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Thank you and have an IVH night.
Tonight's guests are probably, maybe, perhaps Kristen Bell and Robert Carlyle (oooh, he's in that new Stargate show on SciFi, oops, I mean SyFy).
It's October and just about time for our annual Fall Classic, the World Series of Baseball. Although I like baseball, I usually don't pay much attention; if the Brewers ain't in it, then it ain't for me, and the Brewers are never in it.
I do kind of like baseball, despite being the quintessential fair weather fan. I like hearing the crack of the bat, seeing the green field on a hot summer afternoon, eating hotdogs, peanuts, and cracker jacks, the seventh inning stretch, and keeping score during the innings. In Milwaukee, we sing The Beer Barrel Polka during the seventh inning stretch, and have the pleasure of Bob Uecker giving us the play by play on the radio.
In America, of course, you know for sure that winter is over when spring training begins -- none of that passive-agressive ground-hog behavior to jerk us around. And the World Series ushers out our indian summer.
This time of year I usually have a small, personal celebration of baseball -- usually by watching one of my four favorite baseball movies. (They never get old with me.) And, I just found a baseball blogger who writes from somewhere in the bush leagues. Of course, the original bush league blogger was one Jack Keefe, who wrote a blow-by-blow account of his big step up to the Big Show, called You Know Me, Al. (Go ahead and download it. The book's out of copywrite, so it's okay. It was written in 1914, but it's still fresh, nearly a 100 years later. The man who wrote, Ring Lardner, had a keen ear for the American vernacular, and knew the sport inside out.)
Here's Craig interviewing the man who played Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoush in one of my all time favorite baseball movies.