EC's South Island League

[Eugene Church]

[Eugene Church]

MY LIFE IN 1960
EC's Life's Not So Nifty in '60

Time for us to get an update on the World of Music... 10 songs reached the #1 spot on the Billboard Country chart in 1959... in 1960 the top of the chart was dominated by just 5 songs... "El Paso" by Marty Robbins for the 5 weeks of the year... "He'll Have To Go" by Jim Reeves for 14 weeks... "Please Help Me I'm Falling" by Hank Lochlin for 14 weeks... "Alabam" by Cowboy Copas for 12 weeks and "Wings of a Dove" by Ferlin Husky for 8 weeks.

In the merry month of June the buckaroos and little darlin's were spooning to this #1 song by Hank Lochlin... here's "Please Help Me I'm Falling"... please note the great piano playing of Floyd Cramer on this song... he had a way of "bending a note" to give him a distinctive style and sound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DACtnEn_9Os

This song also crossed over to the Billboard pop chart and reached the #8 spot... Hank Lochlin's song was so popular, RCA wrote an answer song to it, made popular by Skeeter Davis of "The End of the World" fame.

Here's Skeeter Davis for all you buckaroos and little darlin's, too, with her answer song "I'm Falling, Too"... Floyd Cramer is playing some great piano licks on this song, too... and the great Chet Atkins is strumming on the guitar strings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SfW314kbBQ

[Eugene Church]

Monday, May 30, 1960

IST PLACE SMILEYS AND 2ND PLACE STOUTS BOTH WIN... GRIN HILL UP BY 2 GAMES OVER CHERRYWOOD IN SI SECONDARY LEAGUE
The first place Grin Hill bats were sizzling on Sunday in the South Island Secondary League... the Smileys kept their 2-game margin over runner-up
Cherrywood.. they trounced the Billings Rams 10-5, while the Stouts were also triumphant... they tamed the Joliet Green Giants 6-3... Grin Hill has
recorded 8 straight victories and has lost only one game this year... in other South Island Secondary League action it was Parkland nipping the Littleville
Supermen 4-3 and St. Dominic downing the Pelham Oaks 8-5.

[Eugene Church]

South Island Secondary League Stars of the Week

[Eugene Church]

[Eugene Church]

[Eugene Church]

[Eugene Church]

MY LIFE IN 1960
EC's Life Still Not So Nifty in '60

Sorry, wish I could say it was better... EC is still living a mundane, lonely life in the USAF... no social life at all... that's why I focused on sports, music and movies... yep, I really enjoy sports and music, but to be honest, movies were not very good in 1959... EC was not impressed with the Academy Awards for that year... the awards are always given out the following year after release... the 1960 Academy Awards are for the movies of 1959.

Sorry, I didn't give out the 1959 Academy Awards... so here they are:

1959 Best Picture:
"Gigi" with Leslie Caron and Maurice Chevalier... EC did not go see it... no interest in it... "Auntie Mame", "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", "The Defiant Ones" and "Separate Tables" were also nominated.
The best one was Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier playing excaped convicts in "The Defiant Ones"... that was the only one that interested me... no, wait, I saw Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"... not very good at all... was a boring movie... I did not see the other three nominees.

1959 Best Actor:
David Niven in "Separate Tables"... Sidney Poitier should have won in my estimation for "The Defiant Ones"... other nominees were Tony Curtis for "The Defiant Ones", Paul Newman "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and Spencer Tracy for "The Old Man and the Sea", which was more boring than EC's life... yep, it was.

1959 Best Supporting Actor:
Burl Ives won for "The Big Country"... I always like Theodore Bikel as an actor... he was in "The Defiant Ones"... but EC would have given it to Gig Young in "Teacher's Pet" with Clark Gable and Doris Day... he also stood out as the second banana in all the movies he was in, playing the happy-go-lucky best friend.

1959 Best Actress:
Susan Hayworth for "I Want To Live"... the movie was too intense... she was executed for murder... but I suppose my Mama would not like it if I didn't pick her... Susan Hayworth was her favorite actress... my Mama named my little sister after her... Deborah Kerr, Shirley MacLain, Rosalind Russell and Elizabeth Taylor were the other nominees.

Best Supporting Actress:
Wendy Hiller won for "Separate Tables"... EC only saw Cara Williams in "The Defiant Ones"... nope, Cara didn't impress much... other nominees were Peggy Cass, Martha Hyer and Maureen Stapleton... none of these nominees had great careers, but Martha Hyer was a looker.

My favorite movies of 1958 were "Run Silent, Run Deep" a submarine thriller starring Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster... "Teacher's Pet", a romantic comedy with Doris Day, Clark Gable and Gig Young... "Vertigo", one of my all-time favorite movie starring James Steward and Kim Novak... it is a fascinating movie made by Alfred Hitchcock... you think it ends several times before it finally does... and "Thunder Road" with a catchy theme song sung by Robert Mitchum, who starred in it... he was a moonshiner running whiskey, the highways and byways in the woods somewhere... I would like to also mention a movie that most people never saw starring John Gavin... "A Time to Love and a Time to Die"... a World War II story with Jock Mahoney (the Range Rider and Yancy Derringer on TV) and Don Defore (Thorny Thornberry on "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet")... back then, I liked it... don't know if it would stand the test of time... but EC enjoyed it back in the day long, long ago and faraway in another place and time.

Now that that's taken care of... here are the 1960 Academy Award winners... now this was a great year for the movies.

1960 Best Picture:
"Ben-Hur"... yep, this was a good one with a great chariot race with Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd... other nominees were very good, too... I would have picked "Anatomy of a Murder" as the best movie... James Stewart, George C. Scott, Arthur O'Connell and Ben Gazzara were in it... both Stewart and Scott were outstanding... it was Scott's first movie... "The Diary of Anne Frank", "The Nun's Story" and "Room at the Top" were the other three nominees... only saw "Room at the Top" and it was slow and boring.

1960 Best Actor:
Charlton Heston won for "Ben-Hur"... personally EC would have given it to Jimmy Stewart for "Anatomy of a Murder"... other three nominees Jack Lemmon in "Some Like It Hot"... he was really good as a gal... just ask Joe E. Brown... Lawrence Harvey in "Room at the Top" and Paul Muni in "The Last Angry Man".

1960 Best Supporting Actor:
The winner was Hugh Griffeth in "Ben-Hur"... sorry, he didn't impress me that much... neither did Charlton Heston... other nominees were Arthur O'Connell and George C. Scott in "Anatomy of a Murder", Robert Vaughn in "The Young Philadelphians" and Ed Wynn in "The Diary of Anne Frank"... hands down, George C. Scott should have won.

1960 Best Actress:
Nope, EC doesn't have much good to say about the ladies... they are super talents, but EC didn't care much for the movies... I enjoyed Doris Day in "Pillow Talk", but I'm not too sure it was worth an Oscar... EC would have given it to her by default... it was the only good movie in the bunch.

1960 Best Supporting Actress:
Sorry, folks... not much to say here, either... Shelley Winters won for "The Diary of Anne Frank"... other nominees were Hermione Baddely for "Room at the Top", Susan Kohner and Juanita Moore in "Imitation of Life" and Thelma Ritter for "Pillow Talk"... I'm sure Thelma Ritter was entertaining in the Doris Day and Rock Hudson classic "Pillow Talk"... yep, give it to Thelma.

And to wrap up the movies for this year, here are EC's favorites:
"Rio Bravo" is one of my all-time favorites with John Wayne, Dino Crocetti, Ricky Nelson and Walter Brennan... and if you wondering about the Italian cowboy in the movie... that's Dean Martin's real name.
"Anatomy of a Murder"is a real good story with a fine cast of James Stewart, George C. Scott, Arthur O'Connell, Ben Gazzara, Eve Arden and Lee Remick.
"The Young Philadelphians" is a legal drama with an excellent cast with Paul Newman, Barbara Rush, Alexis Smith, Diane Brewster, Robert Vaughn ("The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Ilya Kurakin's buddy), Otto Kruger (great character actor), Paul Picerni, Robert Douglas (a great character actor and always a villain), Adam West (yep, that's TV's Batman), Anthony Eisley ("Hawaiian Eye" with Kookie, Cricket and the Gang) and Richard Deacon (a great character actor).

[Eugene Church]

Monday, June 6, 1960

JACKSON STUNS NEW YERBY... KNOCKS YANKS FROM RANKS OF THE UNBEATEN
Yep, it was quite a shootout in New Yerby this weekend... yep, it was quite a game... the
Jackson Jackalopes pulled a big upset in South Island Supreme League circles, winning a
battle royal 10-9 and dropping the New Yerby Yankees from the ranks of the unbeaten... the
Yanks had won their first 9 games this season... however, they still prevail over second place
Delta by 3 games with 4 remaining on the league schedule... in other action the Delta Stars
rapped the Meraux Tigers 7-2... Mystic skimmed past the Zebulon Zips 2-1... and Braxton
bombarded Bar Harbor 9-6.

[Eugene Church]

South Island Supreme League Stars of the Week

[Eugene Church]

[Eugene Church]

[Eugene Church]

[Eugene Church]

MY LIFE IN 1960
EC's Life's Not So Nifty in '60

After perusing the country chart for a good song to play for you buckaroos and little darlin's, too, I just became of aware that 1960 was not a good year for country music... it certainly wasn't nifty in '60... sure there were a few biggies that crossed over to the pop charts and scored top 10 hits there -- "He'll Have To Go" by Jim Reeves, "Wings of a Dove" by Ferlin Husky and "Please Help Me I'm Falling" by Hank Lochlin, but nothing else were mentioning.

Gentleman Jim Reeves was enormously popular in country music and also in MOR music ("Middle of the Road")... that was the first form of adult contemporary music... the MOR stations played a lot of the Nashville Sound... country music with lush strings instead of fiddles and pop background singers like the Anita Kerr Singers... it was easy listening at its best.

Here's one of Jim Reeves' classics "Am I Losing You".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtUcORyHhwA

[Eugene Church]

Monday, June 6, 1960

PARKLAND SOCKS IT TO SMILEYS, SNAPS GRIN HILL'S 8-GAME WINNING STREAK
You can't win 'em all... after winning 8 straight games in the South Island Secondary League, the Grin Hill Smileys fell to the Parkland
Perfectos for only the 2nd loss of the season... all four games in the Secondary League were decided by only one run... the Perfectos
pounded out a 10-9 win over Grin Hill Sunday afternoon on their home field... Grin Hill still has a 2-game edge in the standings over
Parkland and Cherrywood with 4 games to go in the season... in other league games St. Dominic surprised the Cherrywood Stouts 7-6
... Joliet slipped past the Littleville Supermen 6-5 and Billings rallied past the Pelham Oaks 7-6.

[Eugene Church]

[Eugene Church]

[Eugene Church]

[Eugene Church]

[Eugene Church]

MY LIFE IN 2023
EC's Life's Is Filled with Glee in '23

"Wit, Quips and Quotes from the Diamond Minds"

Well now, just who do you think was the best center fielder in baseball history?... Joe Posnanski makes a good case for Tris Speaker in his book "The Baseball 100"... Speaker was known for playing a very, very shallow center field... in his career he had 6 unassisted double plays, where he would catch a fly ball in short center and step on second base and double up a runner... he played so close to the infield, several times a year Speaker would throw a batter out at first base.

Nope, they didn't hit it over his head either... he would go back and haul it in... a la Willie Mays.

From Posnanski's "The Baseball 100"

"There's a famous Joe DiMaggio story that gets at this point. When DiMaggio came up to the Yankees in 1936, he, too, played an absurdly shallow center field. After one game, pitcher Lefty Gomez heard DiMaggio in the clubhouse bragging about how he would make everyone forget all about Tris Speaker, to which Gomez said, "Yeah, that's great, Joe, but let's not make them forget Lefty Gomez. Play deeper."