Duck, Duck, GOOSE

The "other" story about Baseball's annual Hall of Fame election on Tuesday is about how poor Richard "Goose" Gossage has to wait ANOTHER year for his shot at Cooperstown.

Every year, it's the same for the Goose. The 2nd Tuesday of January comes, radio and television stations line up interviews to talk to Goose about the election, and with every passing year, he just...keeps...coming...up...short. And this year, he winds up 21 votes shy. The glass half-full response that is he's a shoe-in now for next year (especially with a new class of candidates coming in who don't have a prayer of getting any support). I guess after waiting every January since 2000, and getting more support with each election, what's one more year of waiting for the phone to ring?

Meanwhile, it's been impossible to avoid A&E's hyping up the fact that they're now airing a sanitized version of The Sopranos. The stories might be the same, but it's just not the same show. First of all, this is a program that shouldn't have commercials, and secondly, A&E has done the unthinkable with the series. No, not removing the F-bombs and some of the violence, but the biggest shock to me is that they've totally done away with one of the signature moments of each episode. There's no more closing song over the closing credits. This has to irk creator David Chase to no end, as I know he and his producers carefully select a different song for each episode to tie everything up. It's almost like the final song is a character of the program. The pilot episode ends with Nick Lowe's "The Beast In Me", but you'd never know that if you first saw the show last night on A&E. If you've never seen the show, for Chrissakes, see it either on HBO first or buy the damn DVDs. Plus "fuck" just sounds so much more effective than "freak".

The one good thing that A&E has done is a pretty damn addictive internet game called Suitcase Full of Cash. This is actually a brilliant idea on their part, as it allows users to put together a bingo card (they almost called the game "Bada Bingo") of characters and other items seen in each program. You can watch your card in live time (when the shows first air on A&E), and see how many points you score as the show moves on. Or if you actually don't have time on your hands, you can come back later and see how you scored. Seriously, this is actually worth checking out. Unfortunately, the closing credit songs are not a playing piece for your game card.