Kevin Costner is in a band. You probably don’t care. But if you’re a baseball fan, odds are you’re a “Bull Durham” fan. So maybe you’ll find this snippet from a recent Costner Q&A interesting:

Q: Is this the first time you’ve sung in a movie? [Costner sings in "Swing Vote," with his real-life band, Modern West.]

A: I did, actually, in “Bull Durham” and it got cut. It was a scene where I fight with Nuke [Tim Robbins]. That scene was originally where Crash [Costner's character] hung out at a [house of prostitution]. He’s sitting at a piano playing “Unchained Melody” and I’ve got this 70-year-old [prostitute] sitting next to me with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, and I’m singing, “Oh, my love, my darling. …” It’s a classic, classic scene.

And yet the [screening] audiences were asked what scene bothered them the most. And they didn’t like that. So they reconstructed a scene where I hung out in a pool hall, another sign of a misspent youth. But I like the ambiguousness of things.

I wonder what bothered the screening audience the most, the prostitutes or Costner’s singing?

It’s official. In an attempt to freshen up and reliven their image - and presumably, make the team even more anonymous than it was already, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays have changed their name to “Tampa Bay Rays“.  Some initial thoughts:

1. So… Yeah… They’re just the Rays now… Sweet.
2. No word yet on whether or not they will pursue Ray Durham, Ray Olmedo, Ray King, and Chris Ray during the off-season.
3. Not only is the name unfathomably dull, their uniform is just as bad.
4. For the life of me, I cannot think of a celebrity more fitting to appear on this dull occassion than the incredibly monotone Kevin Costner. And yes, his character in “Field of Dreams” was named Ray Kinsella. So he’s a Ray.

And now let’s all go do something a bit more interesting. Like, go watch someone try and guess all the flavors in a Whitman’s Sampler. I don’t know.