Movie Review: Belanger, a Documentary Directed by Dominic Dastoli (2018)

My signed 1981 Topps card of Mark Belanger, and the DVD of Belanger, directed by Dominic Dastoli, 2018.

Mark "the Blade" Belanger, about to scoop up another ground ball.

Mark Belanger was the ultimate “good field, no hit” shortstop. Belanger played for the Baltimore Orioles from 1965 until 1981, and one season for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1982, winning 8 Gold Gloves and accumulating a career batting average of just .228. I’m too young to have seen Belanger play, but because I collected baseball cards from the 1970’s and 1980’s, he was a player I was aware of. I can’t really tell you why I was aware of Mark Belanger when I was a little kid, but my head was full of random details about old baseball players. Sure, I knew superstars from the 1970’s like Reggie Jackson, Willie Stargell, and Jim Palmer, but I also knew random 70’s players like Billy North, John Milner, Mike Lum, and Kurt Bevacqua. I’m sure part of the reason I liked Mark Belanger was because we have the same first name, and he has a cool-sounding last name. What little information I could glean from my early 1980’s Topps cards of Mark Belanger told me two things: 

1. He had played for the Orioles for a really long time

2. He was not a very good hitter

But hitting statistics only told part of Mark Belanger’s story, and for him it was definitely the less interesting part of his story. Sabermetric fielding stats paint a picture of Belanger as one of the finest defensive shortstops ever. Baseball-Reference ranks Belanger second all-time in defensive WAR, just ahead of his longtime infield mate, third baseman Brooks Robinson. In a statistic called Total Zone Runs, which I’m not smart enough to attempt to explain, Belanger ranks as the second best defensive shortstop since 1953, behind Ozzie Smith. Belanger’s 8 Gold Gloves at shortstop still rank as the fourth most at the position. 

I wrote a little about Belanger in my review of Jeff Katz’s book Split Season: 1981. Katz’s book focused on Belanger because he was one of the union player representatives who were most involved in the ongoing negotiations between the players and the owners. It made me more intrigued about Belanger, and in my recent internet sleuthing, I discovered that a documentary about Belanger premiered in 2018. Titled simply Belanger, the film was directed by Dominic Dastoli. Running 70 minutes, the film explores the story of Belanger’s life. It begins with Belanger’s boyhood in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he played baseball on a farm field. Belanger achieved high school stardom on both the baseball and basketball fields, and he was courted by college basketball coaches, as well as major league baseball teams. Belanger signed with the Baltimore Orioles just after he graduated from high school in 1962. 

Belanger’s path to the major leagues was blocked by the Orioles’ excellent shortstop, future Hall of Famer Luis Aparicio. Belanger earned September call-ups in 1965 and 1966, but he was not on the roster for the Orioles’ upset of the Dodgers in the 1966 World Series. Once Aparicio was traded to the Chicago White Sox after the 1967 season, Belanger became the Orioles’ regular shortstop. 

Belanger hit for the highest batting average of his career in 1969, when he hit .287, well above the American League’s cumulative batting average of .246. In the film, Boog Powell attributes Belanger’s success with the bat that season to Charley Lau, the Orioles’ hitting coach. Unfortunately, the Orioles let Lau go after the 1969 season. 

Belanger became an integral part of the Orioles’ lineup during their three consecutive trips to World Series, from 1969-1971. These Oriole teams are often mentioned in discussions of the greatest baseball teams ever, as they averaged 106 wins a year. The Orioles lost to the “Miracle Mets” in 1969, and were defeated by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1971, but they beat the Cincinnati Reds in 1970. Belanger batted just .105 in the 1970 World Series, but he and Brooks Robinson combined to make the left side of the infield impenetrable. 

Belanger features interviews with several of Belanger’s teammates, like Jim Palmer, Rick Dempsey, and Davey Johnson. Brooks Robinson is seen once at the very beginning of the film, and I wish we had heard more from Robinson, as he and Belanger were one of the finest fielding third base and shortstop duos ever. Johnson says of Belanger in the film, “Everything he did was meticulous.” This extended from his fielding work at shortstop to his post-playing days working for the players’ union. Johnson also informs us that Belanger never wore a protective cup when he played! That’s a sign of the confidence Belanger must have had in his own fielding prowess. (Belanger not wearing a cup is confirmed by Tony Kubek in George F. Will's book about baseball, Men at Work.) Rick Dempsey says that he never saw a ground ball go between Belanger’s legs. Even allowing for old baseball player exaggeration, that’s a pretty remarkable statement to make. 

Fortunately, Belanger features enough footage of “the Blade” in action for the viewer to get a sense of how excellent Belanger was in the field. Every motion of Belanger’s was graceful, whether he was ranging left or right, and his powerful and accurate throwing arm fired bullets to first base. One of the plays that I was most impressed by was a catch Belanger made in the 1979 World Series. Willie Stargell hit a pop fly, and Belanger caught it in left field—he’s out at normal left field depth, calling off the left fielder to make the catch.

As a kid, I had a book that was called You Are the Manager, or something like that. You’d read about a situation confronting a manager, and then see if the manager did what you thought they should have done. One of the situations in the book was “Who do you play at shortstop for the Orioles in the 1979 World Series?” The choices were slick-fielding but poor hitting Mark Belanger, or poor fielding but good hitting Kiko Garcia. As a kid, I probably went with Garcia because of his bat. Now, I’d stick with Belanger and his stellar defense. Kiko Garcia wasn’t actually that great a hitter—in 1979 he hit .247, with 5 home runs. Granted, Belanger hit .167 with zero home runs, but still, it’s not like Garcia was a .300 hitter or a power threat. 

At the very end of the 1981 season, Belanger started to lose playing time to a hotshot young shortstop the Orioles had just called up. His name was Cal Ripken Jr., and he would revolutionize the position of shortstop. There had been good-hitting shortstops before, but very few had combined hitting and fielding excellence the way Ripken did. There’s certainly no shame in losing your job to someone as talented as Cal Ripken Jr. Belanger was a free agent after the 1981 season, and the Orioles made it clear they had no interest in bringing him back. Belanger had also publicly criticized manager Earl Weaver in September, which may have helped to sow the seeds for his departure. The Orioles might also have been sick of having two players who were highly involved in the players’ union, as they also traded outspoken union representative Doug DeCinces during the 1981-82 off-season. 

Belanger ended up signing a one-year contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He played sparingly, starting just 12 games for the Dodgers in 1982. He retired at the end of the season. 

Belanger features interviews with family members, and the film presents us with a picture of the man he was off the field as well. When Curt Flood was challenging baseball’s reserve clause, Belanger was one of the few active players to publicly support his case. Belanger’s interest in the players’ union led to him becoming a union representative, and after his retirement, the first former player hired by the players’ union. As Expos pitcher Steve Rogers says in the film, “He spent his life defending.”

Mark Belanger was tall, (6’2”) thin, (175 pounds) and darkly handsome. (He looks better on film—his baseball cards don’t really do him justice.) He was a devoted father to his two sons, and he took his work seriously, whether it was fielding ground balls or protecting the rights of his fellow baseball players. Unfortunately, Belanger was also a longtime smoker who died from lung cancer at age 54 in 1998. In a sad footnote to the film, Belanger’s son Rob, who speaks eloquently throughout the film about his Dad, died of prostate cancer in 2016 at the age of 47. 

The older I get, the more fascinated I am by baseball players like Mark Belanger. He wasn’t a Hall of Famer, and he only made one All-Star team, but he still made an impact on the sport. Belanger does an excellent job of telling his story.

Album Review: Paul McCartney and Wings Red Rose Speedway (1973)

Album cover for Red Rose Speedway by Paul McCartney and Wings, 1973.

Paul McCartney rocking the coolest sweater ever.

When the Beatles were tossing around ideas for the film and album that eventually became Let It Be, Paul McCartney put forth the suggestion that they should play some unannounced live gigs at small venues. None of the other Beatles were that enthusiastic about Paul’s suggestion, and eventually the recording sessions culminated with the famous “rooftop concert” on January 30, 1969. It was still a great ending to the sessions, but I can’t help but wonder what would have happened had the Beatles taken up Paul’s suggestion and hit the road for some gigs. It certainly would have provided the group with fantastic publicity—not that they were ever lacking for publicity. 

McCartney formed his band Wings in 1971, and the following year he did exactly what he had wanted the Beatles to do, packing the group up in a van and showing up unannounced at colleges and universities. Wings played 11 concerts in February of 1972, with nary a Beatles song to be heard. Although Paul did sing “Long Tall Sally,” which was a staple of the Beatles’ live repertoire, and was the last song they sang at Candlestick Park in 1966. Paul’s reluctance to play any Beatles songs shows that he wanted to establish his own identity outside of his former band. I suspect that if McCartney had played lots of Beatles songs in concert with Wings, it would have seemed to him to be a tacit admission that his best work was already behind him. 

Paul’s decision to not play any Beatles songs wasn’t unusual for solo performances by the former Beatles during the 1970’s. John Lennon only gave two full concerts during his lifetime, and the only Beatles song that he sang at those 1972 shows was “Come Together.” George Harrison sang four Beatles songs during his 1974 US tour, and one of those, “In My Life,” was a Lennon/McCartney song. (George got a lot of criticism for changing the lyrics of the song to “I love God more.”) 

Wings released three singles during 1972, but no albums. First was the political “Give Ireland Back to the Irish,” which is included as a bonus track on the 2018 reissue of Wild Life. This was followed by “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Yep, that “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” While the single peaked at number 9 in the UK, it did nothing to assuage the growing critical consensus that McCartney’s music was trite and inconsequential. Much better was the third single of the year, the rocking “Hi Hi Hi” and the languid “C Moon.” “Hi Hi Hi” was predictably banned by the BBC for drug references and also for the lyric that the BBC heard as “get you ready for my body gun.” As McCartney has said, the actual lyric is “get you ready for my polygon.” So, there you go. 

Red Rose Speedway, released on April 30, 1973 in the US and on May 4^th in the UK, was more commercially successful than Wild Life, peaking at number 5 in the UK and topping the charts in the US. Wild Life and Red Rose Speedway were both reissued in December of 2018 as part of the ongoing Paul McCartney Archive Collection series. I’ll be reviewing the two-disc version of Red Rose Speedway.

I think Red Rose Speedway is a stronger record overall than Wild Life. The first track, “Big Barn Bed” is a slight song, but it has the polish that the songs on Wild Life lacked. The big hit single from Red Rose Speedway was Paul’s gushy ballad “My Love,” which topped the charts in the US. It’s a catchy song that sticks in your head, but for McCartney’s detractors it was the kind of big ballad that screamed “middle of the road” rather than “rock star.” “Get on the Right Thing” has a good groove and some excellent vocals from Paul. “One More Kiss” is a nice tune with a country feel. “Little Lamb Dragonfly” is an interesting song, although I’m not really sure what it’s about. Some people think it’s about Paul’s decision to become a vegetarian, and some people think it’s a message to John Lennon. I quite like “Single Pigeon,” even though it’s a silly title for a song. “When the Night” is one of my favorites from the album. Paul’s singing on it is great, and it has a New Orleans/Fats Domino vibe to it. Parts of the melody sound a bit like “Tomorrow,” from Wild Life. 

Like all of McCartney’s solo albums to this point, Red Rose Speedway still has some moments of weird idiosyncrasies, like “Loup (1st Indian on the Moon)” a four-minute long tune that mainly consists of chanting and some odd synths. 

An eleven-minute long medley of four songs closes the album, inviting the inevitable comparisons to Abbey Road. The first song is called “Hold Me Tight,” but it bears no resemblance to the 1963 song of the same name that Paul sang on With the Beatles. The song finds Paul imploring someone to “hug-a me right,” which doesn’t exactly bring confidence in the lyrical content to follow. “Lazy Dynamite” isn’t much better. “Hands of Love” is at least a catchier song. “Power Cut” is fine, if unmemorable. There’s really no reason for these four songs to be strung together as a medley, and the segues between them aren’t that interesting. 

Red Rose Speedway is a more polished album than Wild Life, and I just enjoy listening to Red Rose Speedway more than Wild Life. The difference between the albums is highlighted in the CD packaging for the 2018 reissues, as Red Rose Speedway has a slick, glossy texture, whereas Wild Life has a low-key matte finish. The artwork in the booklet of Red Rose Speedway is very reminiscent of Pop Art, with Marilyn Monroe, missiles, and pin-ups vying for our attention—it looks like it could have come from a Roxy Music album. The back cover of the CD even reproduces the original LP’s Braille message of “We love ya baby,” apparently a message for Stevie Wonder. 

Red Rose Speedway was originally meant to be a double album, and many of those songs that didn’t make the cut are found on disc two. We also get the other 1972 singles, so you can hear “Mary Had a Little Lamb” for yourself. And then you can groove to “Hi Hi Hi” and “C Moon” and wonder how the same man who did a version of the simplest nursery rhyme could go from that to picking up a girl at the station with a bootleg in her hand. Also included is “Live and Let Die,” released just a month after Red Rose Speedway. There’s also a very cool alternate take of “Live and Let Die,” which is fun to hear. Another song of note is “I Lie Around” the B-side of “Live and Let Die,” which marks Denny Laine’s first lead vocal on a Wings recording. We also get to hear Linda McCartney sing on “Seaside Woman,” a song that was recorded during the sessions for Red Rose Speedway but not released until 1977, when it was released as a single credited to “Suzy and the Red Stripes.” Unlikely as it might seem, the song actually made it to number 59 in the US charts. “Mama’s Little Girl” is one of the better songs that was cut from the album. There’s also a cover version of a 1950’s song, “Tragedy,” which was a hit for Thomas Wayne and the DeLons and also the Fleetwoods. 

The Wings lineup for Red Rose Speedway was Paul, Linda, Denny Laine on guitar, Henry McCullough on lead guitar, and Denny Seiwall on drums. As the group was rehearsing new material during the summer of 1973, McCullough and Seiwall left the band. The trio of Paul, Linda, and Denny Laine went to Lagos, Nigeria, to record Wings’ most successful album: Band on the Run, released just seven months after Red Rose Speedway.

Album Review: Paul McCartney and Wings Wild Life (1971)

Album cover of Wild Life, by Wings, 1971.

Paul and Linda McCartney, 1971.

When the Beatles split up in 1970, expectations for Paul McCartney’s solo career were sky-high. But Paul and John Lennon both issued minimalist albums for their proper solo debuts: McCartney, and John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. It was left to George Harrison to issue the solo album that most fit the mood of the times: the epic, sprawling, triple-disc All Things Must Pass. 

Rock critics probably expected McCartney to make a solo album that was a major statement. What they got instead was the lo-fi weirdness of McCartney, Ram, and Wild Life. McCartney had been a homemade affair, with all the instruments played by Paul. Ram, credited to Paul and his wife Linda, featured a full band and a slightly more polished sound. McCartney’s third solo album, Wild Life, was released in December of 1971, less than seven months after Ram, and was credited to his new band, Wings.

Wait, Paul McCartney was starting a band? After he was just in the Beatles, the greatest band of all-time? Okay, weird. Who was in this new band? A group of rock superstars? Nope, guitarist Denny Laine, and Denny Seiwall on drums. Oh, and Paul’s wife Linda on keyboards and backing vocals. He’s starting a band with his wife? Well, John Lennon was doing the same thing. As I’ve said before, it took guts/stupidity to start a band with a spouse who’s not a professional musician, and Paul and Linda suffered the slings and arrows of the rock critics. 

It’s clear from interviews that it was important to McCartney’s identity to be in a band, rather than just be Paul McCartney, solo artist. Of course, to some degree Wings would inevitably always be “Paul McCartney’s backing band,” but I suspect that being in a band lessened the psychological pressure on McCartney to live up to the huge expectations of making music after the Beatles. 

Wild Life and Red Rose Speedway were both reissued in December of 2018 as part of the ongoing Paul McCartney Archive Collection series. I’ll be reviewing the two-disc version of Wild Life.

Wild Life was a pretty inauspicious debut for Wings, and in my opinion it’s a much weaker album than the superb Ram. Part of the charm of Ram is that even the tossed-off songs, like “Monkberry Moon Delight,” are still awesome, whereas on Wild Life the tossed-off songs just sound, well, tossed-off. Wild Life is a pretty slight album, starting off with the jam “Mumbo” and the repetitive “Bip Bop.” Then we get a cover of “Love is Strange.” While Paul has issued cover albums, it’s extremely rare for him to feature covers in the middle of an album of original material. Like the rest of the album, “Love is Strange” is loose and jammy. 

My two favorite songs on Wild Life are “Tomorrow” and “Dear Friend,” on side two of the album. “Tomorrow” is a very simple song, but it’s catchy as hell, and would be my pick for a single, had one been issued to support Wild Life. (Some copies of “Love is Strange” were issued as a promo single, but the single was never actually released.) “Tomorrow” is a great example of Paul McCartney’s melodic genius, how he can take clichéd lyrics and still turn them into a catchy pop ditty, seemingly at a moment’s notice. 

“Dear Friend” is a stark, haunting piano ballad. Most critics interpreted it at the time as being a response to John Lennon’s venomous song about Paul, “How Do You Sleep?” issued on his Imagine album in September of 1971. However, “Dear Friend” was actually recorded during the Ram sessions, before “How Do You Sleep?” was released. “Dear Friend” has just two verses, and no real chorus or bridge, and it clocks in just shy of six minutes. It’s another example of a song being simple, but still very effective, and quite emotional. “Dear Friend” also features superb vocals from Paul. 

The second disc of Wild Life collects a bunch of previously unreleased home recordings, as well as assorted and sundry rarities. For me, the most interesting home recordings were the two versions of “Dear Friend.” Also of interest is Wings’ 1972 single “Give Ireland Back to the Irish,” which was never issued on an album at the time. The song is McCartney’s response to the events of Bloody Sunday, when British soldiers killed 13 protestors during a march. The song is a rare example of a direct political statement from McCartney. The song was duly banned by the BBC. You can compare and contrast “Give Ireland Back to the Irish” with John Lennon’s own song about Bloody Sunday, “The Luck of the Irish,” which appeared on his 1972 album Some Time in New York City. (Be warned: Yoko sings on it.) 

In my next review, I’ll examine Paul McCartney’s next album, 1973’s Red Rose Speedway.

Book Review: Split Season: 1981, by Jeff Katz (2015)

Cover of Split Season: 1981, by Jeff Katz, 2015.

Mark Belanger's 1981 Fleer Star Sticker card. Belanger was a union representative and very involved in the protracted negotiations during the strike. He was also one of the best fielding, and worst hitting, shortstops of all time.

My favorite baseball player, Steve Carlton, had an excellent year in 1981, going 13-4 with a 2.42 ERA and winning his only Gold Glove.

1981 was a difficult year for baseball, as a strike by the players wiped out almost two months of the season. As someone who was born in 1981, it’s always annoyed me that because most teams played around 107 games that year, the stats from my birth year look so paltry. Mike Schmidt led the majors in RBIs with 91—no pitcher won more than 14 games. As a kid flipping through my baseball cards, I would compare players’ stats from 1981 to what they did in other years and inevitably I’d end up disappointed. No one had their best season in 1981. I suppose the silver lining is that the strike was settled in time for the postseason, so there was actually a World Series the year I was born.

Jeff Katz’s 2015 book Split Season: 1981—Fernandomania, the Bronx Zoo, and the Strike that Saved Baseball examines the year in question in great detail. Katz does a fine job recapping the highlights and lowlights of the season. A limitation of the book is that the details of the strike are very complicated and not that interesting. And that’s coming from a baseball fan, so I can’t imagine that many people who aren’t hardcore baseball fans would read this book. Basically, the key issue was that the owners wanted compensation for teams who lost players who signed as free agents with other teams. The players’ union saw that as an attempt to fundamentally weaken the free agent system. The strike was ultimately settled with the owners winning a small concession from the players as a complicated compensation system was adopted. 

When the strike was settled and the 1981 season continued, the dubious decision was made to split the season in two halves: before the strike and after the strike. The teams who were leading their divisions when the strike began were guaranteed a playoff spot, and they would play the winner of the second half of the season. Not surprisingly, with nothing to play for, none of the first half winners also won the second half. This harebrained scheme also ensured that the two teams in the National League with the best records, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Cincinnati Reds, didn’t make the playoffs, because they didn’t win either half of the season. 

Katz is insightful when writing about the four players who were deeply involved in the ongoing negotiations between the players and the owners: catcher Bob Boone, pitcher Steve Rogers, third baseman Doug DeCinces, and shortstop Mark Belanger. Katz interviewed Rogers and DeCinces for his book, and he paints interesting portraits of these four athletes. 

Mark Belanger in particular comes off as a really interesting person. As a baseball player, Belanger is famous for being perhaps the ne plus ultra of a “good field, no hit” shortstop. Belanger played in more than 2,000 games over 18 years, and ended up with a batting average of just .228. However, Belanger won 8 Gold Gloves for fielding excellence, and sabermetric stats paint a picture of him as one of the finest defensive shortstops ever. Baseball-Reference ranks Belanger second all-time in defensive WAR, just ahead of his longtime infield mate, third baseman Brooks Robinson. In a statistic called Total Zone Runs, which I’m not smart enough to attempt to explain, Belanger ranks as the second best defensive shortstop since 1953, behind Ozzie Smith. 

Belanger’s playing career ended after the 1982 season, and after he retired he worked for the players’ union. He died from lung cancer in 1998, at the age of 54. In the 2001 edition of The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, James writes of Belanger’s time working for the union: “He had three books on his desk: a baseball encyclopedia, Marvin Miller’s autobiography, and Don Baylor, by Don Baylor.” (p.624) I don’t know how Bill James knew this, but it’s a fun fact. The first two books make sense to me, but Don Baylor’s autobiography? It seems like a very random choice. However, Belanger and Baylor were teammates on the Orioles from 1970 to 1975, so maybe Belanger enjoyed revisiting his own glory days with the Orioles. I read Don Baylor’s autobiography when I was a little kid and I remember enjoying it, although I couldn’t tell you anything specific about it. It’s never been one of the top three books on my desk.

Katz presents the strike as something of a black and white struggle. It’s very clear he’s on the player’s side, rather than the owners. There’s nothing really wrong with that, but for Katz there cannot be a greedy player or a sympathetic owner, which robs the book of complexity. 

Katz’s book would have improved with stronger editing. Some examples of awkward phrasing and sloppy writing are the following:

“{Bowie} Kuhn came from an immigrant background. Alice Waring Roberts’s family arrived in 1634, sailing from England to Maryland.” (p.23) Well, yes, we’re all immigrants, unless you’re Native American, but did Alice Waring Roberts’s arrival 292 years before Bowie Kuhn’s birth really have much of an impact on how he saw himself?

Katz describes Ted Simmons’ status as a “ten and five” man, meaning that he had been in the majors for ten years, and spent the last five years with the same team. As the St. Louis Cardinals wanted to trade Simmons to the Milwaukee Brewers, Katz writes that Simmons “had control of the situation.” (p.39) What Katz doesn’t tell us is that as a “ten and five” man, Simmons had the right to veto any attempt by the Cardinals to trade him. To understand the control Simmons had in that situation, you need to know that fact, which Katz doesn’t provide. 

There are other passages that are much sharper, such as Katz writing that Cliff Johnson “looked like a giant walrus in cleats.” (p.59) Katz also does well chronicling the larger-than-life personalities of Billy Martin and George Steinbrenner: “Like Steinbrenner, Martin was unaware of irony.” (p.80) So true!

Unfortunately, Split Season: 1981 commits what I consider to be a fundamental error for a non-fiction book: there are no footnotes or endnotes. There’s a bibliography, but there’s no way to tell where quoted material comes from. I really don’t understand why major publishers allow non-fiction books to be published without footnotes or endnotes. I know, the majority of people don’t care, but the omission severely limits the usefulness of a book as a historical document.