OCTOBER 31 UPDATE

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Commitments

Dukes, Danika.  P, Running Rebels Gold, to Stanford

Gehrke-Jones, Jacquelyn.  SS, Running Rebels Gold, to Cal Poly

Smith, Christina.   P, TX Katy Express Gold,  to Texas A&M

Baker, Candice.  P,IF, OC Batbusters, to Cal St Fullerton

McClelland, Darcie.  P, Case Batbusters, to Brown Univ

Krzan, Holly.  SS,C, WA Spirit Gold, to Univ Alabama-Birmingham

Gervasi, Kourtnee.   OF, USA Athletics Gold, to Long Beach State

Case Batbusters

After some shifting, we wanted to catch up with Case.  The team is alive and playing winning ball.  Dexter Porter is the Manager now but Jim Dolan, Cliff Murphy and Bob Wenk are still coaching with the club which is 15 -3 through Oct 27th.  Two of three losses were to the Firecrackers with the other to Stealth in a game where we only had 7 players due to SAT testing.  At the Batbusters Octoberfest in Tustin , Case was 5-1 with four shutouts.  Included in the results was a 7-1 victory over American Pastime (Farnsworth) team.  The overall scores were:

Firecrackers 6   Case BB 1
Case BB 7          American Pastime 1
Case BB 5          Legacy  0
Case BB 5          NW Outlaws 0
Case BB 5          RBI Monarchs  0

 Sunday 10-27 scores were:

Case 3 Irvine Sting 0
Case 5  So. Cal Force 0
Case 5  Stealth 2
Case 2  So Cal Waves 0

Movie Trivia

Casablanca .  Ilsa, not Rick, asked Sam to play As Time Goes By.  The producer/director originally wanted Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan to play the leads.  The irony of having Dooley Wilson play Sam is that he could sing but could not play piano.  A modestly-known vocalist of the day, Dooley had a recording of As Time Goes By (rare but I have it), but, when the movie was created, the tempo was changed to a slower beat.  In the original, Dooley races through the lyrics, much like Sinatra in his later version.

Reader Jan Robertson had the most complete answer:  Sam was played by Arthur "Dooley" Wilson, who could not play the piano.  Bogart said "play it, Sam", not "play it again, Sam" as the Woody Allen movie is titled.  George Raft was considered for the Bogart part; a few actresses, including Hedy Lamar and Ann Sheridan were considered for the Bergman part.  Some say Ronald Reagan was supposed to play Rick but others say that's not true.  Who knows?  Love the movie.  I think it was cast perfectly in the end.

Phil Mumma was among the first to weigh in on Gene Autry, but then poses a question to which I do not know the answer: Gene Autry wrote and sang "Here Comes Santa Claus."  What was the corporate name of his string of radio stations, and which was its flagship station?  (As Jay Creps, Jim DiPippo and Gary Stith noted, Autry also wrote Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.) Readers Rog May and  Jay Tresler chimed in with the info that John Wayne played “Singing Sandy.”  The Duke had many assets; like Jimmy Stewart, a fine voice was not among them.  Tresler also thinks Rudolph was the first Autry holiday hit.  Surfing the net, we learn that Autry wrote and sang Rudolph; Oakley Haldeman composed Here Comes Santa Claus in 1947, which was then performed by Autry.  Both are included in Autry’s most popular holiday album.  Did you know there is a town called Gene Autry, Oklahoma ?  A little bit of trivia: the Santa Fe railroad ran gravel hoppers in and out of that area, on a line called the Dolese Spur.  A waitress in a hash house down there was named Kay Starr, who gained her 15 minutes of fame with a song, Bonaparte’s Retreat.  I worked nights on the Santa Fe as a teletype dispatcher to put myself through college – 17 year old kid with a really big train set to play with; learned a lot about railroad cafes like the Green Fly (an old Harvey House) and the women who worked in them.  Some of the finest people I’ve known worked on the railroad; indeed, one of the best-read persons I knew was an uneducated sleeping car porter.  We quite literally passed many a night speaking of cabbages and kings (O.Henry)..

Other Trivia

In answer to readers’ question, yes, the Rayburn Hesse whom Robert Friedman quotes in his recently-released Red Mafiya, is the same Rayburn Hesse who writes SPY.  I was in Russia several times over three decades, and just happened to be there when the Soviet Union collapsed into the dust bin of history.  I have known Friedman for years; fine investigative reporter.  The quote he uses actually comes from a much more detailed interview on the Russian Mafia which I did for McGraw-Hill’s financial publications.

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