Greetings and welcome back to BCB After Dark, the sexiest gathering place for early risers, night owls, new mums, and overseas Cubs supporters. Come in from the cold, please. You are invited to a special celebration that takes place this evening. Give your coat to us to take. Take a seat at any table that is open. Please bring a drink of your own.
As long as it doesn’t violate the site’s policies, you can discuss anything you need to get off your chest about baseball, music, movies, or anything else at BCB After Dark. Everyone is welcome to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the day, but the late nighters are urged to start the celebration.
Despite my technical difficulties last night—if you can call a brain freeze technical—I was still able to ask for your vote for two very close-to-induct Hall of Fame candidates: Billy Wagner and Gary Sheffield. Ultimately, neither candidate managed to secure the seventy-five percent needed to win an election today, but my guess is that Wagner will win next year and Sheffield will be elected by the Veterans Committee in the end.
However, when it came to casting your votes, the same proportion of you, 28%, would have chosen to support neither candidate or both. Furthermore, roughly as many people (22%) would have supported Wagner alone as opposed to Sheffield alone (21%).
By the way, The Athletic’s Tyler Kepner plagiarised one of my stories from BCB After Dark. I wrote a piece about the same subject the day my mother passed away, in addition to having done so here. I appreciate you poking your knife in, then.
(And yes, I am aware of how unlikely it is that Tyler Kepner will ever read this piece. It aches still.)
This is the section where I’ve included the movies and the music. You can skip that now if you choose to. You’re not going to offend me.
I neglected to include a poll in the BCB Winter Western Classic last night. Al fortunately had me covered and added one in the morning, but most of you who read the article yesterday night most likely missed the opportunity to cast your ballot. Thus, kindly return and cast your vote in the BCB Winter Western Classic between Rio Bravo and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The vote is quite close as I write this. Voting is open until tomorrow night.
After writing these features, I usually stay up a bit longer to see whether anyone has left a remark before turning in for the night. But I chose to watch a movie before going to bed yesterday night after finishing the article and hitting publish. I saw A Man Escaped (1956) directed by Robert Bresson. That’s the title in English. Un condamné à mort s’est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut, which translates to “A man condemned to death has escaped or the wind blows where it wants,” is the title in French. It’s understandable why the American distributors altered the name.
I didn’t know much about it other than the fact that it was a World War II prison break film and that it seemed like a good movie to watch before bed. I was correct, too. This film was excellent. I never checked back on the website because I was so engrossed in the movie at the time. I didn’t realise that the movie was regarded as one of the greatest works of French cinema until after I had finished it. I did not, however, attend film school.
