THE POST'S "APOLOGY": From today's Page Six:

Sandy Koufax, an apology

A TWO-SENTENCE blind item we ran here Dec. 19 about a "Hall of Fame baseball hero" has sparked a series of unfortunate consequences for which we are very sorry. The item said the sports hero "cooperated with a best-selling biography only because the author promised to keep secret that he is gay." Two weeks later, the Daily News' Michael Gross, after finding "Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy" by Jane Leavy on the best-seller list, named Koufax as the player and ran a photo of him. Koufax himself, an intensely private man, was deeply offended by our item. The author has denied making any deal with Koufax and called our item "erroneous." We apologize to both Koufax and Leavy for getting it wrong.

Responses:

1. The blaming of Gross is disingenuous to the max. Any fool with half a brain -- including me -- could have easily noted that there was only one baseball biography on the best-seller lists that was written by a woman. The Post named Koufax with the un-blindest item ever -- it was as blind as an item that referred to "an well-known Long Island-based portly piano man with a drinking problem" -- and has no business blaming others for identifying the obvious subject.

2. "has sparked a series of unfortunate consequences for which we are very sorry": Me? I'd be sorry for the initial lie. The Post doesn't seem to be. They just seem to be sorry that it's hurting the Dodgers.

3. "for getting it wrong": What's the "it", here? Are they admitting to being wrong on their being a deal between Leavy and Koufax (it seems so), or on the allegation about Koufax himself (unclear)?

There is no excuse for poorly-sourced reporting, especially on matters as personal and private as these for Mr. Koufax, and with such damaging effects on Ms. Leavy's reputation as well. Shame, shame, shame -- for the initial item, and now, for a half-assed apology.

Now, can I get back to talking about Joe Millionaire?

THE SCORE BARD STRIKES AGAIN: Reacting to a story in today's Philadelphia Daily News on Bobby Abreu (pronounced uh-BRAY-you) -- Phillies RF, Venezuela native and all-around great player -- the Bard notes:

"What's great about Bobby Abreu,"
Says Bowa, "He'll never dismeu."
He just gives his best
And will not protest,
Whatever you ask, he'll obeu."

I'm headed home.

THE NEAR-GREAT MOVIES: Part two of a continuing series. Today: My Best Friend's Wedding.

Starring Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz, Rupert Everett and Dermot Mulroney, MBFW is a fundamentally flawed movie. It just doesn't work. But the ways in which it doesn't work tell you everything you'll ever need to know about what makes romantic comedies work when they do work, and for that reason, it's one of my favorite movies to talk about and revisit.

This is a triangle movie that skips the Boy Meets Girl part and jumps right into Girl Loses Boy And Needs To Get Her Back. Nothing wrong there. Many of the elements of great romantic comedy are in place: the Trusted, Witty Friend; the haughty parents; the miscommunications and the madcap chases.

The cast is solid. In particular, Everett is just plain fabulous as George Downes, the wise, gay editor who comes in to save the day for Our Heroine Julia.

And the premise is sound: two long-time friends (Roberts, Mulroney) had promised that if neither married by the age of 28, they'd marry. Only Mulroney just found love on his own, in the form of Kimmy Wallace (Diaz), a nineteen year-old University of Chicago architecture major (and yes, there are at least three things wrong with that clause). So now Roberts realizes she wants him back, wants to break up the wedding and uses her friend (Everett) to pose as her fiancee as a distraction from her machinations. Will she succeed in breaking them up? Will anyone find true love? It's a great setup for a movie . . .

. . . and yet, it just doesn't work. Why? Because in a Julia Roberts Movie, Julia Roberts is supposed to end up with the man. I don't care if it's Pretty Woman or Mystic Pizza or Notting Hill or Runaway Bride or even Erin Brockovich -- if Julia is the star, Julia's gets a happy ending, including The Guy. And, [spoiler], this time, she doesn't.

But that's not all: not only does she not win The Guy, we don't really want her to. Instead of being Our Hero Julia, the Julia of MBFW becomes increasingly unsympathetic as she tries to break up the wedding of Mulroney and Diaz. She plays dirty, and not in a cute way. (Also, she smokes, and Good Girls Don't Smoke In Movies.) This movie absolutely frustrates your expectations for romantic comedy by not wanting you to root for The Name Above The Title, and it's a striking choice.

Not only do we not want her to succeed in breaking them up, the movie doesn't convince us to root for Diaz and Mulroney either. Diaz is a likeable enough ditz, but Mulroney's character is just a blank slate --an "underwritten, blankly rendered pretty-boy", as one review put it, and so we don't really want anyone to end up with him. We just don't care.

The only character we do care about? The gay guy. Does he end up with anyone? Of course not.

So why watch this movie? First off, as I said, it's so obvious what's missing that you will keep rescripting it in your head until it works -- that either Julia and Dermot are supposed to be together, and it works, because there will be some Big Flaw they'll discover with Kimmy; or Julia realizes she's not meant to be with him (which she does in the movie), but she still finds someone else, because movies require happy endings, not wistful ones. Under the Law of Economy of Character Development, however, that should be The Friend, but in that case, he can't be gay, which would strip this movie of its best character. Choices have to be made.

[See? But once you figure out what this movie needed, you can plot 90% of Hollywood's romantic comedies just by hearing the premise.]

Secondly, and just as important, this movie gets all the little things right. Every supporting role is well-thought, well-cast and memorable. I haven't watched the movie in years but I can still remember the details -- the Burt Bacharach songs, Diaz's older sisters, the kids with the helium, the guy with the giant lobster-claw mittens -- really cute, amusing throwaway stuff that works. While the core of this cake was poorly-baked, the icing makes you smile.

I really despised this movie when I first saw it. I was just so frustrated with all the ways it messed with my expectations that I couldn't appreciate the movie which was made. My Best Friend's Wedding is not a great movie by any stretch, but its flaws make it one of the most interesting movies out there. Rent it.

Next week: Point Break? Top Secret? To be determined.

THE BEST DISINFECTANT: I feel bad today.

I feel bad because my counter's telling me that I'm getting a lot of hits today for people searching for "koufax" and "gay" -- I'm #3 on Google right now for that. I feel bad because I don't want to be part of a machine that furthers the publication of gossip that is alleged to be untrue, even if Koufax is the one who's put this story back in the news.

Then again, I can't read into your motives to know why you're looking up information on the subject -- maybe it's to look up further denials, rather than the initial allegations. Maybe just to find more news on Koufax's current actions. Regardless, I'd rather you were coming here for something else, and I hope you'll enjoy the other content this site has to offer, including the stuff about someone else who shouldn't be perpetuating bad rumors about himself. Or Nell Carter, or my theory on the Oscar category for Best Documentary Feature.

I was thinking about this last night as I was considering a post on a show I saw on ABC last night, a "reality" program so debased that were trying to appeal to any lower audience demands it could only add fart jokes and full frontal nudity, and, really, it's about 75% of the way there already.

The show was so bad, I don't even want to encourage you to watch it just so you can confirm how bad it is. It's so bad, there's not even an angle from which to mock it, because it's conscious of its own depravity and, in fact, caters to it. The only thing that could make the show better would be if everyone involved in the show -- the creators, hosts and contestants -- were all placed in Oswald State Correctional Facility for crimes against humanity.

The show aspires to be trash, and it succeeds. Bravo. Way to make your parents proud.

It's so bad that I don't want to even call more attention to its existence. And yet, by posting this, I will. (At least, I won't name it.)

Just don't watch it. Please. For your own safety. Because television is only going to get worse from here, unless we demand that it get a little better.

OUR NATION NEEDS MORE POETS: Thankfully, the Score Bard, America's best poet specializing in the field of baseball verse, has established a website compiling his work:

On Trevor Hoffman having surgery:

The Padres without injured Trevor
Have likely no chance whatsoever.
Without a clear heir,
They don't have a prayer,
Though I guess you should never say never.

My favorite of his works followed the decision of BaseballProspectus.com that the time was right to charge for content this season, and it's good in at least fifty ways:

The problem has hit me mostly economically
What is a Nickle worth, and what about Penny?
My favorite web site now no longer will be free
I must pay forty bucks to read my BP.

I asked, "Is 40 bucks a price that is so wise?"
The answer is easy if you care to analyze
That is the price where revenues will maximize
I must pay forty bucks to read my BP.
Forty bucks to read my BP.

That's what it Costas, Bob.
It's not too Deer, Rob.
Fork up the Cash, Norm.
And stay informed....

The poem continues here.

The website also features The Random Diamond Notes Generator, providing perfect facsimiles of Peter Gammons' analysis. Good stuff.

KOUFAX'S BRUSHBACK: Remember that item I posted in December about the Page Six rumor that Sandy Koufax was gay?

Well, Koufax himself saw that Page Six item, and has responded in kind:

Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax, whose brilliance on the mound captivated fans in the 1960s and defined the Dodgers' greatest era in Los Angeles, has severed ties with the club in protest of another News Corp. subsidiary.

Koufax, a very private man who established a standard for pitching excellence in four of the most dominant seasons in the game's history from 1963-66, recently informed the Dodgers he would no longer attend spring training here at Dodgertown, visit Dodger Stadium or participate in activities while they are owned by the media conglomerate, because of a report in the New York Post that apparently intimated that he is homosexual. The Post is owned by News Corp. . . .

Contacted Thursday by The Times, [Jane] Leavy, a former Washington Post reporter, said she assumed the item was about her book [on Koufax]. She called it "thoroughly erroneous on all counts. [The item] was blatantly unfair, scandalous and contemptible. It was thoroughly without basis in so far as it had to do with Sandy or any relationship I had with him professionally. It's not the kind of journalism I practice."

Can't say I blame him. Not one bit. The initial gossip item was as far from "blind" as can be, and such baseless, invasive rumor-spreading has no business in legitimate publications. Or The New York Post, for that matter.

GET YOUR HIGH HORSE ON: Roger Ebert has not given out a zero-star review since February 1, 2002. Until today.

The zero-star is a special place in Ebert's hell, a rare level of dishonor few can achieve, and such reviews tend to be full of bon mots like this:

This movie doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels.

Many years ago, when surrealism was new, Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali made "Un Chien Andalou," a film so shocking that Bunuel filled his pockets with stones to throw at the audience if it attacked him. [Tom] Green, whose film is in the surrealist tradition, may want to consider the same tactic. The day may come when "Freddy Got Fingered" is seen as a milestone of neo-surrealism. The day may never come when it is seen as funny.

And this:

``Little Indian, Big City'' is one of the worst movies ever made. I detested every moronic minute of it. Through a stroke of good luck, the entire third reel of the film was missing the day I saw it. I went back to the screening room two days later, to view the missing reel. It was as bad as the rest, but nothing could have saved this film. As my colleague Gene Siskel observed, ``If the third reel had been the missing footage from Orson Welles' `The Magnificent Ambersons,' this movie still would have sucked.'' I could not have put it better myself.

Or this, the classic North review:

I have no idea why Rob Reiner, or anyone else, wanted to make this story into a movie, and close examination of the film itself is no help. "North" is one of the most unpleasant, contrived, artificial, cloying experiences I've had at the movies. To call it manipulative would be inaccurate; it has an ambition to manipulate, but fails. . . .

I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.

Today, February 21, 2003, the zero-star club has a new member:

The acting in "The Life of David Gale" is splendidly done but serves a meretricious cause. The direction is by the British director Alan Parker, who at one point had never made a movie I wholly disapproved of. Now has he ever. The secrets of the plot must remain unrevealed by me, so that you can be offended by them yourself, but let it be said this movie is about as corrupt, intellectually bankrupt and morally dishonest as it could possibly be without David Gale actually hiring himself out as a joker at the court of Saddam Hussein. . . .

Spacey and Parker are honorable men. Why did they go to Texas and make this silly movie? The last shot made me want to throw something at the screen--maybe Spacey and Parker.

You can make movies that support capital punishment ("The Executioner's Song") or oppose it ("Dead Man Walking") or are conflicted ("In Cold Blood"). But while Texas continues to warehouse condemned men with a system involving lawyers who are drunk, asleep or absent; confessions that are beaten out of the helpless, and juries that overwhelmingly prefer to execute black defendants instead of white ones, you can't make this movie. Not in Texas.

Of course, this is the same Alan Parker who made a wretched movie about the civil rights movement that painted blacks as helpless victims and FBI agents as the only heroes, but, strangely, Ebert really liked that one.