You might recall that a couple of weeks back, we introduced RandBall readers to the site Bring Moss Back, a rather eclectic smattering put together over the past few years by one Beck DeRobertis. We concluded that post with, “Beck, send us an e-mail. A guest post or a Q&A might be in order.” Well, the good sir obliged with an e-mail. And here is the resulting Q&A. Please do enjoy. It was rather tasty.

RandBall: Can you describe the key ways in which VIDEOS, FASHION, and KITSCH might help return Randy Moss to the Minnesota Vikings?

Beck DeRobertis, Bring Moss Back: What I’m trying to do with this campaign is reinvent Randy Moss as a sports icon in Minnesota. When a player leaves town, even a player as incredible as Moss, most people forget them pretty fast, unfortunately. You can find number 84 Vikings jerseys for two dollars each at most thrift stores around town. I know, I’ve bought a lot of them. But just because someone leaves town, that doesn’t mean their legend has to go with them. With the Bring Moss Back campaign, I want to remind everybody how brilliant the Super Freak is, and how much of an outrage it is that the Vikings traded such a talented, spectacular, and hilarious player in his prime. And I also want Moss to know that the fans not only want him back in Minnesota, but that they never wanted him gone in the first place.

RB: The Bring Moss Backini does seem both super freaky and super sensual, as advertised. What was the creative process behind that treat? And does that come in a medium?

BD: After I decided to make a women’s fashion line based on Randy Moss, I convinced my friend Lauren to collaborate with me on the project. A bikini was one of the first things we decided to include, because what fun would fashion be without some sex appeal sprinkled in? The very punny title followed soon after. Interestingly, the initial sketches of the Backini featured Moss’ face (with Afro) [hilarity unfortunately redacted here]. For some reason, we decided not to go with that idea. And yes, the Backini is available for special order in all sizes.

RB: What would happen if the Vikings actually brought Moss back?

BD: I’m glad you asked that question, Michael. This is how I see it: In the next couple years, we trade with New England to reaquire Moss, teaming him with Adrian Peterson, who should be entering his prime (Purple Jesus meets the Super Freak!). Then, we sign some above par veteran QB, like Donovan McNabb, or I don’t know, Brett Favre. Combine that with the already superior Vikings defense, and we’ve got the recipe for a Super Bowl win, my friend! Oh, how sweet that purple nectar will taste. And then, I’d like to convince Moss to star in a buddy picture with Woody Allen (who will have to be convinced, as well).

RB: I dispute your claim that Rhoda Morgenstern is on the side of your campaign. Who are your sources?

BD: You’re absolutely right. Rhoda did not sign off on that advertisement. I’ve just always been a big Rhoda fan, and I wanted to restate my long held belief that Rhoda is much sexier than Mary, even though Mary wears a Fran Tarkenton Vikings jersey in the opening credits of the MTM Show. I also figured that if Valerie Harper (the actress who played Rhoda) sued, it would be good publicity for the campaign, and maybe I’d get the chance to ask her out on a date.

RB: Seriously, how did this all start?

BD: I first thought of the idea in the fall of 2006, a dismal season for the Vikings. I was still in shock that they’d traded Moss, even though it had been almost two years. I was outraged that the Vikings had traded my favorite player, and I started the campaign so that I would at least know that I did everything I could to try to bring him back. And then I realized that the campaign was a great venue for all sorts of fun projects, like videos and trading cards, etc. I’ve recruited most of my friends to work on the projects, and it’s been a fantastic time, with lots more to come. Rest assured, the Bring Moss Back campaign will continue until Randy Moss is back in the purple and gold.

RB: Did you weep openly the day Moss left?

BD: Yes, I was devastated. It didn’t make any sense. Why would you trade your best player when your team is improving? If you look at the 2005 posts on the Bring Moss Back website, you can read an essay I wrote on the night of the Moss trade. I was irate, and I still am.

RB: When you travel to New England, do they throw pennies at you?

BD: I have yet to venture into the New England area. But I hope that when I finally visit Boston, I am greeted with a parade for being a representative of the city that has given them so many fine professional athletes in recent years. And then Bill Simmons can present me with the key to the city.

RB: Any plans for a “Bring Troy Williamson Back” sister site?

BD: Absolutely not. Everything has already been said about the Troy Williamson debacle, the key word being “disappointment.”

RB: You seem like a guy that takes yourself pretty seriously. In 53 words exactly, tell me why I’m right.

BD: After Moss returns, I’d like to focus on directing low budget feature films. The films will be set in Minneapolis and will combine bright colors, lots of yuks, sensual bursts, and theme songs from old TV shows. I’ll become to Minneapolis what John Waters is to Baltimore and Woody Allen is to NY.

RB: Randy Moss cut a gold record using nothing but a jazz flute and his wisdom. True or false? Defend your answer.

BD: Romantic, but false. I mean, I feel like that would be on the guy’s Wikipedia if it were true. But I’d like to take this moment to invite everybody to the Red Hot Art fest this weekend at Stevens Square Park in Minneapolis, where my art partner Jenna Brouse and I will be peddling all sorts of glorious kitsch, including Bring Moss Back stuff and One Night Lexicons (our fun illustrated minizine). And thank you to the supporters of Bring Moss Back!

Michael Schur writes for “The Office” and has also appeared on episodes of the program as Dwight Schrute’s cousin brother, Mose. He also writes for a (primarily) baseball blog called Fire Joe Morgan. The Office. Baseball. Yeah, it sounded like he would be right up the alley for a RandBall Q&A. We promised to keep the questions plenty bizarre and mostly about baseball. But we couldn’t help but slip in a few references to his television program. He was kind enough to answer our questions; four of the questions were at least partially written by either Stu or Fasolamatt (hence the “RB” is really a collective in this case), which is the second part of the fun here. If you can guess all four, you win a special prize. The main part of the fun, though, is that Schur is hilarious. We hope you enjoy:

RandBall: You’re stranded on a desert island and only have room for VORP or OPS+. Which do you keep?

Michael Schur: VORP is a better stat. But I might take OPS+ so I can easily compare Juan Pierre’s 2003 with Tim Raines’s 1985 and have a nice laugh.

RB: A ghost runner of Michael Schur is on first base when a young Joe Morgan hits a double into the gap that rolls to the wall. Two outs, crack of the bat, you’re off. Do you follow the rules of ghost runners and stop at third when the entire free world knows you could have scored? Is your answer somehow influenced by the batter?

MS: Well, I haven’t really seen enough Ghost Baseball to know one way or the other. The thing about Ghost Mike Schur is he needs to be consistent with his baserunning. There really aren’t very many great Ghost Teams anymore. To be a great Ghost Team you have to be Ghost Consistent. The 1975 Ghost Reds were a great Ghost Team because they could do it all — run, hit, ghost hit, hit for power, field, ghost field, ghost pitch, scare people, haunt houses, stack chairs on top of tables when people’s backs were turned, make scary noises, slime people, and sneak into ladies’ locker rooms. So I would say that Ghost Mike Schur would try to score, because you have to be aggressive.

RB: Two outs, bottom of the ninth, the Yankees are down by a run. Derek Jeter draws a walk, followed by an Alex Rodriguez home run. Which one is more “clutch?”

MS: Are you kidding? Jeter. Because what you didn’t see is that Jeter pumped his fist after turning a routine DP in the 4th inning, which inspired ARod to hit the home run. Jeter’s walk is a direct result of his leadership and calm eyes. ARod is lucky that he gets to play with Jeter every day.

RB: Your father-in-law appeared in “The Bad News Bears Go to Japan.” Why?

MS: If you’re telling me that anyone would turn down the chance to be in a “Bad News Bears movie you’re nuts.” I would trade most of my career to have played the guy who loses to Kelly Leak in air hockey before Tatum O’Neal walks into the arcade.

RB: Rainn Wilson graduated from New Trier (Ill.) High School, as did Liz Phair, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Castino, the 1979 AL Rookie of the Year with the Minnesota Twins. What do you imagine would be a good icebreaker at an all-class reunion attended by each of those four? And would you personally show up to point out that Castino was only a co-winner with Alfredo Griffin?

MS: It would probably go something like this:

Wilson: Hey — you’re Liz Phair. I’m a big fan of your music.
Phair: Oh, thank you. “The Office” is one of my favorite shows.
Rumsfeld: Holy $&*%$& — that’s 1979 AL Co-Rookie of the Year John Castino!!!!
(They swarm Castino and trample him to death.)

RB: More gratifying: The Office’s critical and commercial success or the fact that Joe Morgan thinks Billy Beane wrote Moneyball?

MS: The Office’s success is more gratifying. The fact that Mr. Morgan thinks Mr. Beane wrote “Moneyball” is funnier than anything I could ever write.

RB: Which current Major League manager fills out a lineup card in a manner that most closely resembles the way Michael Scott would do it? Defend your answer.

MS: Maybe Dusty Baker. He hits Corey Patterson leadoff when Ryan Freel doesn’t play, seemingly just because Freel usually hits leadoff. CF = leadoff hitter. That’s a very Michael Scott philosophy. Plus, he delivers roughly as many malapropisms as Michael does, like when he was trying to talk about how much Edwin Encarnacion cares about winning and he said “the guy bleeds internally.”

RB: You get to pick the TV play-by-play and color guy for each of the four divisional playoff series. Who do you want, and why?

MS: I’ll take Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy out of pure homerism. I love Gary Thorne, so let’s pair him with Rick Sutcliffe, since you never know what’s coming out of that guy’s mouth, and it might be entertaining. Mike Tirico is very good, so I’ll match him with Al Leiter, who I think does a great job when he’s in the booth. And then let’s have one series called by Hawk Harrelson, Ed Farmer, John Kruk, Steve Phillips, Joe Morgan and Tim McCarver. It’s getting harder and harder to find material for our blog, and that should keep us posting for years.

RB: Your words are heard by countless people when you write for TV. Why start a sports blog? And why ditch the cloak of anonymity?

MS: Because I love baseball, and I’m a comedy writer, and baseball reporting provides ample opportunities for comedy writing. The anonymity provided a way to keep our professional worlds from being conflated with our silly sports metacritical world, but when push came to shove, we felt like we should stand behind what we write. The accused have a right to face their accusers.

RB: Wade Boggs reportedly ate chicken before every game — a ludicrous idiosyncrasy that nonetheless paved the way for 3,000 hits and a Hall of Fame career because he thought it helped him. Can you envision the creation of a statistical tool that would measure such factors for various players, and if so what would you call it?

MS: I would call it the “Jeter.” It would measure the importance of personality traits and behaviors that have nothing at all to do with baseball, and their impact on baseball. Every player would get a perfect score of 0.00.

A special thanks to ESPN’s Josh Krulewitz and, of course, to Erin Andrews for calling within 24 hours our initial request through Josh. They made life easy. Now, on to Part II.

RandBall: How did Men’s Health get you to talk about men’s grooming?

Erin Andrews: (Laughs). They actually just called ESPN. … They said, we want to have her do something. She’s around men 24/7, what does she see and what doesn’t she see? I actually just got an e-mail from a guy today who is with the American Cancer Society, who said, “I know it wasn’t in the context you thought it was going to create awareness, but anyway we can get skin cancer awareness out there, it’s really big to us.” … And I think the one exception I’ve taken to all the blogs and Internet stuff is there was a photo of me last week on the Internet with Tim Tebow. There is a photo of my calves, and people were freaking out about how white they are. Well, they’re not that white. They’re not that bad. But people have no idea, and it was the first time I wanted to write back on a blog, but I have an inch-and-a-half scar on my leg, right by my calf, from where I had the beginning stages of skin cancer. … I was never diagnosed with skin cancer, but there’s a scar on my leg. It was two years ago. Growing up in Florida, I used to fry myself. I will have to put the tanning cream on because obviously I can’t be white for these Internet blogs. But it was the first time I wanted to write back and just be like, “OK, now this is getting personal.”

RB: You said, in that Men’s Health piece, “Laid back is sexy. Let David Beckham or Tom Brady be your guide.” No offense, but if you look like Becks or Mr. Bundchen, you don’t need much help. Could you provide our readers with some more realistic examples they might be able to follow?

EA: First of all, what I meant – and I’m frustrated that it didn’t come out this way – is I don’t mind if a guy is going to use a lot of products to get ready. That’s fine. I just don’t want to know about it. And quite frankly, I don’t want him to take longer than me to get ready. But what I like is if a guy does take a lot of time, it shouldn’t look like you did. I don’t know how long it takes Tom Brady or David Beckham to get ready, but seriously, to me, it looks like they just threw on a rag pair of jeans and a hot shirt and called it a day. It looks like it took nothing to get ready, and it probably did take a lot of time.

RB: OK, so we’ll all work on that – looking a little more like Tom Brady and David Beckham.

EA: (Laughs) Come on! We’re all supposed to look like Gisele and Marissa Miller, so give me a break. Like Jessica Alba.

RB: Speaking of sexy, Playboy bestowed upon you the honor of “Sexiest Sportscaster” in 2007. Do you think we’re ever going to come to a day when we run out of “sexy” list categories?

EA: I don’t think so … because I buy the “Sexiest Man Alive” People Magazine. I’ll be completely honest: When I’m not working in sports, a totally male-dominated field where I don’t get to be a girl and I don’t get to talk about pop culture and are Gisele and Tom Brady really getting married, when I go back on the airplane or I come home and am with my girlfriends who can care less about sports, that’s what we talk about. That’s a release for me. I’m finally able to be a girl. They could care less about the Cubs, and if this could be their year. That’s my release. And I’m someone who will look at those lists instead of batting averages.

RB: I think we all look at those lists.

EA: See, and I love that a guy admits he does. That’s perfect.

RB: OK, here’s my clichéd question: What are three things about you that would surprise people if they knew?

EA: I’m an in-closet Beavis & Butthead fan. My sister and I speak the lingo like 95 percent of the time. Um …. I’m a huge “The Hills” fan.

RB: That one doesn’t necessarily surprise me, but I’ll let you get away with that.

EA: OK, well let me think of another one … the one person I haven’t interviewed and I want to interview so bad is Brett Favre. He’s the one guy I grew up cheering for with my dad, and the reason I’m in sports is my dad. There are a couple of athletes that I sit on the couch and root for. Larry Bird, I already met him, and I made a complete idiot of myself. I was just so awestruck, and basically in five seconds I told him I grew up having a Larry Bird backpack — and this was like two years ago, I’m such an idiot – and I know all about him … and my dad and sister and I ran up the stairs at Boston Garden before they tore it down, where he ran out after he hit his head when he was playing the Indiana Pacers, and we have a photo of that and it’s in my kitchen. I mean, I literally embarrassed the crap out of myself. … I didn’t do as bad embarrassing myself when I met Pedro Martinez, but I think I said, “Oh my god, Pedro, I’m so excited to meet you right now,” and I think David Wright rolled his eyes at me. But Brett Favre is one athlete I’ve never met, and I’ve always wanted to interview.

RB: Maybe you’ll break the story that he’s coming back. Because he is.

EA: Yeah, I would love it if he was. OK, and the third thing is that I have to eat Chick-fil-A like twice a week.

RB: Seriously?

EA: Yes. I love it.

RB: You’re going to be a correspondent on the National Spelling Bee. What do you think that assignment is going to be like?

EA: I don’t know, but I’m really excited. I remember in high school, we taped it on our VCR, and that was the year the girl, I think, the Saturday Night Live cast made a skit out of her. She was screaming (the letters). I think it’s really funny I’ve been put on it because I’m one of the worst spellers ever. My dad is legendary for telling stories about how I used to sit down with him when I had a spelling test, and if I got one wrong I’d have to write it out 20 times. Spellcheck is my best friend. Thank god I don’t have to write newspaper articles. … But I’m just starting to learn what (the spelling bee assignment) entails. I think it’s going to be fun. I worked Little League the last couple of years and the kids are such a riot there. These kids are so serious, and I think I’m going to be more nervous talking to them than they are talking to me.

RB: Is there one word that gets you every time?

EA: I can’t say because I’ll get killed on the Internet.

RB: OK, we’ll spare you because you’re probably right.

EA: Let’s say Pierzynski. That’s the word that gets me all the time. Or Podsednik.

RB: Are you serious?

EA: If I had to spell Pierzynski all the time, I think I’d die.

RB: Last question: What’s next? Seriously, in an ideal world, where would your career go from here? It seems like you probably have opened up some options at this point based on your popularity.

EA: Yeah, a lot of things are starting to come down, and it’s really happened within the last month. Some entertainment opportunities are being discussed.

RB: I take it you’re being purposely vague there?

EA: Yeah, but there are some opportunities that have come about over the last couple of weeks. The biggest challenge for me will be to really smart with things. I’m definitely interested in pursuing other options, but at the same time I want to be true to myself. I still really love being at games. Despite growing up a Red Sox fan, I’m at Yankee Stadium the other night, and it’s bottom of the ninth, two on, Yankees down by three, and Alex Rodriguez is up, and he can tie it. This is cool. I love stuff like that. I don’t think I’m ready to leave the games yet, but I may be ready to take something else on along with doing games. I don’t know what that’s going to be yet. I made a statement in USA Today about Kelly Ripa. I’d love to maybe fill in for her a couple of times if she needs a vacation. I’d love to sit with Regis and talk about Notre Dame and Yankees/Red Sox. I’d love to do a show with her and I, chatting about stuff.

It seems you can’t traipse through the Interwebs these days without running into Erin Andrews. The ESPN sideline reporter is the subject of roughly 9 million sports blog posts every day, many of them dealing with the idea that she is what the kids consider “hot.” Why, just this morning we received a link to this post, which proposes to make Andrews a blogger birthday card for big No. 30 coming up. There is also a YouTube video featuring still images of her that has more than 1 million hits. Crazy, crazy, crazy stuff. This sort of thing is not uncommon for the types of athletes Andrews interviews, but it seems to us a little nutty for a member of the media to have such a cult following. So we decided to ask her about “Being Erin Andrews,” among other things. Here is Part I of the conversation we had Thursday:

RandBall: How do you explain and handle the phenomenon of “Erin Andrews,” and when were you first aware of this groundswell around you?

Erin Andrews: It’s all kind of exploded from college football on this year. It’s been kind of nuts. … When I first started I was a little sideline reporter for the Tampa Bay Lightning, we had a little message board on the web site, and I would think it was funny when I would see my name. Then I would see things like, “She needs a nose job,” or “Her voice is like nails on a chalkboard.” I was living with my parents at the time, and it was my first year in the business, and I ran out to my parents’ living room and started crying. My dad’s in the industry, and he said, “What’s your problem?” And I said, “Oh my gosh, I just read all this awful stuff about me on the Internet. People think I need a nose job and that I’m horrible.” He looked at me and said, “First of all, you need to relax. Second of all, if you’re going to do this, and you want to be working at ESPN or Monday Night Football, it’s going to get a heck of a lot worse. So either toughen up, or get out.” … So, I think it’s all gotten nuts in the past year. In college football and college basketball, before I would go out to eat with my play-by-play and analyst, and people would go crazy as they should when Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit walked in. And then people started being like, “Well, can we get a photo with you?” And I’m like, “What?” It’s just gotten crazy, so much so that during Major League Baseball, when people could usually care less — they’re yelling for Derek (Jeter) or Alex (Rodriguez) — last night [Wednesday] I was standing by the field and a bunch of people started screaming for me. At one point, a guy screamed, “You are my goddess!” and the Yankees players started laughing at me.

RB: Do you think it’s gotten out of hand? Every time you’re on TV, it winds up on YouTube.

EA: Yeah, that part is kind of scary. I think at the same time, though, you have to take it as flattering. If they weren’t talking about you, then people really wouldn’t care. I grew up in the industry. I know there’s only a certain time frame you have. I’m just waiting until the next big thing walks in. I’m sure she will, and she’ll be younger and hotter and everybody will freak out. And I’ll be like, “Wait a second, I thought I was a goddess!”

RB: Even today there was something people were making a big deal about, an interview with you and Joba Chamberlain. Something on Huffington, an awkward moment.

EA: Oh, really? It’s on what?

RB: Huffington.

EA: I wonder what that’s about. Oh, wow. In a situation like that, not even knowing what it’s about, I’m playing it back in my head, “What did I do, did I do something wrong.” That’s where it’s out of control. We can’t really do anything without people taking notice. The worst thing is you can’t even come back and explain it. It’s just out there.

RB: The whole Bruce Pearl thing is a probably a good example of that, right?

EA: (laughs) I knew I was going to get phone calls about it. After it happened, I was getting text messages from a lot of my guy friends saying, “This will be on YouTube in 15 minutes.” And it was. I called my agent and I just said, “What do I do? Should I have something to say.” … But with (Pearl), I just find him to be such a character. It’s fun to have different characters. It’s like (Bill) Belichick, Ozzie Guillen in baseball. It’s cool when people aren’t the same. He’s such a passionate guy, and it was so funny. It didn’t even catch me off guard.

RB: Um, it looked like it caught you a tiny bit off guard.

EA: OK, well the face that I made when he did that, and anybody who knows me has asked me about it, my face is going, “My god, this is going to be all over the Internet.”

RB: So that’s a different level of self-awareness. That’s something a year ago you wouldn’t have thought of right away, right?

EA: Never. And I’ve had good teachers around me … I’ve learned from them what you should and shouldn’t be doing. We have, in football, a little tent they have on the sidelines for me during halftime, and I sit and eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and I have a Coke or a glass of water, because if I eat out on the field, people will make a ginormous ordeal about it.

RB: And that’s been proven.

EA: Yeah, with the sandwich. … But I mean, whatever. It has to roll off your back.

Part II ( of II) upcoming: Andrews talks about Beavis & Butthead and what she finds sexy in a man, but not necessarily in the same answer.

True story: Lisa Guerrero called and left a message last night. Seems Stu’s Hunt Down on former Twins pitcher Scott Erickson (Guerrero’s husband) last week found not only a national blog audience, but a snippet – pertaining to “A Plumm Summer,” the film the two are working on — also made its way into Page 2 of the Los Angeles Times’ sports section. So she wanted to let us know more about the film; we called her back this afternoon and happily obliged. She reports that “A Plumm Summer” has received very good reviews at various family film festivals; there is a good chance that the indie flick will make it into Twin Cities theaters as part of a limited release in a couple of months. “We’re independent filmmakers … anything helps us,” Guerrero said. “We can’t afford to buy commercial time in all these markets.” In case you don’t know, Guerrero was a sideline reporter for Monday Night Football and a personality on The Best Damn Sports Show Period; she has also appeared in multiple men’s magazines and, well, her career is eclectic enough that we should probably just link to it and get on with things. She had plenty to say about the movie, Scott Erickson and John Madden’s cookie-eating habits. Folks, we give you our Q&A with Lisa Guerrero.

RandBall: Like you said, this movie sounds like a strange concept. I’m wondering how you got involved with it in the first place?
Lisa Guerrero: I’ve been an actress since I was a kid, even before I was a sportscaster or broadcaster. I had done a show for Court TV a couple years ago, and I told my agent I really wanted to get back to acting.

But every time we had submitted me for an audition, the casting director or producer would say, “Oh yeah, we know Lisa Guerrero. But she’s a sportscaster, not an actor.” It was a real struggle to get auditions. So my agent suggested we go in another direction and look for an independent production company that’s doing a small budget film and pitch you to these types of producers and directors. So my manager found out about the female lead in “A Plumm Summer.” At the time, Freddie Highmore, the little boy from August Rush and Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, was attached to it to play my character’s son. They had financing in place. I went in strictly as an actress. I got the role, but about three weeks later, Freddie dropped out so he could do August Rush — a better opportunity for him than an independent film — but they lost the funding. The project was just going to go away. Scott and I had discussed it, and we wanted to form our own production company anyway. … So when the financing fell out, I went to the current director and said, “If you guys can slash the budget, by less than half and recast this with actors and a crew that will work for scale, Scott and I would like to produce this with Home Team productions.

RB: Home Team productions?
LG: Yeah, that’s our company. We work from home, and we’re sports personalities, so it make sense. … So we got the rights to it, and worked out an agreement. We paid for the film, and we’re called the executive producers of the film. We sent scripts to people we thought would be the best adult leads, and the first actor we sent it to was Billy Baldwin, who plays my husband. He immediately said yes. He plays an alcoholic, very troubled character. The second person we sent a script to for a different character was Henry Winkler.

RB: The Fonz!
LG: The puppeteer, who’s a true person named Happy Herb. Henry got back to us within three days and said, “I’ll do it, I’m in.” Once we got Billy and Henry, the entire project came together. We shot on location in Montana. The actual real Happy Herb is still alive and has a cameo. The Governor of Montana has a cameo. It’s just a really sweet film. Most family films have animations, CGI … our film is a throwback to old Disney movies that you and I grew up watching. It’s all about the story, all about the family drama. No CGI, no special effects. Just a really sweet story.

RB: So Scott’s role is financing, doing some production. How is he doing overall?
LG: Oh my gosh. First of all, he’s a huge movie fan. It’s a dream come true for him to be on the set, watching the monitor, wearing the headset, working with actors. He was an accounting major at the University of Arizona.

RB: I didn’t realize that.
LG: Yeah, he’s really good at understanding money, working with unions, doing the DVD deal. He’s a very savvy producer on the business end. I do more of the production end that has to do with design, casting, script — the creative side. We have two really different roles. And of course all the actors are baseball fans. The kid who plays the lead, Chris Kelly, he’s going to be the star of a huge Universal project called Cirque du Freak … and we discovered him in Minnesota, on a videotape. He submitted when we were casting, and we were like, “Boy, he looks like could be the son of me and Billy Baldwin.”

RB: Handsome young man, he must be.
LG: Oh, thank you. Aw, shucks. But what’s amazing is he’s an incredible actor. He looks like a young Leo DiCaprio. And he’s from Minnesota. So for us to have an opening in Minnesota, with Scott and him having ties, makes a lot of sense.

RB: You alluded to this before, but was it frustrating ever to get pigeonholed into things — you had Monday Night Football, you were in various magazines — was it hard to get taken seriously with a project like this?
LG: It’s been a very varied career –- I’ve been a lead on a soap opera, I played George Lopez’s sister on the George Lopez Show, been on the cover of Playboy, did Monday Night Football, did Best Damn Sports Show.

RB: All over the place.
LG: All over the map. But I kept taking different adventures. Every single time I try something new, people raise their eyebrows or say, “Is this a smart move?” But I just wanted to choreograph my own career. I didn’t want to walk the same path as other people. I didn’t set out to be a sideline reporter; I set out to be an actor and a writer. … I have a real passion for being a different character. It’s up to a performer or a personality to get out of that pigeon-hole. Find something else to do. Surprise people. I think I’ve surprised a lot of people.

RB: You were in “Fire Down Below” and “Batman Returns.” I don’t remember those roles. Can you refresh my memory?
LG: I was blonde for “Batman Returns.” I was a volunteer worker campaigning for Danny Devito, and I looked nothing like myself. But that was pretty fun. “Fire Down Below,” I played a reporter. I get a lot of offers to play reporters. I’ve done that a few times, but that’s another problem: people try to get me for an athlete’s wife or a reporter.

RB: I think people remember you most for MNF — it’s a huge stage. What do you remember from that experience, and what’s your best story from that experience?
LG: The funny thing, and Scott laugh about this all the time, is that when people recognize me or e-mail me, the thing I get recognized most from is not Monday Night Football; it’s from Best Damn Sports Show. People quote specific things I said to Tom Arnold or Michael Irvin years ago. They remember a huge fight I got into with John Kruk over the potential players’ strike. People remember that stuff. Monday Night Football was a more prestigious gig. But yeah, Monday Night football, best story. Here is why I love John Madden: I hit it off with John and Al, they were like uncles to me. We had just finished a production meeting in a hotel, and the whole crew, John, Al, I, the director, were walking down a hallway. And there was one of those trays that people leave out from room service. Somebody had a cart out there with all the leftover food, half-eaten hamburgers, empty wine bottles. I’m chatting with John Madden about the head coach we had just interviewed. He stops in mid-sentence and lifts up a tray that is clearly leftovers, and right there is a cookie. There were half-eaten cookies around it, but there was one pristine cookie in the middle. He picks up the cookie, starts eating it and continues the conversation as if he hadn’t just picked up leftover food from a tray. For him, it was like, “Why would that be strange?” It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Scott was actually there. He was in the hallway, waiting by the elevator. He saw it, and said, “Did John Madden just pick up food from an old tray?” That’s something that really sticks out. That’s John Madden right there.

RB: Well, it sounds like you guys are enjoying this movie experience. Sorry if we were having fun with it, poking fun at it earlier.
LG: No, it was fine … and thanks. We have two more movies in pre-production. We’d like to make our money back on this one so we can do another one.