The Tigers have beaten the New York Yankees. I am bouncing off of the walls!

Incredible. To lose the first game, and come back and win 3 in a row like they did, with the last two in front of their home town crowd?! Incredible. And each of the players, in their interviews, said almost the same thing: “We blew it last week. We lost the Division championship and let the fans down. Now we feel like we can celebrate, like we’ve done our job for them.” Granted, they’ve just moved to the next round, but still – they did it in grand fashion against an opponent that very few people expected them to beat.

While I was too ridiculously scheduled to see any of the Yankee games at the park, I’m working hard to get some tickets for the Oakland series!

The Tigers won the second game at Yankee Stadium.
AND they won last night’s game in Detroit.
If they win tonight, they’ve knocked the Yankees out of the playoffs, which would be an amazing thing.
If they lose tonight, they go back to NYC and try to knock the Yankees out tomorrow!
Man, I hope they win it tonight! I’m just bouncing off the walls waiting for this game to start at 4pm!

My brother and his wife, Alesha, have a new baby boy! I’m an uncle again! Jamis Brent Caselli has joined the world! Hooray!

Tonight is my High School Reunion. Yep, I’m going. Although it’s only been 19 years, they combined the 1987 reunion with the 1986 class reunion because both classes were so small. Should be fun to see the handful of people I still talk to, and the bunch of people I’ve not seen since the 10 year reunion!

Had a great time this morning – took my 8 year old, Maggie, to do some shopping. We stopped at an art gallery downtown for her to look around, because she’s very, very into making all sorts of paintings and drawings, and has more than once expressed interest in being an artist. We spent some time checking out some wonderful works of art, which she just loved! It was nice to spend some time just Daddy/Daughter – we’ve not done that in a while.

Gotta run – it’s family time!

GO TIGERS!!

And the Reviews are in for Rounding Third.

4 Stars out of 4 Stars from The Detroit Free Press. Excellent.

The Lansing State Journal loved it.

The Lansing City Pulse loved it.

Aaaaand the 4th and final review, from Between The Lines, is also very good. It’s not online yet, though, so I can’t link to it!

So, yay for Williamston Theatre. Let’s hope ticket sales get a nice boost from the reviews!

Well, the Tigers lost 8-4 at Yankee Stadium last night. Although they managed 12 hits, they left way too many men on base – poor hitting with runners in scoring position, poor starting pitching (again!), and a couple of really odd managerial decisions just left this team looking a lot like the team that lost a whole lotta games the last month of the season, and not the team that held 1st place for 4 months of the season.

Ah well – maybe they’ll pick it up tonight. Rain delay, though, will make us wait.

It’s been so interesting today, and annoying, to listen to and read the sportcasters and sports analysts thoughts (proclamations) on what’s going on with the Tigers. So many people are saying things with such vitriol, it’s amazing! There’s a very interesting attitude pervading much of the discussion, that feels like “Who the hell do these guys think they are?! They suck! It’ll sure be fun to watch the Yankees pound them for 3 games and then move on to something important.” Like it or not, this team won 95 games this year! I mean, I know several New Yorkers, and they’re not ALL positive that they’re the center of the universe, but is it a requirement of New York Sportswriters to think that?! It’s entertaining, really, to listen to people gloss over the HUGE difference in salary, and experience, simply because what makes a good story is to be loud and abusive.

I mean, we COULD be hearing stories about a team that hasn’t been to the playoffs in 19 years, and has a lot of young guys taking their first steps into what, just possibly, will be a long series of postseason appearances. However, it’s WAY more fun to go “Oh, there was the ‘cinderella story’ that I wrote about 3 months ago. Let’s tear them down!”

So, I’m annoyed. I even ranted on OTHER peoples LiveJournals! (Not at them, they’re great people. Just TO them, because they know baseball.)

Would I have rather they won the last few games of the season? Yes. Would I have preferred a different outcome to last nights game? Yes. Do I think some roster moves need to be made in the off-season? Yes.

But I’m not going to start ranting about how much a team sucks, and how every decision is a clear sign of stupidity, and how every mis-play is a sign of immaturity and complete lack of talent.

Sorry, jumping on that bandwagon is just a little too easy.

…but the Tigers will be at Yankee Stadium, as the A.L. Wild Card team. They could not muster a win, sadly, in the final weekend of the regular season. The Minnesota Twins overtook them on the FINAL DAY of the season to become the A.L. Central champs.

Although it’s disappointing, it was still a remarkable year for a team that only won 53 games and lost 119 games in 2003. I mean, they won 95 games this year! AND they’re still going to the playoffs! If anyone, in the first week of April, had said “Oh, yep – Detroit’s going to the playoffs as the Wild Card” we all would’ve laughed! And now, even though we have to go to New York and play in the very intimidating confines of Yankee Stadium, we’re going to the playoffs.

Way to go, Tigers. This was a remarkable, exciting, entertaining season. And now, let’s hope we have a post-season that’s at least as good! 🙂

BASEBALL
The Tigers can clinch the Central Division with a win tonight. How great would that be?! Then they’d start the playoffs on Tuesday at home, with Oakland coming in. Anybody wanna donate to the “Get Tony Playoff Tickets” Fund?

I’ve ranted about Neifi Perez, the infielder that the Tigers picked up when Placido Polanco got hurt. Well, thankfully, Polanco is back. This hilarious quote was pointed out to me by Kradical, because he’s a great baseball guy and has heard me complain about Perez:

“[Placido] Polanco’s comment–‘I feel good enough to help the team’–betrays a becoming modesty, but let’s face it, a gouty koala would probably be an improvement over Neifi Perez.”
—Christina Kahrl, BaseballProspectus.com, 29 September 2006

I read that and actually spit coffee out of my mouth onto my desk. It was embarassing, since I was at work, but I laughed for 10 minutes. A gouty koala, that’s good stuff! And the best part is, she’s RIGHT!! Thanks Kradical for pointing this out!

THEATRE
As I posted, Opening Night went well. Now it’s time to work on building audiences for this show, and focusing on the next couple. I’ll be working on a couple in a row – the Christmas spoof Every Christmas Story Ever Told!!, which opens the Friday after Thanksgiving, as well as doing prep work for Fully Committed at Williamston Theatre, and I’ll be taking a couple of trips to Buffalo, to prepare for the show I’m directing at Studio Arena Theatre, The Mystery of Irma Vep. (Irma Vep, incidentally, is Vampire, anagrammatized!)

I’ll post reviews for Rounding Third as they come out this week.

KIDS (warning: bodily fluid graphicness ahead)
The kids are great. Maggie, however, was sick this week – she came home feeling really yucky on Wednesday afternoon, and spent the next 12 hours hurling her guts out every 45 minutes. Poor kid. She’s fine now. However, I did have one absolutely hilarious moment with her during this ordeal:

At about 2am, we were camped out in the hallway near the bathroom, (she loves to lay in her sleeping bag in the hallway by the bathroom when she’s not feeling well). After making her hourly trip to empty her stomach, she rinsed her mouth out and wiped her face, and came to lay back down.

As she crawled into her sleeping bag she said, in a very sleepy little-girl voice, “Dad? You know what I learned at school? When frogs throw up, their whole stomachs turn inside out and come right out of their mouths! I think that’s SO COOL!!”

Then she snuggled up on her pillow and went to sleep.

I laughed for about 10 minutes. How funny that, in the middle of throwing up, she’s thinking about how frogs throw up. AND she thinks it’s “SO COOL!!” What a kid!

THEATRE PART II
This is really funny. The setting: Performance Network theatre in Ann Arbor. They’re getting a bunch of publicity because an actor took a costume to be dry-cleaned, and left a prop in the pocket. The prop was a note, from another character to his character. The note said, basically, “I know you committed the murder. I have no choice but to kill myself. Love, your wife Alice.”

When the drycleaner found the note, they called the police. Hilarity ensued! Read the article here! I spoke with some folks at the Network about it, and they said “Whoops. But, also…YAY! Free publicity!” *laughing*

Well, Opening Night for Rounding Third seemed to go very well. Tons of laughs, and some nice gasps and silences when they were called for! A lot of really nice comments afterwards.

For fun, I took a picture of the audience during my pre-show speech. Here’s what some folks looked like (with a little glare from the lights!)

A couple of reviewers were there, and a couple more will be at tonight’s show. Not that I’m worried about the reviews, because we have no control over those, but the publicity in the paper is always helpful, and it doesn’t cost us an arm and a leg for the ad! I’m always more worried about what the audiences will think, and so far they’ve liked it a lot.

So, there it is – another opening. I’m really happy with the show, as Director, and as Artistic Director of the company I’m happy with the product – it’s funny, poignant and relatable, and hopefully it’ll sell!

These are absolutely hilarious.

And at the same time, they make me a little sad and scared.

Well, okay….more than a little.

The Top Ten “Bushisms”: Really, really stupid things the leader of our country has said in public. With video and audio clips, to add to the fun.

Imagination! Imagination! I put it first years ago, when I was asked what qualities I thought necessary for success on the stage.
Ellen Terry