BCB After Dark: Domestic or an Import?

Welcome back to BCB After Dark: the happening for night owls, early-risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. So glad you stopped in tonight. Let us take your hat and coat. There’s no cover charge here tonight and the dress code is waived. Except you do need to be dressed, or at least turn your camera off. We run a classy joint here. Bring your own beverage.

BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.

Last night I asked you if you thought that Matt Olson or Freddie Freeman would be the better player over the next two seasons. I said “next two seasons” because that was before Olson signed his eight-year extension with the Braves. At the time, I thought that the Braves only had two years of control of Olson, but also, Olson is four years younger than Freeman so it’s not really fair to compare the two of them going too far into the future.

In any case, by a margin of 56 percent to 44 percent, you voted that Freddie Freeman would be the better player over the next two years.

On Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, I don’t do the movie essay. You can read what I had to say about the 1928 silent classic The Passion of Joan of Arc last night and I’ll have a bit more to say about it tomorrow night. I’m halfway through watching it a second time and it really is a movie that stands up to repeated viewings.

But I always have time for some jazz, so if you want to skip that, now is your chance. You won’t hurt my feelings.

Tonight’s selection is a BBC performance of the Bill Evans Trio from 1965. I know I’ve extolled the virtues of the pianist Bill Evans here before as a sideman to Miles Davis, but I don’t think I’ve ever featured him as a band leader in his own right.

This is a colorized video and I have to admit that the colorization looks like it was done by Crayola. I wish they had just left it in black and white. However, the performance is a truly soulful one. It is at times peaceful and soothing and at other times it really starts to swing.

So with Chuck Isreals on bass and Larry Bunker on drums, here is the Bill Evans Trio.

The performance is over an hour long and is actually a two-part show, so you may want to bookmark it and save some of it for later. It’s that good.

Welcome back to all of you who skip all that jazz.

We found out this evening that Anthony Rizzo would not be coming back to the Cubs, despite some rumors that the front office was at least talking to Rizzo’s representatives.

But team president Jed Hoyer has said that the Cubs are still looking to add talent this spring and that some of the players they add could be “significant.” This has been widely interpreted as an admission that the Cubs front office is still in pursuit of some of the top free agents, although Hoyer does say in his next breath that “I’ve done this too long to assume that anything gets across the finish line, so you try keep a lot of balls in the air.”

Two players that the Cubs have been linked with in recent hours (really, you can’t say days the way the deals have been flying recently) are Japanese slugger Seiya Suzuki and American slugger Kyle Schwarber.

I don’t think I need to introduce Schwarber to any of you. Back in February, I asked club members if you thought the Cubs should and would sign Suzuki. You can go back and read what I wrote about Suzuki back then (and maybe check out what I wrote about Rome: Open City) if you need to re-familiarize yourself with him. Back then, 71 percent of you thought it was a good idea for the Cubs to sign Suzuki, but only 16 percent of you thought he would. I think the odds of him coming to Chicago have gone up since then, even if we have no idea whether or not they’re the favorites.

But tonight, I’m asking you whether or not you think that Hoyer and company will manage to get either player “across the finish line,” as he put it. I’m not going to ask you whether you think it’s a good idea to sign either player because I know that an overwhelming majority will say yes at this point. So I’m just going to ask if you think either or both of them will be Cubs in 2022.

So will the Cubs sign either slugger in the next few days?

Thank you again so much for stopping by. I hope you have a way to get home safely. Be sure to tip the waitstaff. Don’t be a stranger and come by again tomorrow night for another edition of BCB After Dark.