On baseball: An unlikely World Series journey

What an unbelievable and unlikely baseball journey it’s been for my adopted (hometown) team, the Washington Nationals. A week ago, at 11:08 p.m. Eastern Time, the Nationals completed a four-game sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals to win the 2019 National League Championship Series. After beating the Milwaukee Brewers in a winner-take-all Wild Card game, then prevailing over the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Division Series, the Nationals captured the team’s first pennant in its brief history since the franchise grew out of the defunct Montreal Expos after moving to Washington, D.C. in 2005. It’s been a time to remember.

Not since the days of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933 has there been a World Series played in the nation’s capital city. It involved the original Washington Senators, who played their games at the long-since-torn down Griffith Stadium in the Shaw neighborhood, near Howard University. Those Senators left town three decades later and are now the Minnesota Twins. Then, a second Washington Senators franchise arrived in 1961 and promptly left town in 1972 to become the Texas Rangers.

In 1904, the Senators were playing so poorly that well-known baseball writer and humorist Charles Dryden famously wrote: “Washington – first in war, first in peace, last in the American League.”

Finally, Washington’s baseball fortunes all changed a week ago on October 15.

⚾️ Prize least expected.

⚾️ Pop the corks. Raise the pennant.

⚾️ Improbable team.

Now, the Nationals will face the mighty Houston Astros in the 2019 World Series starting tonight. Pretty good for a Nationals team that was 19-31 on May 23 and seemed hopeless. The team wasn’t hitting in the clutch, it wasn’t pitching effectively, it wasn’t fielding particularly well. The team’s manager, Dave Martinez, was on the verge of being fired.

Then, the team started winning – and people started paying attention.

“Since baseball time is measured only in outs,” the esteemed longtime New Yorker baseball writer Roger Angell wrote in The Summer Game, “all you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time. You remain forever young.”

While I’ve long been a fan of the San Francisco Giants from living 21-plus years in the San Francisco Bay Area before moving to suburban Maryland two years ago, I’ve (finally) begun taking an interest in the Nationals, too. After all, Nationals Park is only 6.5 miles from our home just across the District line – and I’ve been a baseball fan all my life.

As longtime Washington Post national baseball columnist Thomas Boswell, who’s been around the nation’s capital city writing about baseball through good times and bad – mostly bad – wrote upon the Nationals’ pennant-clinching victory over the Cardinals: “What the Washington Nationals have done this season is like going into your backyard with a spade to plant petunias and, instead, striking oil.

“Their appointment with the World Series, just 14 days after facing elimination in the wild-card game, is like spilling water on Grandma’s painting of an old farm house and finding out she had painted over a still-pristine Picasso.”

Last week’s Game 4 pennant-clinching victory over the Cardinals – another “Curly W in the books” as the team’s radio play-by-play broadcaster Charlie Slowes bellowed in a celebratory tone across the air waves – was part comedy, part horror show. But in the end, the Nationals won 7-4. Indeed, as NLCS MVP Howie Kendrick of the Nationals said, “Some of the best things come from the unexpected moments.” Indeed, they do. How else do you explain the “Baby Shark” phenomenon that’s unified the Nationals and rallied their fan base? I witnessed good fortunes for the Giants in 2010, 2012, and 2014. Maybe, good fortunes will come to the Nationals, too.

So, I say: “Congratulations to the Nationals and good luck!

#STAYINTHEFIGHT

A World Series postscript:

The Washington Nationals won their first World Series title on Wednesday, October 30. They beat the Houston Astros 6-2 in the decisive Game 7 of the best-of-7 series and won the series four games to three. It brought the city of Washington its first World Series title in 95 years.

⚾️ Can you believe it?

⚾️ World Series Curly W!

⚾️ A great victory.

#FIGHTFINISHED

Photo: Courtesy of Google Images.

Getting lost at the Smithsonian with Aasif Mandvi

Aasif Mandvi is a comedian and actor – and, as I’ve recently learned much to my delight, a pop culture fanatic at heart. In his new podcast series, “Lost at the Smithsonian with Aasif Mandvi,” the former “Daily Show” correspondent who now co-stars in the CBS drama “Evil,” gets up close and personal with some of the most iconic artifacts at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

Whether exploring vintage clothing (Fonzie’s leather jacket from “Happy Days”), ratty furniture (Archie Bunker’s chair from “All in the Family”) or mismatched shoes (Dorothy’s ruby slippers in “The Wizard of Oz”), there are endless ways to get lost at the Smithsonian. Mandvi and his guests at the Smithsonian share how these and other items – 10 iconic pop culture objects out of 156 million in the Smithsonian collection – each became defining symbols of 20th century American pop culture.

In the opening episode of the series, we learn why Henry Winkler’s portrayal of “The Fonz” became the breakout character in the mid-70s sit-com “Happy Days” and how his leather jacket became a symbol of coolness in an era of Watergate, when Americans yearned for simpler, happy days. Mandvi interviews Winkler to learn how he was able to turn “The Fonz” into an American icon.

“He was everybody who I wanted to be and who I wasn’t, because I was not in control of my life or my psyche,” said Winkler in describing his portrayal of “The Fonz.”

In the second episode, Mandvi explores the acoustic guitar belonging to José Feliciano, who at age 22 was the first artist to perform a “personalized” rendition of the National Anthem. Today, taking liberties with the National Anthem is commonplace before baseball games and many other American sporting events. However, as Feliciano deviated from the norm when he performed “The Star Spangled Banner” before a 1968 World Series game in Detroit, it nearly destroyed his career. But was it an act of protest or patriotism? You might be surprised by the musician’s answer.

“My version was not outlandish,” recalled Feliciano, now 72, during his conversation with Mandvi. “It was a combination of soul, gospel and because I’m Latin, I gave it a little bit of a Latin feel.”

What began as a chat about Feliciano’s legendary guitar ended up morphing into a thoughtful conversation about race, about patriotism, and what it means to be an American. The blind, Grammy Award-winning Puerto Rican artist also performs a private concert when he’s reunited with his guitar at the Smithsonian.

The third episode, which debuted last week, focuses on the ruby slippers Judy Garland wore in the 1939 film classic “The Wizard of Oz.” As Mandvi recently tweeted, “Click your heels 3 times and say ‘There’s no place like @amhistorymuseum,’ & you’ll be transported to an exhibit that’s been viewed 100,000,000+ times. ... Well, not really. But you’ll get pretty close.”

Curator Ryan Lintelman said of Dorothy’s famous ruby slippers: “So we estimate that since 1979 we we got them, a hundred million people have seen them probably. You know, it’s pretty incredible. And other than like maybe the Mona Lisa, I don’t know that any other museum can really claim that one thing has been seen by so many people,” he said.

Thus far, three episodes of “Lost at the Smithsonian” have aired and new podcast episodes drop each week via Stitcher. Those in the know have hinted that among the future items Mandvi explores include Muhammad Ali’s boxing robe and Mr. Spock’s ears from the original “Star Trek” TV series.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get lost at the Smithsonian.

Listen to “Lost at the Smithsonian” via Stitcher:

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/stitcher/lost-at-the-smithsonian

A postscript: “Lost at the Smithsonian” concluded its run on November 24. Following is a list of themes for each episode:

1. Fonzie’s Jacket
2. Jose Feliciano’s Guitar
3. Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers
4. Phyllis Diller’s Gag File
5. Muhammad Ali’s Robe
6. Carrie Bradshaw’s Laptop
7. Archie Bunker’s Chair
8. Pele’s #10 Jersey
9. Bee Gees’ Silver Suits
10. The Original Muppets

On art and photography: By the light of the silvery moon

A friend of mine recently noted that it must be nice to live in Washington, D.C., and have access to so many varied museums. Indeed, it is – and the great thing about it is most of them offer free admission, too. Take the National Gallery of Art, for instance, which has grown into our favorite museum to visit in the two years we’ve resided inside the Beltway.

In addition to regularly attending the NGA’s monthly “Evenings on the Edge,” in which the east gallery stays open late the first Thursday of selected months, from time to time the NGA also sponsors insightful lectures in conjunction with its ongoing exhibitions.

Last week, my wife and I attended one of these lectures, “Photographing the Moon,” which featured curators from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum discussing the history of photographing the moon and how photography played both a significant role in preparing for the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969 and in shaping the cultural consciousness of the event.

We learned how “the mission, launched within the framework of Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union, was not merely one of scientific discovery and technical prowess. It was necessary, as President John F. Kennedy explained in a famous 1962 speech, ‘to win the battle ... between freedom and tyranny’ and held nothing less than ‘the key to our future on Earth.’”

Buzz Aldrin’s Footprint, July 20, 1969

David DeVorkin, senior curator of astronomy and space sciences, spoke on “Mapping the Moon with Telescopes,” in which he illustrated the interplay of the eye and hand with the development of the photographic process of the moon over the past 150 years and how it impacted the Apollo space program.

Then, Matthew Shindell, curator of planetary science, in “Geology from Orbit: Robots, Cameras and Photogeology,” described the development and impact that photogeology, which provided for early photography of the earth and moon from airplanes, had in establishing a pathway for mapping and selecting landing sites for manned missions to the moon.

Finally, Jennifer Levasseur, curator of space history, showed how images captured by the Apollo Era astronauts formed a framework for our ability to understand human spaceflight today.

The hour-long lecture tied in nicely with the “By the Light of the Silvery Moon” exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, which we viewed afterward. (The exhibition opened on July 14 and continues through January 5, 2020 in Gallery 22 of the NGA’s West Building.)

“By the Light of the Silvery Moon” contains some 50 works including a selection of photographs taken by the unmanned Ranger, Surveyor and Lunar Orbiter missions that were preliminary to the Apollo 11 manned space flight. The landmark event is represented by glass stereographs that were taken on the moon by astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin. They show close-up views of three-inch-square areas of the lunar surface. There are also many iconic NASA and press photographs of the astronauts, which brought back memories of my childhood, that received wide recognition and dissemination following the success of the Apollo 11 mission.

The exhibition also includes lunar photographs collected from the 19th and early 20th centuries, including Warren de la Rue’s late 1850s glass stereograph of the full moon and Charles Le Morvan’s photogravures from Carte photographique et systematique de la lune that was published in 1914, in which he tried to “systematically map the entire visible lunar surface.”

Collectively, the photographs displayed in “By the Light of the Silvery Moon,” ranging from the 19th century to the “space-age” 1960s, “merged art and science and transformed the way that we envision and comprehend the cosmos.”

Credits: Cover photo: By Michael Dickens. Other photos: Courtesy of “By the Light of the Silvery Moon” exhibition. Video: Courtesy of YouTube and National Gallery of Art.

Rhiannon Giddens: A global voice that resonates with curiosity and purpose in these troubled times

Rhiannon Giddens / there is no Other

When Rhiannon Giddens released her latest album, the intense and sparsely-arranged there is no Other – recorded with Italian multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi – earlier this year, it “at once was a condemnation of ‘othering’ as well as a celebration of the spreading of ideas and connectivity and of a shared experience.”

Together, Giddens and Turrisi traced an overlooked movement of sounds originating from Africa and the Arabic world and found common ground in how those sounds influenced European and American music. The original songs which Giddens penned for there is no Other as well as interpretations of others such as Ola Belle Reed’s “I’m Gonna Write Me a Letter,” Oscar Brown Jr.’s “Brown Baby” and the Italian traditional “Pizzica di San Vito,” collectively illustrate both her adoration of Appalachian bluegrass, gospel, opera and traditional Italian music and the commonality it brings to the human experience. Her interpretation of the gospel standard “Wayfaring Stranger” ranks up there with those of Emmylou Harris and Johnny Cash.

It was in this spirit that I saw Giddens and Turrisi perform selections from there is no Other last week in the 450-seat Terrace Theater at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. It was the first time I had seen Giddens in concert. I hope it’s not the last.

Giddens, 42, is a celebrated Grammy Award-winning artist and MacArthur “Genius” Grant recipient, who loves to dig through the past to reveal bold and candid truths about our present. The messages in her songs have drawn upon slave narratives as well as African American experiences, including the 1960s Civil Rights movement, and are often told from the point of view of black women’s suffering and resilience. In concert, Giddens painstakingly takes the time to weave her excellent storytelling skills to put each song into an historical context.

Giddens recently was featured in the Ken Burns Country Music documentary film series. In an interview with the Greensboro (N.C.) News & Record, she said, “I have played country, I have sung country. I’ve listened to country or what we say is country. I’ve played a lot of music that has been funneled into what became country. I play music that country has been borrowed from.

“But it’s just a strand of what I do. You can’t box the music that I do. People ask me all the time, ‘What do you play?’ Well, I play American music. That includes what we would call country.”

Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi

During her performance with Turrisi, the North Carolina-born Giddens sang in a beautiful contralto voice – she’s a conservatory-trained opera singer – and played a 1858 replica of a minstrel banjo as well as octave violin. Meanwhile, the jazz-inspired Turrisi performed on piano, accordion, frame drum, tamburello, banjo and colascione among many instruments.

Over the course of their two-hour show that was full of interplay between these two gifted musicians, Giddens and Turrisi criss-crossed cultures – African, Arabic, European and American – that reflected a wide global sensibility and brought together old and familiar – and new – stories. It was as if a music appreciation master class broke out extemporaneously. There’s a sense of curiosity and purpose in Giddens’ music that is both thoughtful and reflective – and, on this night last week, it was refreshing to hear it resonate clearly during these troubled times we live in.

Credits: Cover photo – courtesy of Google Images. Story photo – courtesy of rhiannongiddens.com. Video – courtesy of NPR Music.