BRONX, NY – Happy Birthday to my lovely wife, who probably won’t read this because she’s got better, more fulfilling things to do on her special day. She moved to New York City to pursue acting and ended up marrying a guy who pursued a career in make-believe sports writing. To her great credit, she’s stayed true to her love of theater and hasn’t once been tempted to spend countless hours in front of the TV with me rooting for hapless, go-nowhere teams. In her honor, today’s post will be entirely about Broadway shows. Well… sort of.
Damn Yankees. God only knows the last time this show had a high-profile staging. Aside from writing for this site, my other claim to fame is that I was in 6th-grade production of this baseball-themed musical back at P.S.7 in the Bronx Mesozoic era. As for the real Damn Yankees, I wish my damn Seattle Mariners would stop helping them out by losing to them while beating the Red Sox. What the hell?
Hello, Dolly! Fresh off her success in “Rochelle, Rochelle: The Musical,” Bette Midler recently took home a Tony Award for the revival of Hello, Dolly! Football season is right around the corner, which unfortunately means college and pro players alike will soon be hollering “Hello, Dolly!” as trainers rush to cart their crippled carcasses off the field. Anyone else catch the just-published report that 110 of 111 NFL brains studied had C.T.E.? Good luck to all with THOSE revivals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTYyFdGs2Q4
Chicago. This musical seems to keep chugging along on its familiarity, past glory, and a name that evokes comfortable Midwestern appeal. The same can be said for baseball’s Chicago Cubs. The defending World Series champs have been playing a bit better of late after mailing it in for most of the season’s first half. Going to Wrigley is almost always worth the price of admission, but being only 4 games over .500 and trailing the Milwaukee Brewers doesn’t exactly translate into another show-stopping finale for the Cubbies.
Wicked. It would most likely take a nuclear holocaust to take out this long-running show inspired by The Wizard of Oz. And, even then, they’d probably still pack ’em in with apocalypse zombies and cockroaches. There are so many wicked figures to choose from in sports that it’s hard to single out just one. But, let’s do it anyway! Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is a scumbag of the highest order who will cut a lesser player (receiver Lucky Whitehead, in this case) to make a point about how no-nonsense he is, only to look the other way time and again when one of his stars (*cough* Ezekiel Elliott *cough*) runs afoul of the law. And it turns out Whitehead didn’t do anything wrong. It was a case of mistaken identity. It makes statements like this, from Dallas coach Jason Garrett, all the more hypocritical: “There’s a certain way that we want to handle ourselves on and off the field. There’s a standard that we have. We believe very strongly in adhering to those standards and trying to uphold them each and every day in everything that we do. When you have someone in your program, in this environment, in this structure, and they don’t grow and develop and they make the same mistakes over and over again, it’s time to move on.” What a crock!
Hamilton. Broadway’s answer to Godzilla, this monster musical about the dude on the 10-dollar bill has been crushing it at the box office since its 2015 debut, sending legions of fans scurrying to fork over outrageous amounts of money to secure tickets. Speaking of sawbucks, today $10 will buy you a hot dog OR a water at the stadium, but not both. Alexander Hamilton would flip his powdered wig over such prices, both at the show that bears his name and at the ballpark.
The Play that Goes Wrong. Aside from what can be inferred from its title, I have no idea what this Broadway comedy is about. But I’m gonna go ahead and guarantee, Joe Namath-style, that this year’s New York Jets will have dozens and dozens of plays that go wrong. Creating a flop on purpose may have worked for “The Producers,” but in sports you reap what you sow.
That’s all for today. Come back tomorrow for Buddy Diaz, who is currently an understudy for the role of Emilio Estefan in On Your Feet: The Musical. And you can find us on Twitter at @Angry_Ward, @MeetTheMatts & @Matt_McCarthy00, Instagram @MeetTheMatts and our Facebook page, Meet The Matts.
