Chicago Cubs and Hollywood: An Interesting New Connection

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What do the Chicago Cubs now have in common with "Here's looking at you, kid",  and Brad Pitt?








This guy....



Something big is about to happen with the hapless Cubs, Chicago's beloved baseball team that nevertheless has not won a World Series for 103 years....  It should be a boon to the team, and provide a movie-lover like me a new level of interest in next year's season....


It's Saturday night, and Mark, who is a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals (the Cubs' arch-enemy), is enjoying the Cardinals' promise to triumph over the Texas Rangers in game 3 of this years' series.  So tonight, something brief, and lighthearted.


Tom Ricketts, the new owner of the Cubs Organization, is closing a deal with the Boston Red Sox to bring Theo Epstein to the Cubs as the President of Baseball Operations.  Epstein was the Golden Boy who used smarts and statistics to bring the Red Sox a 2004 World Series Championship after 83 years, and a second Series Championship 3 years later.  At 28 years old he was the youngest general manager to lead a ball team to Series victory.


I find Epstein's baseball story as fascinating as I find the man personally interestting.  I will cover him, and the Cubs, regulary an the coming Baseball Season.


ESPECIALLY INTERESTNG so far, to me and hopefully to my movie-loving readers, are these two items:


--Epstein took the job with the Red Sox when the first man who was offered the job, Billy Beane, turned it down. Beane is the subject of the new film "Moneyball", which I'll review here soon.


--Epstein's grandfather, Philip G. Epstein, and great-uncle, Julius J. Epstein, won Oscars for the screenplay of "Casablanca".


While neither of these tidbits will have anything to do with Epstein's success with the Chicago Cubs, the continuity with the past glories of 1940's movies, and the slight connection with the subject of one of this year's most highly praised films, feels right....  and gives a trip to Wrigley Field a claim to modernity and the legitimate nostalgia it deserves.



And that should do it for a Saturday night.

Tomorrow....a look at the horrific world of mental illness in "Take Shelter"