Welcome back to BCB After Dark: the coolest club for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Come on in and sit with us. There are still a few tables available. Let us know if there is anything we can do for you. The show will start shortly. 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 it would be a good idea for the Cubs to sign free agent third baseman Matt Chapman if they fail to sign Cody Bellinger. Basically, you were only in favor of it if it were a “pillow contract” of two years with an option. That option got 58 percent of the vote. Thirty percent didn’t want Chapman even at that price. The rest wanted to sign him to a five-year deal (or so).

Here’s the part where I put the music and the movies. Those of you who skip that can do so now. You wont hurt my feelings.

It’s Valentine’s Day, so I guess it’s mandatory to feature “My Funny Valentine.” I think last year I presented the famous Chet Baker version, so this year I’m presenting the equally-famous Miles Davis version. This is a live performance in at the Philharmonic in New York in 1964.

It’s not quite the “second great Miles Davis Quintet” because Wayne Shorter hadn’t left the Jazz Messengers quite yet and the tenor saxophonist is the still very good George Coleman. But the rest of the quintet is here already with Tony Williams on drums, Ron Carter on bass and Herbie Hancock on piano.

You voted in the BCB Winter Western Classic and the results are in. The number-one seed The Searchers (1956) topped the eight-seed, Once Upon A Time in the West (1968) with 64 percent of the vote.

That leaves us with just three contests left. The two semifinals and the final. The Searchers against Red River and Stagecoach against Rio Bravo. And as coincidence would have it, both semifinal contests feature a matchup of a John Ford-directed movie and a Howard Hawks directed movie. We also have a color film taking on a black-and-white effort in both semis—one from each director. And all four pictures star The Duke, John Wayne.* So we have two of the greatest directors of the studio era—maybe the two best directors of that time, although there is a lot of competition for that claim—and the greatest Western actor of all time.

When I was growing up, John Wayne pictures were on television all the time on Saturday or Sunday afternoon. And on the rare occasion that I tuned in to watch one, I wasn’t impressed. (Of course, I was a young punk back then.) And to be fair, I’m sure some of the pictures I caught on the weekend matinees were really crappy. The Duke made a lot of movies and many of them stunk. I can’t remember which ones I would have seen. (Other than The Alamo, which does, in fact, stink. Your mileage may vary, but you’d be wrong.)

But as I hope I’ve made clear over the course of this competition, my opinion of Wayne’s acting ability and many of the films he made has changed since I was young. When he wanted to be, Wayne was a great actor. And in all four of these pictures, he does a terrific job. Wayne actually does a better job in She Wore A Yellow Ribbon or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance than Rio Bravo or Stagecoach in my mind, but that doesn’t mean those two films are better pictures.

In our matchup today, Wayne arguably plays the villain in both films, He’s certainly at least an antihero both films.

We can debate the auteur theory all day long or the difference between Ford and Hawks. But the bottom line is that Wayne made good movies with both of them. Also with Henry Hathaway, John Sturges, Don Siegel and others.

*Technically Claire Trevor gets top billing in Stagecoach, but we all know that was marketing and that Wayne was the real star of Stagecoach. But Stagecoach is also a real ensemble cast film, so “star” is pretty relative.

So enough of my going on about Duke Morrison. Now on to the voting. As always, I’m just repeating what I wrote earlier.