The late-night/early-morning spot for Cubs fans asks how likely do you think it is that Kyle Tucker stays on the North Side.
It’s Wednesday evening at BCB After Dark: the hippest hangout for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Thank you for stopping by tonight. We’re always looking forward to your visits. We still have a few tables available. There’s no cover charge. 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.
No games today.
Last night, I asked you about your thoughts of MLB players in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. The vote was close with 52 percent of you in favor of it and the other 48 percent opposed.
Here’s the part with the music and the movies. You’re free to skip ahead if you want.
Tonight we’re featuring a bit of fusion from the Molly Miller Trio. This video is just two weeks old. Miller plays guitar, Andre de Santanna in on bass and Tamir Barzilay is the drummer. This is “Swing—Live in DTLA”
I’ve been busy with this whole draft thing this week, so I wasn’t planning to write about any films this week. But last night when I was writing my articles, I decided to put on the Mariska Hargitay documentary My Mom Jayne, about Hargitay’s attempt to understand her mother, Jayne Mansfield. I don’t consider myself to be a big fan of either Hargitay or Mansfield and I can count the number of Law and Order: SVU episodes I’ve seen on one hand. Maybe one finger. Maybe none—all the Law and Orders look alike to me. But I don’t dislike either the mother or the daughter and I thought the film was getting good notices and I figured there would be some good stuff on old Hollywood in it. (There was.) I thought it would be good background noise while I worked.
Instead, I found myself so engrossed in the story of Mariska Hargitay’s family that I had to stop the film, finish my work and watch the film afterwards. It is a very good and very moving documentary that I would recommend to anyone with even a passing interest in the subject or in overcoming trauma.
If you don’t know, Jayne Mansfield was perhaps the most successful of the Marilyn Monroe-clones that came out in the wake of Monroe’s success in the fifties. As the film makes clear, Mansfield came to Hollywood from Texas intending to be a serious actress. She was also an accomplished musician. But studio executives took one look at her and told her to cut out all the artsy stuff and just act like Marilyn Monroe. Mansfield wanted to be a star, so she did as she was told.
Also if you don’t know, Mansfield was killed in an automobile accident in 1967 when Hargitay was just three years old. Mariska and her two older brothers were actually in the car at the time of the accident, but were all in the back seat and survived. Her mother, the driver and her boyfriend at the time were in the front seat and were killed.
As she was only three when her mother died, Mariska has no memory of her mother. She always knew her mother was the movie star Jayne Mansfield, but neither her father nor her older brothers and sister talked about her much, primarily to avoid resurfacing old trauma. They aren’t wild about talking about it even now. This film is Hargitay’s attempt to discover what her mother was really like behind that Marilyn Monroe act that she put on screen. For the first time, Hargitay gets her siblings, step-mother and others who knew her mother to open up on camera about who was the real Jayne Mansfield.
The big news that came out of this film was Hargitay revealing a buried family secret. Mickey Hargitay, the man who raised her and who she still to this day considers her father, was not her biological father. She’s known this secret for thirty years (and she reveals the wild way that she first found out) but has kept quiet about it so as not to hurt the feelings of her siblings and especially Mickey, who insisted until the day he died that Mariska was his daughter. (And to be honest, she was and she thinks so as well. Just not biologically.) We get to meet Nelson Sardelli, Mariska’s biological father and his two daughters—Mariska’s sisters that she didn’t meet until she was in her thirties. The resemblance between Mariska and her two sisters is striking. Sardelli explains why he agreed to keep the secret and honestly, he had a good reason. On the other hand, you wonder if all the people trying to do right by Mariska didn’t end up hurting her more than helping her. By extension, Mariska clearly struggles with the question of if her keeping this secret for three decades (and asking her biological family to do the same) wasn’t the same act of lying that people did to her. Even if it was for good reasons, the harm may have outweighed the good.
One of Mariska’s older brothers also reveals a detail about the accident that took their mother’s life that from her reaction, she clearly wasn’t aware of before. I’m not going to spoil it for you, but it brings Mariska to tears and she has to stop filming and just hug her brother. To tell you the truth, it brought me to tears too.
While the family dynamics of Hargitay’s family are clearly complicated, the love that they all have for each other comes through. That includes Mariska’s biological family as well as the family that she grew up with. You can tell that some of her family, in particular her two older brothers, aren’t wild about dredging up painful memories, they do it because they love their little sister and they know this could help her. On the other side, Hargitay backs off when her younger brother, whom Jayne had with her third husband, director Matt Cimber, says he doesn’t want to know about all the bad stuff she’s heard about his father.
There are little details about Hargitay’s life that show how this is a journey to discover herself as well as her mother. She has a clip of her mom on the Merv Griffin Show where Jayne brought out all her kids to be on stage with her. There, little Mariska is asked what her name is and she says “Maria.” She finds other clips where her mother refers to her as “Maria.” As far as she knew, she’d been called “Mariska” all her life and her birth certificate lists her name as “Mariska.” So who is this “Maria” girl that she once was?
My Mom Jayne is a terrific documentary about Hollywood, finding out who you are and dealing with trauma. It also grapples with the question of who has the right to tell your story. It certainly was a healing journey for Hargitay, who has been mourning for decades a woman she never knew and in some ways, resented. By the end of My Mom Jayne, Hargitay feels like she finally knows her mother and you’ll feel so too.
My Mom Jayne is on HBO Max.
Here’s the trailer for My Mom Jayne.
Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies.
Tonight I’m going to ask you a question that I’ve avoided asking all year for one simple reason—none of you know the right answer to it. But I can’t think of any other question and it’s been a topic of conversation for a while so let’s just roll with it.
Do you think Kyle Tucker will be a Cub after this season?
I’m prompted by this article by Steve Greenberg where Tucker is asked flat out if he can see himself playing his home games at Wrigley Field after this year and whether he’d sign an extension this summer. Tucker has clearly been trained on how to answer this question noncommittally and his answers probably won’t change anyone’s mind on the chances.
When asked if he’d like to be a Cub long-term, he said:
Yeah, why not? They’ve been very open with me and other players. … We have a really good environment, not just in the clubhouse but also the front office, coaching staff and everything. We’ve got a good group over there.
When asked if he’d sign an extension this summer, he replied:
You never know. Things can change at any point. I’m just kind of riding it out and we’ll see how things go. Just trying to do my job in the field and let other stuff take care of itself.
Tucker’s answers are exactly what his agent would want him to say. He loves it here at Wrigley Field. He loves his teammates and the fans. And as far as if he’d like to stay long term, he basically just says he’d love to but we will have to see. Kind of like a parent explaining to a kid who asks to go to Disneyland.
The Cubs strategy with trading for Tucker has been much clearer. They want him to spend a year in Chicago, fall in love with it and re-sign long-term. Hopefully at a discount. I think Tucker does love playing in Chicago and would like to stay, but as far as giving the team a discount? We will have to see. It probably won’t be a huge discount if there is one at all.
So let me just use my 1 to 5 scale with how likely you think it is that Kyle Tucker is a Cub next year and beyond. A “1” means you think there is almost no chance. A “5” means you think it’s very likely. A “3” would give it a 50/50 chance.
Thank you to everyone who stopped by tonight and all week. I know we’ve all been off this week and I appreciate you spending some time with us. Get home safely. Recycle any cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again next week for more BCB After Dark.