This week’s dining tip (see back story in Jan. 1 TBRR): it’s now cool and tolerable and the crowds at Walt Disney World are not so large. If you’ve never dined at their 50s Prime Time Café in the Hollywood Studios, you’re in for a treat. Comfort food with Mom lecturing you about eating your green vegetables; it’s a hoot.

The changing U.S. Presidency

A recent read of Diller and Robertson’s The Presidents, First Ladies and Vice Presidents made us realize how much the presidency has changed in just the last decade. Their book published in 2005, which inexplicably canonizes Al Gore, but otherwise is informative, lists some commonalities among presidential candidates then: White, Protestant (except one), male, married (except one) and a history of public or military service. In the past twelve years, you can scratch white, male and history of public service off the list. In the years ahead, who knows what other changes will come to the presidency?

Tampa Bay, politics and stuff:

1. Related to our lead item, you have to imagine the Vegas odds are very strong that neither 2016 candidate will be on the ballot again in 2020. Carrying that one step further, both parties need to coalesce around a strong one or two candidates for 2020 within the next year.

2. Nice touch – on the eve of Veteran’s Day, the California chapter of the NAACP proposes doing away with the National Anthem. Thanks folks, we vets appreciate the gesture.

3. A lot of guys in the military have paid a much heavier price for infractions much less grievous than those of Bowe Bergdahl.

4. Two and a half million dollars later (the combined monies spent by the two candidates), we have a winner in the St. Pete Mayor’s race and we don’t think it’s the people of St. Pete. However, it would seem that Rick Kriseman is the lesser of two evils.

5. And yes, the irony isn’t lost on us. What passes for a newspaper in our area endorsed a Republican for the first time in a millennium, while the reactionaries here at TBRR gave a nod, albeit tepid, to Mayor Kriseman.

The diamond, the media and other stuff:

6. There was no more dominant pitcher in the 2000 decade than Roy “Doc” Halladay whose life ended all too soon last week in a plane crash off New Port Richey.

7. Take away from NFL Week 9: The Tampa Bay Rays played 162 games and finished two games under .500 –nothing to write home about. The Bucs have played eight games and are twice that many games under .500. And should we mention their season, and probably their head coach, are toast?

8. Number of the week – 15 cents. That’s what a McDonald’s burger cost when the first Clearwater store went up on Gulf to Bay Blvd. Last week, a family of three paid just shy of $25 for some sandwiches and small fries (no drinks) at the Golden Arches.

9. Topping the charts 40 years ago this week was Debbie Boone’s You Light Up My Life which, incredibly, would stay at #1 longer than any other song of the 70s – ten weeks.

10. You’ve lived in Clearwater a long time (and know your sports) if you recall the winningest pitcher in Clearwater Bomber history was not Herb Dudley or Weldon Haney or John Hunter but the vastly underrated Eddie King who won 411 games for the 10-time World Champions.

One solution to speeding up major league baseball

Major league baseball continued its trend to longer games this year with the average game pushing three hours, ten minutes. And the recently completed post season games were just ridiculous in their length. One observation during regular and post season is the excessive visits to the mound – not just from the dugout but by the catcher, the shortstop and the water boy (okay, we exaggerate somewhat). MLB needs to limit the trips to the mound or penalize excessive trips by calling a ball beyond say three combined trips per half inning. In post season, the worst offender, by far, was Cubs catcher Willson Contreras who seems to visit the mound about every fourth pitch. If you don’t know what you’re going to do to a particular hitter in a particular situation, then your pre-game planning is extremely poor. Get rid of the excessive trips to the mound and you’ll have a game under three hours, Mr. Manfred.

SNEAK PEEK AT NEXT WEEK: Corvettes, Turkey Shoots and Indians