The regular baseball season is over.
Mostly, it’s the same old faces in the playoffs — although the Detroit Tigers haven’t made it to the postseason since 1987. Last year, the Tigers were 71-91, this year, 95-67.
No team won 100 games in 2006, but two teams, both in the American League, lost 100 or more: the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and Kansas City Royals. Tampa lost the most, 101.
No pitcher won 20 games. No one won the triple crown or batted over .400.
If this is the final baseball season ever (and it is possible), it won’t be a very distinguished one.
I’d like to see the Tigers or the Oakland Athletics in the World Series, but I don’t care which National League team they play.
Last year’s World Series winner, the Chicago White Sox, didn’t make the playoffs this year — we like to think it’s payback for clueless comments made by the team’s jerk manager.
Two big stories of the season: 1) Detroit led the American League Central almost all year but lost the top spot to the Minnesota Twins on the last day of the season. 2) Our Atlanta Braves are missing the playoffs for the first time since 1990.
Navel gazing
Do you know what many movie people consider the best screen performance of all time? (See below.)
I finally found a parking place near the beautiful Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College. Don’t miss the terrific Jerry Uelsmann photography. (I wish I had bought three or four Uelsmanns 30 years ago when I first saw his art.) A lovely Annie Russell portrait graces the gallery at the front of the museum, and there’s an interesting Robert Henri piece I had never seen.
Is Ray Liotta another Kenny Rogers? Check out his eyes.
A story about deviled eggs on the Sentinel’s food pages talked about putting lemon, hot pepper sauce and/or bacon in the mix. How do you taste the eggs then? I do them the old-fashioned way, the best way: mashed egg yolks, mayo, salt, pepper and mustard. You really don’t need anything else.
The only TV sitcom I watch is Weeds. It’s on Showtime, and it’s good but not great. (The sitcom as art form does seem dead or at least moribund.) On Weeds, Mary-Louise Parker’s son was in a debate at school — the popular vote versus the electoral college. He took the popular-vote side, and his whole argument was “George W. Bush.” (I’ve discovered that my guilty-pleasure sitcom is running at 8 p.m. weekdays on that “i” network. That would be Mama’s Family.)
Passings: Edward Albert, 55, son of Eddie Albert and co-star of Goldie Hawn in Butterflies Are Free, has died of lung cancer. Elizabeth Allen, the “Away We Go” girl on Jackie Gleason’s show and star of Broadway musical Do I Hear a Waltz?, has died at 77.
I bet you’re watching a lot of election commercials — Bill Nelson’s look pretty classy compared with the others, especially the shrill ones that try to demonize liberals.
Spouses Bradley Whitford and Jane Kaczmarek surely didn’t waste any time landing series after The West Wing and Malcolm in the Middle ended their runs last season. He’s in the wonderful Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and she’s in that Ted Danson thing that looks so recycled and awful.
Gilmore Girls: I may be in a minority, but I’ve always hoped Lorelai would end up with Christopher, Rory’s father, instead of Luke, the diner owner who still persists in wearing the same ugly shirt and that silly baseball cap backward (shouldn’t that trend be over by now?). You know, come to think of it, there aren’t many likable characters on GG.
Has anyone noticed how hard it is to encounter a moment of silence? There’s even distracting music on TV and radio news shows, for Pete’s sake. I was watching Men in Trees recently, and the singing was so loud I couldn’t hear the dialogue. We were out to dinner the other night at the wonderful Blue Bistro and had to ask for the music to be turned down, and why do you need background music while you’re eating and chatting in a restaurant anyway? Turn it way down; better yet, turn it off. (The salmon I had at Blue Bistro last Friday may be the best I’ve ever had.)
It’s official: I won’t be watching the Sci-Fi series Eureka for a second season if there is one. I mainly watched it because I’m a fan of Joe Morton, but the series became too goofy, and the lead player is such a bad actor, and his character so unbelievable, where’s the fun? Then, the writers had him putting beer on his cereal instead of milk — that’s not eccentric, it’s ignorant.
Joe Morton probably first came to the attention of most of us in John Sayles’ Brother From Another Planet (1984).
Best movie performance of all time? Peter O’Toole as Lawrence of Arabia.
