Tennessee contingent at the party’s national convention, the great majority of them thinking long and hard about running for the U.S. Senate in 2006.

In no particular order, they were:

Former 7th District congressman Ed Bryant, who was one of the first to declare for the office that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist now holds. Frist has indicated he will vacate his Senate seat in order to prepare a presidential run in 2008.

Current 7th District congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, who has not yet tipped her hand but would be regarded as a formidable competitor if she made the run.

Current 3rd District congressman Zach Wamp of Chattanooga, who may have been in and out of Memphis were you read this. Wamp was also scheduled to hit Nashville and other points in a statewide tour designed to underscore his seriousness.

Chattanooga mayor Bob Corker, who ran for the seat in 1994 and later served as former Governor Don Sundquist‘s first finance director.

Nashville state representative Beth

Harwell, who doubles as state Republican chairman.

Former 4th District congressman Van Hilleary, now of Nashville, who will succeed Memphis lawyer John Ryder as the GOP’s national committeeman from Tennessee after the convention.

Not all are likely to run at the same time, of course.

As fellow Chattanoogans, for example, Wamp and Corker would be direct rivals. “We share the same constituency and the same financial base,” Wamp said frankly this week.

“But I’m going after it very seriously right

now, and I’m not going to be turned away by thoughts of Bob Corker or anybody else.”

The conventional wisdom is that if Corker, a self-made multimillionaire who has deeper pockets, gets in, Wamp would have no choice but to get out. Corker is less definite than Wamp about running, but people who know him well say to count him in and that that was the meaning of his recent decision not to run for reelection as mayor.

Bryant has an equivalent concern with Blackburn. “That would be hard,” he admits, if both he and she were forced to compete for votes in the 7th District. But he is confident that the statewide name recognition he earned in his 2002 Senate primary contest with Lamar Alexander would stand him in good stead against Blackburn or any other competition.

Meanwhile, the other major factor in the Senate equation, Frist himself, made it plain in a chat with Tennessee reporters that he does in fact intend to make the seat available. “Nothing has changed,” he said when asked about the declaration he made when first elected in 1994 that he would serve two terms and two only.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Frist also expressed pride, as chairman of the RNC platform ,committee this year, in having overseen what he described as an “Open Road” platform. “Ours is a party with many different views on abortion, on taxes, on Iraq, and every other subject. Nobody has to believe any one thing.”

The senator dismissed the prospect, raised in a recent syndicated column by Robert Novak, that he had

suffered some erosion of support among rank-and-file

Republicans. And he said that relations with his

predecessor as majority leader, Mississippi senator Trent Lott,

were “good.” Said Frist: “We’re close personal friends.” The Tennessee senator was among the first influential Republicans to conclude that Lott’s usefulness as

leader might be ended because of an impolitic statement in

late 2002 seeming to praise the late SenatorStrom Thurmond‘s segregationist views.

Categories
News News Feature

FROM MY SEAT

A SPECIAL BAND OF ‘BIRDS

I had more fun — by a longshot — watching the 2004 Memphis Redbirds than I did any team since the 2000 Pacific Coast League champions. Despite what you may ascertain from the RedbirdsÕ promotional efforts, for me itÕs still about the players I see at Third and Union. And this was a special group, an almost-perfect Triple-A amalgamation of hot prospects, big-league veterans aiming to get back to The Show, and longtime minor-league grinders just wanting a sniff at the big time. ItÕs a team I wonÕt forget, made up of a few players deserving of one more tip of the cap.

Dan Haren — Two St. Louis Cardinal starters — Matt Morris and Woody Williams — can be free agents at seasonÕs end, and the likelihood is that only one will return. And the reason wore number 55 in Memphis this summer. Haren dominated PCL batters, becoming the third Redbird in six years to start the Triple-A All-Star Game. Despite spending most of August with the parent club (where he won a pair of spot starts), Haren won 11 games and led the PCL with 150 strikeouts. The 6Õ5″ righty even showed some pop at the plate, hitting four home runs. HeÕll be 25 when the 2005 season opens . . . and a member of the CardinalsÕ starting rotation.

Yadier Molina — Mike Matheny is a special catcher, having won two gold gloves and established a major league record with 252 consecutive errorless games. But his days are numbered behind the dish in St. Louis. MolinaÕs Triple-A seasoning was interrupted by his promotion June 3rd (when Matheny had to go on the disabled list), and he never returned to Memphis. He has every bit the arm Matheny does, appears to be more comfortable at the plate (he hit .302 with the Redbirds), and has been learning how to handle pitchers from the very best at Busch Stadium.

Scott Seabol — Quickly: who is the RedbirdsÕ alltime home run leader? Yep, this is your man. With 31 dingers this season (on top of the 16 he hit in 2003), Seabol passed Keith McDonald for the top spot in the ÔBirds record book. He played a terrific third base (and second, when called upon), and managed to be a leader for this squad despite his mind being primarily with his twin sons, born nine weeks premature in July. HereÕs hoping the 29-year-old Seabol gets to add to his one big-league at bat . . . and soon.

Kevin Witt — What a monster season. The former Blue Jay, Padre, and Tiger established new Redbird records with 36 home runs (which led the PCL) and 107 RBIs. He and Seabol gave the Redbirds two players with 30 home runs for the first time in team history. WittÕs August may have been the greatest individual month in Redbirds history when he hit 14 home runs and drove in 40.

Bo Hart — If the Cardinals arenÕt going to give this soon-to-be 28-year-old a spot on their bench, there has to be a big-league club that will. After his overnight success in 2003, Hart had but a cup of coffee in St. Louis this season. He continued to sparkle for Memphis, though, hitting .297 and playing as solid a second base as youÕll see in Triple-A. HeÕll never play every day in the majors, but heÕd be a valuable asset off the bench, adept at both middle infield spots and ALWAYS hustling. On August 22, Hart joined a select few in Memphis baseball history to pick up five hits in a single game.

John Gall — With Larry Walker now in the fold, and a guy named Pujols occupying first base in St. Louis, GallÕs future is elsewhere. HeÕs a clunky outfielder who needs to find a home at first base (or, ech, DH) . . . but he can flat-out hit. One of two Redbird All-Stars this season, Gall hit a pair of home runs on the night (June 21) Memphis set a franchise record with seven homers in a single game.

Ray Lankford and John Mabry — Either of these longtime big leaguers could have snubbed the Cardinals when asked to take a Triple-A assignment. Neither did, and now both have a shot at their first World Series ring. As the second Redbird batter of the season on April 8, Mabry drilled a ball over the 400-fight sign in centerfield at AutoZone Park. Seemed like something special was on the way.

I can go on and on with this bunch: Al Reyes (a PCL-leading 23 saves), Colin Porter, Chris Prieto (28 stolen bases), Steve Stemle (now second alltime with 19 career wins for the Redbirds), Alan Benes, Mike Mahoney (how about that game-winning hit August 24 when the Redbirds rallied to score four runs with two outs in the ninth?). Hats off to a baseball team that gave all it could, and cross your fingers, Memphis, that the 2005 squad can approximate its standard.

Categories
News The Fly-By

COPS GONE WILD

Reports confirm that 29-year-old Reginald Abram, Crit-tenden County’s chief jail administrator, was arrested after he received $5,000 to $6,000 worth of cocaine to be delivered to an inmate. It is not known whether or not Abram was trying to pad his résumé in an attempt to get a job in the Shelby County evidence room.

Plante: How It Looks