BCB After Dark: Look sharp

Welcome back to BCB After Dark, the groovin’ get-together for night-owls, early-risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. We’re so glad you stopped in tonight. I hope you can relax with us for a while after the Cubs game. There’s no dress code and no cover charge tonight. Grab any table you can find. 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.

Tonight the Cubs fell to the Blue Jays again, 5-3, wasting Marcus Stroman’s excellent start in his first game back in Toronto. They certainly love Stroman in Toronto, as well they should. Brendon Little had a bad first MLB game and Jeremiah Estrada looked good in his major league debut.

Last night, I asked you to dream and pick one MLB superstar to come to the Cubs for just the 2023 season. The vote wasn’t even close as 73 percent of you want Shohei Ohtani to come to Chicago. Aaron Judge got 19 percent and Jacob deGrom only got eight percent. I’m guessing deGrom’s health issues was behind his low vote total.

On Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, I don’t do a film essay. But I always have time for jazz, so anyone who wants to skip that can do so now. You won’t hurt my feelings.

This week we are paying tribute to the late Joey DeFrancesco, whom we lost last week at the young age of 51.

As I mentioned last night, DeFrancesco and bassist Christian McBride were lifelong friends, playing together in Philadelphia jazz bands when DeFrancesco was just 13 and McBride was only 12. They went to high school together and played together there—and in front of Miles Davis, no less, as I mentioned yesterday.

But after high school, DeFrancesco and McBride went their separate ways. McBride moved to New York and DeFrancesco headed to Arizona, of all places. As McBride wrote last week, DeFrancesco was ahead of the curve in identifying the Phoenix area as a future musical hot spot. The two always kept in contact with each other and they met up with each other when their paths crossed on the road. Sometimes they’d play together for old times, but they never recorded anything together until 2019 when they finally decided that had to put out a record together. That recording, For Jimmy, Wes and Oliver, won a Grammy for the Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album.

I picked this tune, “Don Is,’ because it was the only one on the record written by DeFrancesco. The song is a tribute to Don Was, whom you may know as a record producer or if you’re old enough, the leader of the eighties funk-rock band Was (Not Was). But since 2012, Don Was has been the president of the famous jazz record label Blue Note.

So here’s the Christian McBride Big Band playing “Don Is,” with McBride on bass, DeFrancesco on organ, Mark Whitfield on guitar, Quincy Phillips on drums and too many musicians on horns and woodwinds to mention here.

Welcome back to everyone who skips all that jazz.

Tonight we’re going to handle fashion because if your team can’t be good, at least they should look good.

The question tonight is simple: What is your favorite Cubs uniform this year? Or you can think of the question this way: Assume you don’t currently own any authentic Cubs uniforms. You’re allowed to buy one of the ones they have worn this year. Which one are you getting?

There are five choices. (If the Cubs wore more than that, I’ve forgotten them.) They choices are:

The home pinstripes whites

The road gray

The blue alternate uniforms

The “Wrigleyville” city connect jerseys

The cream throwback “Field of Dreams” uniforms

If you’re having trouble comparing, here’s the Cubs.com shop with all the uniforms on it. We’re not putting the Cooperstown old uniforms up for a vote tonight.

So if you can only have one Cubs uniform, which one are you getting? Which is your favorite? Which one would you look the best in?

Thank you again so much for stopping by. I hope to see you again tomorrow night. Bring the family. If you need a ride home, please let us call someone for you. Get home safely. Tip your waitstaff. Recycle your empties. And join us again tomorrow night for another edition of BCB After Dark.