A Home Run for the week
A lot of good content and a couple nice discoveries
It’s been a big week for us at The O’Leary Review.
We released a couple of podcasts and they’ve been well received so far.
Also, our podcast feed outside of Substack has not been updating for some reason and the last two episodes are not up on most of the podcatchers I’ve tried. I don’t know what the issue is, but I have a ticket in at the support desk…hopefully it is resolved soon or we’ll have to adjust.
I wish I had known about the potential SNAFU on Tuesday, however, when we had the biggest one-day influx in traffic and uptick in subscriptions in the short time we’ve been doing this, after my email from Sunday was published on the front page of LewRockwell.com, a site that I read every single day.
Did America’s Enemies Win the War?
So, here’s to an official thank you and a welcome to all our new readers/listeners for joining our small but growing community here at The O’Leary Review.
My great thanks also goes out to Lew for publishing the piece and to introducing more people to the work we are doing here at The O’Leary Review.
Even better for the future success of this project, Darren Mullen told me he already got some traffic for his Smartsheet consulting business (links are in the episode show notes) based on his podcast appearance. Frankly, that’s the goal of what we’re doing here.
We pride ourselves on having “Conversations that Matter” and let the chips fall where they may after that.
After we unexpectedly went on a tangent about (Canadian) gridiron football for a bit during our conversation with Sean Kennedy, I emailed him after our visit and told him that I do indeed secretly love Canadian football. We then agreed to revisit the Canadian Football League season prior to the playing of this year’s Grey Cup in late November. (That could be a very “niche” conversation, but it will be a good one.)
All this being said, I am still behind a bit in some of the other content I want to bring to the folks. The goal is perpetual motion, as Ray Liotta’s Gary Figgis reminds us in 1997’s Cop Land.
Perpetual motion with the newsletters, podcasts, and other content we are developing over here.
Getting back to my tardiness in the material I had planned…
I try to schedule my material out in advance…for the most part. In the schedule I made earlier this month, for today’s letter, I intended to write about the TV character Richard Kimble—played by David Janssen—in The Fugitive, one of my favorite shows of all-time. The movie or the several re-boots don’t hold a candle to the original series, as far as I’m concerned. Sorry Han Solo.
In researching Janssen, I found that he played a private eye in the few years before he played Kimble on the series called Richard Diamond, Private Detective.
I couldn’t find anywhere to watch this show, until I stumbled upon it this morning without even planning on it. I already decided to pause my Kimble/Janssen research for a few weeks.
But I watched the second episode of the first season of Richard Diamond, Private Detective and it came in a small window of a little more than 24 minutes in my multi-tasked early morning. Apparently the show is available in the public domain.
Good show and a good performance by Janssen.
It’s in black & white, of course, and about half-way through the episode I saw another actor that I thought I recognized. The wheels started spinning…
I soon remembered that I did not know this guy as an actor, but as a television host. He hosted my favorite sports show of all-time—well before I was born, but I ate it up on reruns on ESPN during the summertime.
One day, the series was suddenly cancelled in part to the host’s untimely death at age 45.
The host: Mark Scott
The show: Home Run Derby
This version of Home Run Derby took place at the Wrigley Field in Los Angeles and it was so much better than the fiasco that takes place prior to the All-Star Game nowadays.
It also featured literal heroes of mine. I got to root for Hank Aaron and Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays and Frank Robinson, Harmon Killebrew and Duke Snider, and many more.
Mark Scott made this show work. I haven’t seen it in decades, but I remember the host being very good. I wondered why Home Run Derby never lasted and I found out—even pre-Internet—that Scott died before another season could be filmed. I guess they couldn’t do it without him.
The mere concept of a Home Run Derby has never been the same since. Was it Mark Scott? Was it the format? Was it the legends of the game who were also humble and personable?
Can’t say for sure, but it was a good era and a great show.
Also, I got going down the Ray Liotta wormhole, and I just find it sad that he is no longer with us. Great actor and from everything I’ve seen of him, was a good guy.
I never realized until today that the late Ray Liotta never saw the movie Field of Dreams even after he was the main co-star, playing Shoeless Joe Jackson opposite his former paddle tennis partner, Kevin Costner’s Ray Kinsella character.
The most shocking thing I learned about Liotta is that IMDB says he was best friends with Josh Taylor, the fellow who I know best as Jack McKay, Dylan McKay’s father in Beverly Hills, 90210. He also played the dad in Valerie / Valerie’s Family / The Hogan Family and has been on Days of our Lives for decades.
The story about Taylor, who Liotta met in acting class, might be one of the more bizarre tracks toward eventual stardom on the small screen.
Josh Taylor was a two-time Ivy League champion quarterback for Dartmouth and followed that up by earning a law degree from University of Denver…but then decided to go to work in the Alaskan oil fields instead of hanging up a shingle somewhere or working for Big Law anywhere.
After going to L.A. “just to visit” in a break from working in Alaska, Taylor then moved to the City of Angels and went on to manage restaurants and work as a bartender until his acting career finally gained some steam.
I may watch Field of Dreams or Goodfellas tonight and try to feel better about losing Liotta earlier this year. Or maybe turn to some reruns of a few of the Jack McKay episodes in the early days of 90210…PlutoTV has a whole channel dedicated to the 90210 franchise and its spinoffs.
We’re going back in time 3-ish decades for all of it, either way.
But I also gotta move diagonal, as Liotta’s Figgsy suggests. So, we have another livestream scheduled for tomorrow at 7:30 AM. Ostensibly, it is a college football preview show, called College Football Cookout. This will be our third episode. The first two were terrible and I don’t suggest ever re-watching them.
But this one should be better. We’re going to talk about football, talk a little bit about cooking your favorite tailgate foods (really my favorite tailgate foods), and have some good entertainment for you otherwise.
I wanted the show to do something that most of the cable shows forget about: the fan. We read enough and watch enough about the games already. We need to prepare our bellies for the game.
My adventures in egg “froaching” graced the last livestream. Trial and error.
Starting last week, we also have a picks segment so that some of the readers/viewers with an inclination to place credits down on the action may take the advice of a couple other folks who like to get down—and produce quite well—every week. I am not one of those folks, but I do weigh in with my opinions.
This is the link for the Cookout: https://odysee.com/@BrianDOLeary:f/Week3:0
Follow me on Twitter @BrianDOLeary and I will post the livestream link again before we hit the air in case something about this link goes haywire. We had technical difficulties right before air last week.
For you early risers, join us for coffee and football talk in the morning and look forward to some more “Conversations that Matter” coming down the pike next week.
Brian O’Leary
P.S. — you may also want to check out the new newsletter aggregating service that friend of the program Sean Edrington has developed. It’s called LeftAngle.io and we are hoping to become a part of the group of select publications he has on the site. Free to sign-up!