The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
Anyway, without attempting to reach a verdict on whether the strategy of walking Henderson with malice aforethought was good or bad, I decided to review each of his 61 IBBs to see what the situation was when he was walked and what the result was. Henderson played from 1979-2003, but had no IBB in 1979, 1998, and 2001-03.
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There's a meme/joke form popular on Twitter wherein someone posts an interesting and often weird and unusual item and gives it the caption "We used to be a proper country." Sure, it's a joke, but a lot of them are tinged with a hint of serious regret. There's a sense of lament for things lost, probably never to be recovered. This is how I feel about the lost art of the triple in baseball.
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I've finally got numbers for 3 consecutive years. 2021 was 172 movies (163 distinct with a few watched more than once). 2022 was 133 movies (no duplicates), and this year it's 152 with a trio of movies seen twice.
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As we wait for the coming of Christmas and look towards a second Advent some day, it is pleasing and useful to recall that each of us can be Scrooge; both his flaws and failings and his salvation and redemption.
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So, be counter-cultural at Christmas and watch a modern parable about walking in the footsteps of Christ. Capra is less explicit than modern day films about "faith," but the movie is better for it. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Ignore the philistines who tell you that Die Hard is more of a Christmas move than this because more of it is set during the actual holiday.
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The further along this list we go, the more it feels like these movies hardly need me to suggest, describe, or recommend them. How can you not already be well familiar with and sold on White Christmas? Admittedly, it is a movie written to capitalize on the popularity of the tune first featured in the film Holiday Inn. (That also starred Bing Crosby, but there he was opposite the great Fred Astaire.) But Singin' in the Rain was a musical built around using old songs from the the studio's back catalog and it's the greatest musical of all time, so...
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If you're a fan of Tom Hanks and/or Meg Ryan, or of rom-coms as a genre, you may well be familiar with their third collaboration: You've Got Mail. It's a smaller subset of this group of folks, I'd wager, who are familiar with the film which they were remaking. In 1940 Ernst Lubitsch made the romantic Christmas classic The Shop Around the Corner. (One of the homages to the original in the Hanks/Ryan film is the name of her bookstore, The Shop Around the Corner.)
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This movie has a high bar to clear for a lot of folks, I know. It's a foreign film, sub-titled, and anime to boot. The director is known for his esoteric and unconventional narratives and cinematography and the movie itself has unusual lead characters and, though straightforward, a convoluted narrative. But I really think it's worth your time. Ultimately, though full of dark themes and ideas, harrowing and dangerous situations, and the innocent in peril, ultimately I find it a beautiful film about redemption and hope. I hope you'll give it a chance.
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Miracle on 34th Street is a genuine Christmas classic. It's a tale of the triumph of faith over expectation. It's not a perfect film, though the conclusion is very nearly so.
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Barbara Stanwyck stars as a writer for a women's magazine; most she writes about food she makes, but also the larger context of her life and her general circumstances of life on a rural farm in Connecticut with her husband and their children. The only catch is, the whole thing is a fiction she's put over on the public and her editors as well.
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Neh 