Sorry, Brooks. You're a Better Man than I am

When it comes to Brooks Conrad, I did it, too, just like many Atlanta Braves fans. I asked, rhetorically, why the heck is he named 'Brooks', because he plays like Foster Brooks? I don't think I went as far as the person who commented on one of the Braves' fan pages - something akin to "F*** that mother f****** piece of ****, ********ing **************." But I was close, as in suggesting his name should join the list of words and phrases banned from my household, like racial epithets, Hannah Montana and "I'd like my steak well-done." A few hours later, I realized that Mr. Conrad is much more of a man than I am.

If you aren't following baseball's playoffs, Brooks Conrad committed all three Atlanta errors last night, including one that allowed the winning run to be scored with two-out in the top of the ninth, in the San Francisco Giants 3-2 win. Their best-of-five series isn't over, but Atlanta is in a two-games-to-one hole. Mr. Conrad has committed eight errors in his last seven games, some at third base, some - like last night- at second. Why is Mr. Conrad still playing virtually every day, you ask? Because the Braves' roster has fewer healthy people than a tuberculosis ward. Chipper Jones had his usual "I've broken everything but my schwanzstucker" season and has long been gone, and all-star second baseman Martin Prado was lost for the year in late September with a hip pointer - the very painful injury, not the activity of politicians reaching for your hip because they assume your wallet is there.

Mr. Conrad was also in the game because until the last two weeks, his was the - in the parlance of happy movie voiceover guy Mark Elliot - "the Summer story of a lifetime, featuring all your favorite Disney characters." He labored for six years in the Houston Astros minor league system and was released, never getting the chance to play for the big club in the city that's uglier than a bowling shoe. In 2008, Conrad did get a chance to play for a major league club in a city only slightly less ugly, Oakland, before being signed into the Braves' system in 2009. After a handful of appearances in Atlanta last year, Conrad made the 2010 Braves' roster as a 30-year-old rookie during Spring Training. He would mostly sit on the bench, not a glamorous role, but certainly not a bad way to make a $400,000 salary, and most of us schmucks who today are invoking Conrad's name while making familial sexual references would give a testicle to ride the major league pine.

Mr. Conrad made the most of his opportunity. Of his eight home runs during the season, three were as a pinch hitter, and two of those pinch-homers were grand slams. He is the only rookie to hit two pinch-grand slams in one season...the only one ever, in 134 years of official Major League Baseball and the five or so tobacco-stained mustachioed years of big-league ball prior to the National League's birth in 1876. Mr. Conrad surpassed everyone's expectations, so while there was some trepidation when he was pressed into everyday duty upon the decline of Mr. Prado's ability to mambo, there wasn't overwhelming worry among most Braves fans. That's when Mr. Conrad began throwing baseballs as if he were trying to break 18 windows in the home of a non-subscriber in the greatest video game of the 1980's, Paperboy.

As evidenced by the venom spewing forth from our fangs, that still didn't prepare Braves' fans for what happened last night. Still, shame on the historically fair-weather Atlanta fans for booing Brooks every time his face was shown. Shoot, they were booing the guy before the game started because of his errors prior to last night. They even booed the pre-game highlight video showing his pinch-hit grand slams. Classy stuff, especially since the guy they should have been booing is their soon-to-be-retired Hall of Fame manager, who made the same mistake that Red Sox manager John McNamara made in the Bill Buckner 1986 World Series.

Since Mr. Conrad had made two errors already, one of which led to the Giants first run, why didn't Bobby Cox insert a defensive replacement in the ninth inning? Even with the Project Runway supermodel-thin bench, there were options available. Now, many have argued that this is typical Bobby Cox, the man who supposedly doesn't know how to manage even though only three other managers in history have won more games. But every manager, Hall of Famers included, make just as many mistakes and have their own reasons for what, in the hindsight of us Einsteins, appear to be ridiculous decisions. Still, Mr. Cox flubbed this one and should have admitted as such after the game. Mr. Conrad, meanwhile, took his medicine like a man. "I wish I could just dig a hole and sleep in it," is how he succinctly put it. If only all of us who were, and are, trashing Mr. Conrad so manly.

Tonight, when the pre-game highlight video of his pinch-grand slam is played, the slam that capped an incredible seven-run ninth-inning rally to beat the Reds on May 20, Brooks Conrad will be booed. If he plays in Game 4 of the series, which is doubtful at this point, he will be booed more loudly. Bobby Cox will not be booed for his blunder, nor will the Braves hitters, who are batting a robust .165 in the series. Fair or unfair, Brooks Conrad stands to be goat for the rest of his life. He should be hero, not just for making the majors after nine years of minor league toil, but for setting an example of taking blame for your mistakes, even when they aren't entirely your fault. Sorry, Brooks. I should have known that from the get go instead of acting like all the other jerks.

Shaun Tirrell vs. Mike Manhattan; Sorry, Mike, but you lose

Mike Manhattan, newsman for Savannah's number one TV station, is by all accounts a fine person. He is to be greatly admired for his thus far successful personal battle with cancer, and his voice is of the quality that make women swoon and make men wish for a little additional testicular fortitude. But as a sales pitchman, Mike Manhattan could have partnered with the island of Manhattan and still have been decimated this past Saturday by a fast talking and faster playing piano man who claimed to be a poor salesman.

Mr. Manhattan was emcee for the Savannah Philharmonic's "The American Spirit" September 11th show at the eternally gorgeous, if slightly toasty warm, Lucas Theater. Part of Mike's job was to ask people to support the organization built from scratch by conductor and music director Peter Shannon in ways other than buying tickets to shows; the good old membership drive well known to fans of public radio and TV. In fact, Mr. Manhattan's appearances began to resemble those infamous pledge breaks - his third trip out elicited a whisper of "Lord! Him again?" from a patron seated behind me and my wife.

Mike's intentions were, nonetheless, noble, and there was nothing incorrect about what he said. If we don't support this orchestra, Savannah won't have the music Mike very accurately described as beautiful, exquisite, effervescent, pulchritudinous (okay, he didn't use that one, but dang, with his voice, that would have sounded marvelous). Mr. Manhattan made the requisite request to check out the table in the lobby during intermission or after the concert to inquire about becoming a member and all the benefits of membership, though unlike public TV, membership doesn't get you Dr. Wayne Dyer's latest book "How Bald Gurus Make A Killing Off This Shtick."

Then, during the second half of the show, a man whom some Savannah Philharmonic fans saw at a show last year appeared on stage. Concert pianist Shaun Tirrell, having waived his usual fee to perform, played the bejesus out of the third movement of the Concerto In F, one of George Gershwin's least appreciated compositions among the general public. Tirrell, with a multitude of awards and honors that only the serious music fan knows or cares about, was amazing, not to mention Maestro Shannon and the accompanying orchestra. Almost as stunning was the brief speech and, as it turned out, sales pitch Mr. Tirrell made afterward.

With an 'aw, shucks' attitude more in tune with Johnny Mercer's Savannah than Mr. Tirrell's home of Gaithersburg, Maryland, he made a pitch to support the Savannah Philharmonic that was by far the most effective of the evening. Well, as if Mr. Tirrell's playing wasn't an effective enough pitch, Shaun told us that Peter Shannon was the finest conductor he had played for. Not "a pretty good conductor", not "one of the finest", not "a bloody good musician and a fine consumer of the fruit of the vine", THE finest conductor. You don't have to be a calculus expert to know how many conductors Mr. Tirrell has probably played for.

Even more telling was that Mr. Tirrell missed his son's birthday, which was the day before the show, for the chance to play with the Savannah Philharmonic. That made me want to immediately whip out the check book and join the Philharmonic's "Conductor's Circle", which gets you great tickets to the shows, your name in the concert programs, and car washes for life from the percussion section (I think). Since that check would have been more rubberized than a Goodyear plant, I didn't.

Still, I'd like to think that an endorsement from the likes of Shaun Tirrell would make folks realize that we don't have to wait for the Savannah Music Festival every year to see world class musicians. We already have them here, and helping them put on several shows in a season doesn't really cost you as much as tickets to one Music Festival show.

Mr. Tirrell ended his pitch by talking about his grandfather and how he had introduced him to the music he loved. His 'Pop' was a salesman by trade, Shaun said, an excellent one despite his eighth-grade education, and Mr. Tirrell claimed he could never sell anything as well. Mr. Tirrell was wrong. In my book, he outsold not only his Pop but also Mike Manhattan, who was there in part to specifically sell the Savannah Philharmonic. No offense, Mr. Manhattan, but Mr. Tirrell had me with the first note he played. Let's hope he had most everyone else there by the time he left the stage.

How a Skylark And a (Mr.) B Broke Down a Barrier

When Bix Beiderbecke, who made more beautiful sounds emanate from brass instruments than perhaps any other human, died at 28 from an overdose of degenerate behavior, no one would have guessed that his passing would eventually help tear down a wall of musical racial separation. Even more unlikely was that help in bringing down that wall came from a guy from segregated Savannah, Georgia and a guy from Indiana, home of the modern Ku Klux Klan, or that the voice which blasted the wall away had bi-racial grandparents native to the bigoted nation's capitol.

Bix, self-taught cornet king back when most everyone could distinguish the mellow cornet from louder cousin trumpet, was the idol of many musicians in the 1920's. One idol who got the chance to play alongside Bix was young Hoagy Carmichael, recent graduate of his hometown Indiana University law school. No matter how badly Bix treated himself - the human body was not designed to consume even half of the notoriously nasty Prohibition bootleg gin Bix supposedly ingested - Hoagy was naturally enthralled by the chance to play alongside God. He was so hooked that two of Mr. Carmichael's prized possessions had some Bix in them; Hoagy's first child, a son (luckily) named Hoagy Bix, and a cornet mouthpiece that once belonged to the king himself. The mouthpiece was a mainstay of Hoagy's suit pocket until Mr. Carmichael passed it on to a lyricist, a younger fan of Bix with whom Hoagy occasionally worked - John Herndon Mercer.

Between the first time he worked with Johnny in 1933 and when they would come together again around 1940, Mr. Carmichael wrote some melodies based on Bix's solos - or perhaps they were actual Bix solos as eminent jazz biographer Gene Lees once suggested - in hopes of making a Broadway musical about Bix. When it didn't happen, Hoagy gave one of the melodies to Mr. Mercer to write a lyric for it. It only took John almost a year. Mr. Mercer, sometimes ready with a lyric in as little as half-an-hour, struggled with the melody so much that Hoagy later claimed he had forgotten about it when, one day out of the blue, Mercer presented him with "Skylark."

It was kind of a big deal, big enough to be on the Billboard pop charts four times under four different artists....in 1942 alone, with three of those in one month! Glenn Miller (with Ray Eberle on vocals), Harry James (w/Helen Forrest), and Dinah Shore were all on the same Billboard chart with the exact same song in May of '42. Bing Crosby (of course) would have a hit with it two months later. But before fans bought copies of those records, something happened with "Skylark" that perhaps had never before occurred; it's inaugural to the white entertainment world over the radio was given by black artists, among them Billy Eckstine.

Mr. B., he of the mixed-race background, began singing with the man many consider the first modern jazz pianist, Earl "Fatha" Hines, in 1939. By then, Hines and his orchestra were household names among white and black audiences thanks to an eleven-year run as "the most broadcast band in America" from their home base, the Grand Terrace Ballroom of the Al Capone-controlled Sunset Cafe in Chicago. It was no longer the Grand Terrace Orchestra after 1940; Hines thought he was underpaid and could say so aloud without fear of bullets now that Capone was long gone. Still, the Hines band could easily get a radio gig, and during one particular gig on the air in '42, they appear to have been the first band to play the latest Carmichael/Mercer tune into the ether, likely the first time a black singer and band debuted a mainstream (meaning white) pop song on the radio.

It isn't known whether a recording of that radio performance exists, but the Hines band's studio recording of "Skylark" was just as "sweet" and had just as much of a pop feel as the Glenn Miller version. As Mr. Eckstine crooned the lyric, he was even accompanied by an apparent "skylark", a very un-Hines-like flute for crying out loud, half a decade before flute tweets helped carry Nat King Cole through "Nature Boy." The mellow sax solo during the bridge wasn't as jazzy as Harry James's treatment of the "Skylark" melody with his muted trumpet. In other words, it wasn't exactly the best version of the song. But it was solid, and it helped cement Mr. B. as the "Sepia Sinatra", a ridiculous racial moniker common to the era no doubt. There is also no doubt that a lot of women began swooning to Billy Eckstine during the war.

Hines and Eckstine's recording of "Skylark" didn't sell as well as those of their white contemporaries - their big hit song of '42 was their own composition "Stormy Monday Blues", number one on Billboard's new Harlem Hit Parade, the non-P.C. precursor to the R&B chart. But Fatha and Mr. B. proved to Johnny Mercer, Hoagy Carmichael, and other songwriters that you didn't need Bing Crosby, Benny Goodman, or other performers of pallor premiere your song on the radio to grab an audience's attention. Nat Cole is remembered by most as the first black pop singer with mass appeal among white and black fans. Record sales numbers these days may reflect that, but I think Nat himself would remind us that Billy Eckstine beat him by a few years, with some help from Mr. Mercer and Mr. Carmichael and Mr. Bix.

Mr. B

The first time I heard the voice of Billy Eckstine, Billy Eckstine wasn't even doing the singing. In 2003, I learned that my "intimate" knowledge of singers and songs from a bygone era, of the Great American Songbook and it's greatest performers, turned out to be about as intimate as Bill and Hillary Clinton. That was the year my wife purchased for me a Rat Pack DVD, which I knew I would enjoy immensely. I wasn't expecting to be introduced to one of the most gorgeous voices in the world.

The DVD was "Live And Swingin'" and featured a 1965 St. Louis performance of the Rat Pack, minus the by-then excommunicated Peter Lawford. A standard part of Sammy Davis, Jr.'s shtick from his earliest days as a performer was impressions of other singers, and one of his regular impressions was Billy Eckstine. Davis, exaggerating Mr. Eckstine's brilliant elocution, crooned the alternate lyric to the original Johnny Mercer line in "One For My Baby (One For The Road)", "Eyyyyyyeeee could telllll you a-lllot, but you've got to be, trooo-ooo--ewwwwww to your coooo-ewwwwwd, soo-ewwwww make it one for myyeeee bway-bweeeeeeee...." It was funny, but I wasn't exactly sure why. After all, who the heck was Billy Eckstine?

A short time after watching the DVD, I got a more proper introduction to the man I later learned was nicknamed "Mr. B." in another unusual forum, one of cable television's Music Choice channels. This particular channel played standards, traditional pop songs and their singers; Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Andy Williams and others. I turned it on one night in an effort to get my daughter, two-years-old at the time, to go to sleep, figuring it would help since I had sung many of those songs to her since the day she was born. The second song we heard that evening was Billy Eckstine's cover of "I Apologize." Immediately, I got Sammy Davis's joke. The lyric was pronounced with the precision of a heart surgeon, some of the vowels large enough for a dozen baby grands ("Eyyy-eee a-paaaawwwhllll-oh-gi-eeeeezz), but Mr. Eckstine's voice knocked me out. The richness and depth of his tone were akin to that of an opera star, yet his voice was warm, playful, and seductive.

There wasn't much thought given to Billy Eckstine for a while after that except during repeated viewings of the Rat Packers - our little girl found them much more enthralling than kiddie super group The Wiggles, and who can blame her? One day, while the toddler was thrilling her mother by repeating one of Dean Martin's drinking jokes, I decided for no other reason than the hell of it to do some research. That is, I decided to Google Mr. Eckstine - what passes for research these days. I was flabbergasted. Billy Eckstine was at least as popular with music fans as Sinatra and Bing Crosby from the mid-1940's through the early 50's. I also learned that Mr. B. was a black man - some called him the "Sepia Sinatra", derogatory without being derogatory I suppose. That makes his popularity astonishing considering that era of our racial history. In fact, women of all colors stopped swooning to Sinatra in the late 40's in part because they started swooning to Billy, scandalous indeed.

Later still, I discovered that Mr. B. was also a bandleader, and though its time was short, it may have contained the greatest assemblage of jazz talent of any full-time orchestra. Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis were in Mr. B.'s band at various times. So were Dexter Gordon, Fats Navarro, Gene Ammons and Art Blakey, not as well know as Diz, Bird, and Miles but just as talented. In the vernacular of the time, Billy's "girl singer" was a young Sarah Vaughn. And, of course, fronting the orchestra was Mr. B.'s golden voice, selling millions of ballads in between the band's ground breaking be-bop tunes.

Just last week, while (shameless plug warning!) hosting the "Johnny Mercer Hit Parade" on STAR 1400 (AM) and star1400.com, I discovered that the song containing one of Mr. Mercer's most beautiful lyrics, "Skylark", was premiered on the radio by none other than Billy Eckstine, singing for the orchestra of jazz piano legend Earl "Fatha" Hines. Seemingly every time I turn around, something else Mr. B. did first or at least before a lot of other folks keeps finding it's way to me. I'd like to know more, but there's a problem.

These days on the so-called "Adult Standards" radio stations where you can still hear the voices The Chairman, Mr. Cole, even Perry Como for crying out loud, you never hear Billy Eckstine's baritone. When folks talk about the great jazz bands and the pioneers of American music, we hear much about Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Artie Shaw, and a lot about the guys who were in Mr. B.'s band. Never do we hear about Mr. B. himself, even though for a time he was more popular than all those guys.

Did Billy Eckstine do something, or perhaps not do something, that caused everyone but ardent music historians to forget him? Why don't we remember this man, an African-American who was only supposed to sell what at the time were called "race records", but instead rivaled perhaps the two biggest white singing stars in the nation's history?

I'd love to find out.

My little girl, The Biscuit Nazi

Whenever I think I have it bad, I am brought back to reality by a number of things. I have the most wonderful, most beautiful, most talented wife in the world who, for some reason, puts up with me. I have a house in the less-than-half completed Housing Bubble Burst Acres subdivision. And I have two gorgeous daughters, the two-year-old ham sammich and the seven-year-old Biscuit Nazi.

Making biscuits this morning reminded me you can't take the Biscuit Nazi out of the Biscuit Nazi, even as she gets older. When she was two, we first began making biscuits together based on a recipe from Alton Brown, just about the only person worth watching on Food Network any more. Given that she is mildly autistic, this means that Mr. Brown's biscuit recipe might as well have been etched in stone by the Lord long before He gave the Ten Commandments to Charlton Heston. Hell hath no fury like the Biscuit Nazi if you are out of baking powder and try to substitute some cream of tartar.

It took almost two years to convince BN that, if you happened to be out of buttermilk, you could use regular milk. No, BN said, Mr. Alton said BUTTERMILK, you MORON. The biscuits will get up and run out of the oven, out the door, shake their flaky booties at the neighbor's dog, then explode on contact with the asphalt of the street. It's a good thing that, when we first began making biscuits together, we didn't tell her that Mr. Alton did not use only shortening in his biscuits. He cuts both butter and shortening into his dry ingredients, which does taste better, but we were trying to avoid having to buy butter every other day during that time a few years ago when dairy was more expensive than beer. We might have brought about the return the Four Horsemen by now, which would really have pissed off Ric Flair and Knute Rockne.

We don't make biscuits quite as much anymore, but when we do, the Biscuit Nazi returns, albeit in a somewhat milder form. She isn't as anal about ingredients anymore. Instead, BN has to do everything by herself, measuring the ingredients, mixing them, kneading and rolling - everything except put them in the oven, which she still understands she can't do. It makes me wonder what she'd be like if I had been a fish monger; "you can't use that fillet knife on a MONK FISH. The Monk fish Mafia are gonna GET YOU!"

If this sounds like a pain, it isn't. I wouldn't change anything about BN, and not just because her anal retentiveness helps her make a damn good biscuit. Besides, she is now forever the Biscuit Nazi as christened by Mr. Alton himself in an autographed picture he sent to BN after I got the chance to tell him the story. I think Mr. Alton understands completely, being somewhat of a food Nazi himself. Now, off to the store. We're need baking powder and buttermilk, and I don't want to be eaten by the giant invisible cow monsters who attack the owners of inadequate ingredients.

And The Winners Are....

It's wonderful to be an independent. Especially an independent who has so many good friends on every side of politics. As the cliche goes, some of my best friends are liberal Democrats, conservative Democrats, libertarian-leaning Republicans, super-conservative Republicans, drunkards, sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies; shoot, I've even made friends with a Communist and a New Black Panther. This means that when I talk politics, I am always guaranteed an argument, usually a polite argument since this is Savannah and not Cowpens, South Carolina. So, after girding my loins and even my non-loins, here is a fearless and likely inaccurate forecasts of some of today's primary race for governor of Georgia. The Winners will be...

Karen Handel and Roy Barnes, and it won't be close.

Yes, there might be a runoff on the Republican side, but the GOP race for Governor was over the day Sarah Palin endorsed the former Secretary of State. Some may not understand the appeal of Mrs. Palin. Some may not comprehend her use of the language or Mrs. Handel's mishandling of the Log Cabin Republican issue, but Mrs. Palin is one of the most popular people among conservatives today. That will easily carry her past any of the GOP challengers she faces in a runoff.

Eric Johnson would have had a shot had it not been for two factors, his lack of charisma and Nathan Deal, who seemingly got into the race to avoid a Congressional ethics investigation. Recent polls seem to have exposed John Oxendine, also an ethics casualty even if he turns out to be innocent. Ox lost a lot of people in this area when he arrogantly tried to take over the distribution of information after the tragic explosion at the Imperial Sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, telling some in the media that then-Metro Police Chief Michael Berkow "didn't know how we handle things in Georgia." After being the front-runner in a mostly boring race, Oxendine may not even make a runoff now that Mrs. Handel has Mrs. Palin's support.

Former governor Roy Barnes may be a dead ringer for Charles Durning "The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas", but he will win the Democratic primary in a landslide against a slew of jibronis. No offense to General David Poythress, who seems like a nice man, but he should have known better than to be in this race against Roy. Thurbert Baker should have known better, too, especially since his entire platform appears to be a single word, Bingo. That and he needs better hair next time he decides to run.

While Barnes will be a runaway winner today, he will be hard pressed to return to the governor's mansion unless Mr. Oxendine or Mr. Deal pull off a major upset. They are beatable, even by a Democrat in a Republican year. Unless she makes a major gaffe, and not just a gaffe in the eyes of liberals but a gaffe that will resonate among independents, I don't see how Karen Handel loses in November. Sorry my liberal friends, but not being able to explain exactly why marriage is between one man and one woman is not enough. Mrs. Handel will have to screw up in a way that can be replayed a gazillion times by the Barnes campaign, because as we found out eight years ago, Barnes is not very electable on his own.

If things don't turn out this way, this entire post was written by Tim Rutherford while drunk on spicy green curry shrimp at the Noodle Bowl. No, that won't work, 'cause Tim can destroy me in one sentence flat.

And now, the News From the Ham and Beyond

First, the news from the Ham, which if you don't know, is Effingham County, Georgia, home of wide open spaces, great public schools, and meth (shaken, not stirred).

The renovation at the Rincon Wal-Mart (motto: "Yes, ma'am, we do carry bras in your size, and we'd appreciate you buying one immediately!) is ongoing. The pharmacy is still under construction, so it is temporarily housed at the former location of the checkout counters on the side of the store nearest to health and beauty. Those are the same checkouts that were never manned, or womanned, even though your checkout line snaked all the way back to the discount bikinis.

I am very upset at the Rincon Wal-Mart because they apparently no longer carry Post Raisin Bran, only the more sugary and salty Kellogg's and Sam's Choice versions. What does a guy have to do to get his recommended daily amount of fiber in a tasty way? I suppose I will just have to pay extra and get my Post RB down the road at Kroger. Either that or revert to the days when I would combine a box of All-Bran with a box of Cocoa Puffs or Peanut Butter Crunch.

In news from Savannah, the Savannah Morning News reports that Metro Police Chief Willie Lovett has instituted a ban on visible tattoos on police officers. Good thing Herve Villechaize has passed on. If you think this is an unusual policy, you would be wrong. The Georgia State Patrol will not hire you if you have any tattoos visible below the cuff of a short-sleeved shirt. The Garden City Police Department has been working on a tattoo policy, but officers there have been too busy pulling over people for driving 45.0001 in a 45 mile-per-hour zone, so as soon as they finish giving you a speeding ticket, they will get around to body ink.

In Sports, yesterday's Savannah Sand Gnats game in haiku:

Gnats Lose to Greenville
The Family Had Fun, but
Pitching Was Stinky

The positive news from Gnatsville; despite the loud guy on the public address speakers who one day will pass out while attempting to hold the word 'Savannah' for 30 seconds during pre-game introductions, attendance is up this season. Even though the Gnats are still last in the South Atlantic League in attendance, the average crowd of 1,812 through the first 48 home games is up over the same time period last season. Kudos to new team president John Katz for an outstanding year, and props to the team for giving Savannah a few extra home games by making the playoffs for the first time in 14 years.

With apologies to the Savannah Tobaccostapo, the smoke of the day is the Romeo Y Julieta Habana Reserve, an outstanding medium-to-bold cigar. It's wrapper and binder are grown in Nicaragua while the filler is grown in Nicaragua and Honduras. Unlike some, I don't rate cigars on a particular flavor - no "hints of dark chocolate and coffee" or "aroma of active paper mill." I just pick a cigar that I enjoy and recommend it. Speaking of the Savannah Tobaccostapo, there will be more to say about them down the road, but Mayor Johnson, while I love you as much as one man can platonically love another man, you are dead wrong on the smoking ban idea. We cigar and pipe aficionados are considering a smoke-in at your next town hall meeting because, unlike the Tobaccostapo, we believe in the Constitution.

The jazz record of the day is actually a double album, one that got virtually no recognition for being great in its time. "The Astaire Story" was recorded in December 1952 when Fred Astaire was 53 years old, still making good movies but long after his glory years with Ginger Rogers. Jazz impresario (are there college classes you can take on becoming an impresario?) Norman Granz conceived the album, which mostly featured songs made famous by Mr. Astaire in his films. Rather than the lush arrangements of "The Gay Divorcee" or "Top Hat", this album is pure jazz with the music played by an all-star sextet led by legendary pianist Oscar Peterson. Though it was not a huge seller after it's original release, Mr. Peterson spoke lovingly of this album - he and the other musicians all received gold bracelets from Mr. Astaire with the inscription "With thanks, Fred A", a bracelet Mr. Peterson would wear for the rest of his life. A personal highlight is an updated arrangement of one of Mr. Astaire's few hits as a songwriter, "I'm Building Up To An Awful Letdown", with lyric by Johnny Mercer. If local musicologist Roger Moss is, as he has suggested, recording an album of Mercer songs, I hope that song is included simply to hear Moss's enormous baritone utter the opening line "I'm like Humpty Dumpty...."

That's the news from the Ham, Savannah, and the half-point in between. Tomorrow, how the Ham desperately needs a mathematician. No, not a methamatician. Also tomorrow, how polls flat out lie, especially polls that claim you are just fine and dandy with higher property taxes. Speaking of lies, tomorrow is Primary Election Day in Georgia, otherwise known as Bend Over, This Won't Hurt a Bit Day, Part One.