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“Stop being the palookas of the Pac-10,” Murray wrote of the admonition he kept to himself.

“I am the luckiest palooka,” he said, and gave a shout-out to both mentor David Mamet and his wife, Felicity Huffman, in the audience.

John G. Avildsen directs in a modest, unaffected style that underlines the palooka’s solitude.

Beating Sharks twice in Europe is what boxers do with palookas to inflate records.

But the palooka turns on the percussion pitch, sending it whistling out of the stadium for what looks like a game-winning homer.