Cubs BCB After Dark: Who will have the better Cubs career?

It is Wednesday evening here at BCB After Dark: the coolest club for night owls, early risers, young parents and Boys Fans abroad. Come in to escape the heat. Have a cool drink with us. We still have a few tables available. There is no admission charge tonight. Bring your own drink.

BCB after dark is the place to talk about baseball, music, movies, or anything else you want to get off your chest, as long as it follows the site’s rules. The night owls are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in the next morning and afternoon.

The Cubs got swept 6-1 tonight in Cleveland for the first time this season. Frankly, this game was a pointless waste of time. I guess not if you’re a Guardians fan. But even then, the game was boring as the Cubs didn’t put up much resistance.

Last night I gave you a few more options for what the Cubs could do at catcher. Of the choices I gave you, 45 percent chose the “none of the above” or “stick with what the Cubs currently have” option. I know the list of available catchers isn’t great, but sticking with what the Cubs currently have isn’t great either. Nineteen percent of you wanted the Cubs to sign Danny Jansen.

Here’s the part where I talk about jazz and movies. You can skip that if you want. You won’t hurt my feelings.

Tonight is the 81st birthday of pianist, music educator, jazz presenter and author Ben Sidran. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but Sidran, a Chicago native, joined an early version of the Steve Miller Band at the University of Wisconsin in the early ’60s. When Miller and Boz Scaggs left school to pursue their musical dreams in San Francisco, Sidran stayed, earned his degree and then his Ph.D. Since then, he’s lived in Madison, where he continues to play, teach and write. And yes, he’s played as a session musician on several Steve Miller and Boz Scaggs records over the years.

Here’s a song by Sidran called “Too Many People.” This is one of those pandemic-era Zoom videos. Also featured are Ben’s son Leo Sidran and John Ellis.

The Sea Wolf (1941) was directed by Michael Curtiz and is not to be confused with The Lord of the Seas (1940), also directed by Michael Curtiz. The Sea Wolf The film stars three of my favorite actors from that era – Edward G. Robinson, Ida Lupino and John Garfield. At least, those are the three most frequently mentioned actors. In reality, the stars of this film, based on a Jack London novel, are Robinson as a cruel sea captain who hides both a secret and surprising character depth, and Alexander Knox, who plays a young, naive writer who is clearly a stand-in for London himself. Garfield and Lupino are clearly playing supporting roles, but both were such good actors that they elevate the film.

The Sea Wolfas well as the novel it is based on, is a bit of an oddball, as it combines the kind of sea-based action/adventure stories that Hollywood made so many of during this period (including the not to be confused The Lord of the Seas) with a strangely talkative debate about philosophy. Robinson plays Wolf Larsen, a cruel captain who runs a ship full of convicts and degenerates with an iron fist. He shows no pity and expects none. But Larsen hides a few secrets. One of them I won’t give away, but the other is that he is actually a very intelligent, educated and self-taught man. His cruelty comes from his philosophy, which teaches him that life is a war of all against all and that no one looks out for anyone else’s interests but his own.

Knox plays Humphrey Van Weyden, an idealistic writer who is taken by Larsen’s ship—The spirit—Rescued from the water after a collision between two other ships, he is picked up along with Ruth Webster (Lupino), a woman on the run after escaping from a women’s prison. Ruth is nearly dead after being fished out of the water, so she is absent from much of the first part of the film after her introduction. She is below deck on her deathbed. I firmly believe that pretty much every film could use more Ida Lupino, so her absence from much of the first part of the film was a disappointment for me. Thankfully, she makes up for it with a strong performance in the final third of the film.

Garfield is George Leach, a man committed to serving on The Spirit because he’s on the run from the police for unspecified reasons. He’s also someone who doesn’t follow orders well, which is clearly going to be a problem with Wolf Larsen as the captain. And of course, it becomes a big problem as the film progresses.

After the first mate dies, Larsen hires Humphrey as cabin boy, taking over Leach’s job. (Leach was promoted to the position previously held by the new first mate. He is not happy about the promotion.) Humphrey is not happy to be on the ship, but he sees the captain and crew as interesting subjects for a book he is writing in his spare time.

The cook is, of course, called Cooky and played by the great Barry Fitzgerald. Cooky is Larsen’s full-time spy. He steals Humphrey’s writings and shows them to the captain. Far from being upset by Humphrey’s description of him as a cruel and heartless leader, he values ​​Humphrey’s writings and sees him as someone worth discussing philosophy with. Larsen also likes the idea of ​​being the star of Humphrey’s book.

This is where the film gets really talkative. Larsen and Humphrey debate the basic nature of man and whether society is a Hobbesian war of all against all or whether people can really be kind and help each other. This part could get really bad, but luckily Robinson is such a good actor that he makes Larsen’s speeches interesting enough. It helps that Larsen likes to punctuate his speeches with random acts of cruelty and violence.

Leach, who we also forgot about, becomes increasingly dissatisfied with his treatment on the ship. And the ship’s doctor (Gene Lockhart) decides that Ruth (who is also forgotten about in the film) will die if she doesn’t get a blood transfusion. He says he needs someone with the same blood type, and since real blood types hadn’t been discovered yet (the story is set around the time of the novel’s publication in 1904), they decide that Leach has the same blood as Ruth because they’re both criminals. They get lucky and they actually do have the same blood type, and Ruth recovers.

Ruth is grateful that Leach saved her life, and a romance begins between the two. Leach begins to make plans for how he and Ruth can get off the ship.

There is a lot of action in The Sea Wolf between all the philosophical debates between Larsen and Humphrey. There’s a mutiny and a sea battle and several fights. Supposedly there was a lot more philosophy in the script that would make it clear that Larsen symbolized Nazi Germany and Humphrey symbolized the Anglo-American democracies, but that was mostly cut from the final film. You can still see it if you look for it, though.

The action is well done for a film from 1941. This is to be expected, because Curtiz not only had The Sea Wolf, But Captain Blood, The Charge of the Light Brigade and of course The adventures of Robin Hood. Later he headed Casablanca. Curtiz had an incredible range, which actually hurt his reputation because he was never pigeonholed into a single style. But he was one of the studio system’s greatest directors.

But the real reason to watch The Sea Wolf is the performance of Edward G. Robinson as Captain Wolf Larsen. Larsen is a complex and compelling character, as well as oddly likable. He is both the star and the villain of the film, and he commands the screen every time he is on. Lupino and Garfield are underused until the final third of the film, but they answer the call when it finally comes. Knox is good, playing a stand-in for Jack London and having to defend decency and empathy for his fellow man. It’s a thankless role and hard to shine in, but he’s a decent foil for Robinson.

Here is the trailer for The Sea Wolf. They really emphasize the connection to Jack London.

Welcome back to those of you who avoid music and movies.

Tonight I’m going to pit two rookies against each other – Michael Busch and Pete Crow-Armstrong. The question is simple: Which of the two do you think will have the better career with the Cubs?

Busch has clearly been the better player this season. In fact, if you go by WAR (either Baseball Reference or Fangraphs), Busch has been the Cubs’ best player. Busch has a batting average of .260/.348/.458 and 16 home runs in 115 games. And after some struggles early in the season adjusting to first base, he’s been a defensive asset at the position.

Crow-Armstrong has struggled at bat, but he’s actually been much better in August. Even if he’s been out lately, at least he’s making more contact and hitting the ball harder. His batting average is .209/.250/.346 with four home runs in 82 games. That’s not good, but at least he’s moving in the right direction with a .275 batting average in August.

But of course, Crow-Armstrong is on the roster not because of his bat, but because of his incredible glove. It’s hard to believe that by the end of his career he won’t have multiple Gold Gloves at a premier defensive position.

Still, Crow-Armstrong’s defense doesn’t make up for the difference between his bat and Busch’s right now. But Crow-Armstrong is only 22 years old. Busch is already 26. When Busch was Crow-Armstrong’s age, he had just finished his career with the Great Lakes Loons in what was then the Low-A Midwest League. (Busch didn’t actually play at 22, because that was in 2020.)

Of course, there’s the whole baserunning thing. We’ve already talked about that. Busch is slow. Crow-Armstrong is not.

The point is that Crow-Armstrong is still far from his peak age and Busch is already there, so Crow-Armstrong has plenty of time to improve, but Busch may not.

So who will have a better career for the Cubs: Busch or Crow-Armstrong?

Thank you for stopping by tonight and this week. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. Clean up your table. Recycle all the cans and bottles. Get home safe. Tell your friends about us. And come back next week for more. BCB after dark.