With under two months to go, the Cincinnati Reds are neck-and-neck with the St. Louis Cardinals in hopes of making the playoffs and winning the division. They have just finished a series with the Atlanta Braves, and are facing the bottom of the win barrel in the Pittsburgh Pirates, who are 36-68.

Rewind to 70 years ago, where the Reds are running away with the conference, six games in front of the Chicago Cubs. They had just faced the lowly (that season anyway) New York Giants and were facing the Atlanta Braves, who at the time were known as the Boston Bees. They were also, at that time, dead last in the league.

While the Reds are working as a unit, knowing who can perform and what to expect, the Reds in 1940 under Bill McKechnie were facing a problem. Their star catcher, Ernie Lombardi, was injured, so the Reds turned to backup catcher Willard Hershberger as they had done in previous instances.

In 63 games, Hershberger hit .345 for the Reds in 1939, and he was again serving well as Lombardi's backup in 1940. On July 31, in a match against the Giants, the Reds lost 5-4 after they scored four runs in the ninth.

Hershberger, who had recently lost 15 pounds as the result of the summer heat, felt that he was being attributed the blame for the loss to New York and that they would have won had Lombardi been catching the game. McKechnie told him it was nonsense but the signs pointed to Hershberger reaching rock bottom in his life.

The Reds had a day off on August 1, and on August 2 they had a doubleheader with the Boston Bees. Third-string catcher Bill Baker caught the first game, and Hershberger caught the second. The Reds again blew a late lead and lost the game, 4-3 in 12 innings as Hershberger went hitless in five at-bats.

Again, he took the blame for the loss, telling McKechnie how his father had committed suicide and threatening to do it himself. McKechnie calmed him down and after meeting for an hour Hershberger went to his hotel room.

Before the first game on August 3, Hershberger failed to show for pregame activities. Presuming that he was still troubled, McKechnie had Reds publicist Gabe Paul talk to him, telling him he didn't have to suit up but at least wanted him in the stands in street clothes.

He had still not shown during the first game and Paul went up to his hotel room, finding it locked. He talked with hotel management and forced his way in. Upon reaching the bathroom the sad truth unveiled himself.

Willard Hershberger had committed suicide that day, the only major league player to do so, at the age of 30. The Reds learned of his death after the second game of their doubleheader.

While the Reds finished the season 38-21 and won the World Series that season, it was a bittersweet celebration as they won it without Hershberger. Black bands were worn on the Reds uniforms for the duration of the season and they later retired his #5 jersey in honor of him, though it was later worn by fellow Reds catcher Johnny Bench. August 3 remains a sad day in baseball history, especially Reds history.

Filed under: Gossip, Television

Soap opera star Victoria Rowell is rumored to be in talks with ABC about joining the popular daytime drama 'All My Children.'

According to reports, the former star of 'The Young and The Restless' revealed herself online that she was in discussions with 'All My Children' producers about taking up residence in the fictitious Pine Valley, Pennsylvania.

Now the magazine, ABC Soaps In Depth is reporting that a network rep said that Rowell is "not headed to the ABC sudser at this time."

The 51-year-old actress joining 'All My Children' wasn't a stretch for most daytime television fans since it's widely known that Rowell is best friends with 'All My Children' actress Debbi Morgan.

Regardless, the Portland, Maine-bred talent is currently promoting a novel titled 'Secrets of a Soap Opera Diva,' which is supposedly a story thinly based on her stint at 'The Young and The Restless.'

The actress's work on 'The Young and The Restless' earned her 11 NAACP Image Awards and three Daytime Emmy Award nominations.
For related stories, read: 'Tika Sumpter: Soap Siren Stars in 'Stomp the Yard' Sequel'

& 'Darius McCrary: Former Child Star Becomes Soap Stud.'

 

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Football's dark and bitter comedy is enough to drive anyone to smoking

Earlier this week I was fondly recalling the days when football fans threw toilet rolls on to the field. "They threw other stuff, too," I waffled nostalgically. "If memory serves, Hull fans used to pelt goalkeeper Ian 'Keckers' McKechnie with oranges, because he'd once told the local paper he liked them. Just as well the Tigers' custodian hadn't expressed a fondness for melons or coconuts, or he'd likely have suffered brain damage. But it was toilet rolls that were thrown mainly."

"The Boro have been that bad this season, I've been tempted to throw the whole toilet," a friend said in response, "and I wouldn't have flushed it first either." When I laughed he said, "I actually mean it." But that, of course, was what made it funny. In football the best jokes are dragged from despair, like smouldering fruit bushes from a badly located bonfire.

A few years ago now I received an email from a Bolton fan recalling the mid-60s at Burnden Park. Back then managerial and coaching duties fell to Bill Ridding who served as club secretary and sat on the board. Ridding apparently used to stand on the touchline smoking a pipe and wearing a homburg. At some point around 1966 irate Trotters fans took to serenading him with a song that included the lyric, "Resign Ridding, resign/Resign Ridding, resign/Take off you hat/You fucking great twat/Resign Ridding, resign."

If you follow a football team the biggest belly laughs you ever get are when you're standing on the edge of the abyss. If Manchester City added Fernando Torres to their real-life Panini sticker album of stars, he might bring goals but the gags would dry up. No wonder Ricky Hatton looked glum at the Emirates on Saturday. The man's watched 20 years of sour wisecracks disappearing down the plughole. Jerry Seinfeld once observed, "You can't have sex with someone you admire. Where's the depravity?" Likewise you can't joke if you're successful. It sounds like smug triumphalism.

This is undoubtedly the best time of the year for those of us who revel in the national game's dark and bitter comedy. It is not, however, a good time for any fan to give up smoking. A friend of mine who supports Hartlepool quit tobacco as a New Year's resolution. He may have expected his football club to give him a helping hand as he battled withdrawal symptoms, but not a bit of it. Instead of the humdrum, mid-table mediocrity he might reasonably have anticipated when he first mooted the idea of quitting, he's had to nicotine-patch his way through a nine-game run of away defeats and now, just when he thought things were easing up and he was down to 15 Kit Kats a match, the threat of the three-point deduction over fielding the suspended Gary Liddle in a game against Brighton has turned up to torment him.

"You'd imagine, given the situation, that the FA would make a decision quickly," he said desperately on Monday. I know just what you're thinking, and you're right: when people start talking gibberish like that you really do see how totally addled their brain is by lack of chemical stimuli. Next thing the poor sap will be expressing disappointment that Garth Crooks isn't going to be the BBC's main reporter at the World Cup, or that Barry Davies has retired.

I have to admit I have a good deal of sympathy for my friend. Because, as anyone who has ever given up smoking will know, the minute you quit you start looking for an excuse to start again. I gave up a 20-a-day habit in 1988 and I still find myself approaching any scenario that threatens doom with thoughts along the lines of, "Well, if I do lose a leg wielding this chainsaw in a foolhardy manner, at least no one will begrudge me having a fag." To be honest, until the smoking ban on aircraft there were times on long-haul flights when I've been practically willing the damn plane to go into a nose dive just so a I could snap up a carton of duty frees and start puffing away again.

What makes it worse for my friend is that due to work commitments he has to follow the scores from Pools' matches via 5 Live score updates. As every fan knows this is the most torturous experience anyone can willingly put themselves through. It is the sporting equivalent of natural childbirth and Mark Pougatch is the midwife.

As this weekend's crunch game against Exeter approaches, I wonder if my friend will be capable of sticking to the plan he and his wife drew up for this day in January. Or whether, as the full horror of what he has let himself in for begins to take hold and John Murray starts to tighten his grip and the icy words, "Now an interesting scoreline from Victoria Park which could have a bearing on the League One relegation situation …", he will crackcompletely and bellow: "Bollocks to what I said four months ago, give me my drugs and give them me now."

British lyricist known for Expresso Bongo and Irma La Douce

Although he wrote the book and lyrics for three of the biggest musical comedy successes of the 1950s – Grab Me a Gondola, Expresso Bongo and Irma La Douce – Julian More, who has died aged 81, is a relatively forgotten name in British theatre. His last West End success, written with the composer Monty Norman, was Songbook at the Globe theatre in 1979. This spoof tribute to a fictional songwriter, Moony Shapiro, was first performed by the Cambridge Theatre Company, with Bob Hoskins as Moony. The role had been written for Hoskins, but before the show found a West End home, he was offered his big film break in The Long Good Friday. David Healy replaced him in this revue-style rollercoaster account of success and failure, as Moony's career takes him from the Follies of 1926, via the talkies and the second world war, to a one- hit wonder, the disco era and death.

It was an enjoyable and skilfully couched metaphor of More's own career, and his lyrics were witty and touching. The show was produced on a shoestring (the set cost £9,000, very little even in those days) and ran for six months. Shortly after it closed – too late to count at the box office – it won prizes including the Evening Standard award for best musical.

More's father, Frank, was a land agent for Lady Howard Stepney at the Cilymaenllwyd estate, near Llanelli in south Wales; his mother was the painter Gwen More. He was educated at Stowe school, Buckinghamshire, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he wrote and performed with the Footlights, making his professional debut with Puss in Red Riding Breeches, a pantomime for adults, though not X-rated, at the Watergate theatre in 1954.

On graduating, he and Sheila (who had been at Girton College) married and set up home in Sloane Avenue, London. It was a golden time for theatre-bound Oxbridge graduates: Julian Slade wrote Salad Days with Dorothy Reynolds in 1954, the same year that Sandy Wilson's The Boy Friend opened in the West End. More's Grab Me a Gondola, with music by James Gilbert, opened at the Lyric two years later and ran for more than 600 performances, with Joan Heal giving a virtuoso performance as a Diana Dors-style film star at the Venice festival.

Expresso Bongo (April 1958) at the now vanished Saville theatre, with a book by More and Wolf Mankowitz and lyrics by More and the composers Norman and David Heneker, starred Paul Scofield and Hy Hazell. The show was hailed as the first low-life British musical since The Beggar's Opera; the lead character (played by Cliff Rich- ard in the 1959 film) was based on Tommy Steele, the new pop idol of the Soho coffee bars.

Irma La Douce, directed by Peter Brook, opened to rave reviews at the Lyric theatre in July 1958. More adapted the book from the French with Norman and Heneker, retaining the gutsy and affecting Parisian score of Marguerite Monnot (who had written songs for Edith Piaf) in the love story of a pure-at-heart prostitute (Elizabeth Seal) and an impoverished law student (Gary Raymond) in Pigalle, Paris. Billy Wilder's 1963 movie starring Shirley MacLaine dispensed with the songs. With the advent of pop culture, More's kind of musical theatre was rejected by audiences, too, and no wonder, said the director Richard Eyre, who played the Bongo pop idol in a Cambridge undergraduate production by Stephen Frears, forcing himself into a gold lamé suit to deliver numbers he reckoned unappealingly glutinous.

The Art of Living, a revue based on the humorous writing of Art Buchwald, was no more a success at the Criterion in 1960 than was Peter Ustinov's operetta R Loves J, for which More wrote lyrics, at the Chichester Festival theatre in 1973 starring Topol.

Songbook hit the mark because it reflected poignantly on this upheaval in popular taste, but it failed to set New York alight in 1981. Roza, a 1987 collaboration with the songwriter Gilbert Bécaud, directed by Harold Prince and starring Georgia Brown as a humanitarian concentration camp survivor, a sort of "one woman Unicef" in Paris, was ushered from Broadway with similar lack of ceremony by the critics. More's adaptation of Abe Burrow's book for the 1988 West End revival of Cole Porter's Can-Can was counted another failure, despite the sparkling efforts of a cast led by Donna McKechnie, Milo O'Shea and Janie Dee.

More moved to France in 1976 and became a travel writer. His elegant books, with photographs by Carey More, one of his twin daughters, included A Taste of Provence. He is survived by Sheila, Carey and her sister Camilla, and three grandchildren.

• Julian Bensley More, lyricist and librettist, born 15 June 1928; died 15 January 2010

In honor of one of my favorite primetime soap operas, Falcon Crest, finally being released on DVD on April 20, we're going to take a trip down memory lane today to visit the ruthless Angela Channing (Jane Wyman) and the rest of the winery gang. The series is also celebrating its 28th anniversary this month as it began on December 4, 1981, and ran for nine seasons on CBS until May 17, 1990.



Unfortunately, the DVD of The Complete First Season will not include the unaired pilot, which was originally called The Vintage Years (creator Earl Hammer changed the title when CBS thought it sounded like a show about old people). I would love to see actress Samantha Eggar as Maggie Gioberti and Michael Swan (As the World Turns' Duncan McKechnie) as Angela's biological son, Richard Channing, but hopefully the pilot will be a special bonus feature on a future DVD release. So here are my 10 favorite Falcon Crest episodes out of the 227 that were produced (in chronological order)--and just listen to Bill Conti's glorious theme music back when networks still allowed their shows to have lengthy opening credits:



1) "Family Reunion" (Episode 12, Season 1 - February 19, 1982): Look, it's Lana Turner! After an 11-year absence before the camera, the actress makes a rare guest appearance as Jacqueline Perrault, the wealthy and estranged mother of Chase Gioberti who returns to Falcon Crest to warn her son of Angela's treacherous nature. The much publicized episode gives the show its best ratings for its entire nine-year run.




2) "The Namesake" (Episode 25, Season 2 - November 19, 1982): It's a boy! Ana Alicia's Melissa Agretti was one of my favorite characters, and in this episode, realizing that her marriage to Angela's playboy grandson, Lance (the sexy Lorenzo Lamas), was a big mistake, she pays a visit to Chase's son, Cole (the cute William R. Moses), and confesses that he is the real father of her unborn child. Melissa then goes into labor and gives birth to a premature son, Joseph, whose life is in danger, while Cole breaks up with his older love interest, Katherine (played by the always fabulous Joanna Cassidy). I loved Melissa, Lance and Cole's twisted love triangle, which lasted for many years.



3) "...Divided We Fall" (Episode 30, Season 2 - December 31, 1982): You bitch! Actor David Selby was terrific in his role as Richard Channing, who informs the shocked guests at Angela's annual Founder's Day party that he has finally found his mother--Jacqueline, making him Chase's half-brother. Of course, this news infuriates Angela, who then gets to point a scolding finger at Lana Turner for having an affair with her former husband (Richard's father).



4) "Climax" (Episode 40, Season 2 - March 11, 1983): Who killed Carlo Agretti? We finally learn the answer as everyone gathers together at Vickie Gioberti's wedding reception for the shocking revelation that Angela's daughter, Julia (played by the wonderful Abby Dalton), committed the murder. And she's not done yet as she pulls out a gun and three shots are fired. The closing scene of this second season finale is of a coffin being lowered into the ground, but we don't find out until the fall that poor Lana Turner is its unfortunate occupant.



5) "For Better, for Worse" (Episode 66, Season 3 - May 4, 1984): Gotta love that crazy Julia! She dresses up like a nun in order to kill her mother during Angela and Phillip Erikson's wedding ceremony and reception. When this murderous plot fails, she takes Cole and Melissa's young son, Joseph, hostage. In the next episode, Julia appears to perish in a fire, but this lady has nine lives and returns during the fourth season.




6) "The Avenging Angel" (Episode 98, Season 4 - May 24, 1985): Maggie and Richard kiss! The couple's first intimate moment is, unfortunately, interrupted by a bomb explosion in this fourth season finale. Maggie ends up in Richard's arms after she discovers Chase in an embrace with Connie Gianinni. In other developments, Lance's new wife and Richard's stepdaughter, Lorraine, dies, while Anna Rossini (Celeste Holm) and her daughter, Cassandra Wilder (Anne Archer), have their revenge on Angela as they plan to take over Falcon Crest.



7) "The Cataclysm" (Episode 127, Season 5 - May 22, 1986): Earthquake! The series ends its fifth season with an earthquake that kills off a few characters. This episode features the final appearances of the dreamy Simon MacCorkindale as Angela's lawyer, Greg Reardon, Morgan Fairchild as Richard's attorney, Jordan Roberts (with a split personality), Daniel Greene as Emma Channing's love interest, Dwayne Cooley, and the delightful Laura Johnson as Maggie's sister, Terry (I always liked her).



8) "Desperation" (Episode 155, Season 6 - May 15, 1987): Richard is Angela's son! In this sixth season finale, Angela is shocked to discover that her child, whom she believed to have died at birth, is very much alive and well--in the form of her longtime nemesis, Richard Channing. Meanwhile, a deadly car chase in pursuit of Melissa, who has kidnapped Chase and Maggie's baby son, ends up in in the San Francisco Bay. This is Robert Foxworth's final episode as Chase, who drowns. Actress Kim Novak also leaves the series as the mysterious Kit Marlowe.



9) "Stormy Weather" (Episode 172, Season 7 - February 12, 1988): It was a dark and stormy night . . . and in this episode a storm forces Angela to play hostess to honeymooners Maggie and Richard, along with many other uninvited guests. Emma organizes a fun game of "murder" for everyone to play, but when someone is killed at midnight, Richard becomes the prime suspect.



10) "Last Dance" (Episode 183, Season 7 - May 6, 1988): Richard is killed--or is he? In this seventh season finale, Angela tells a shocked Richard she loves him after she receives a minor gunshot wound, and later he is fatally shot by Eric Stavros (the handsome John Callahan), who has been programmed into a killing machine by "The Thirteen" (an evil underworld group). Angela then loses Falcon Crest to Melissa, but she tells the girl, "I'll be back", before leaving her house. She later meets a mysterious man in a church and asks him when he's going to tell Maggie that he is still alive. Of course, Richard isn't really dead, and he returns for the show's final two seasons. However, his wife, Maggie (my favorite character played by the lovely Susan Sullivan), gets her finger caught in a swimming pool drain and drowns in the ninth season opener--one of my least favorite episodes that obviously does not appear on this list.