Rusty Miller

30 years as AP sports writer in Columbus, Ohio, before hangin' it up.

[J @jasonllevin]

Do You Support the Decision by the NY Knicks?

[A DOG~ @StillADog]

Priorities

[Lyra Belacqua🟧🟦📚👩🏻‍🏫🦉🍸🏎️🏊🏻‍♀️ @ChambersL614]

#ObamaDayJune14

[Jonny Lazarus @JLazzy23]

I asked John Tortorella if he had considered going to Adin Hill in the 3rd period:

“Christ, that could be the stupidest question I’ve heard.”

[Rusty Miller @RustyMillerXAP]

https://t.co/VqUrn4pDUs

[Michael Beschloss @BeschlossDC]

Five months before his own assassination, JFK poses with family of Mississippi NAACP's Medgar Evers, who was assassinated today 1963, hours after Kennedy gave his civil rights speech:

[Jesus Chrysler @JesusChryslerII]

🤡

[Liam Nissan™ @theliamnissan]

Yup

[Rusty Miller @RustyMillerXAP]

@mluckovichajc @EandPCartoons https://t.co/JlUiUFxnaE

[cinesthetic. @TheCinesthetic]

Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann completely losing it during Melissa McCarthy’s improvised two-minute rant in a THIS IS 40 (2012) outtake remains endlessly rewatchable. Watching them fight to keep a straight face only makes it funnier.

[Hildegard Angel Oficial @hilde_angel]

Nem uma única bola rolou no gramado até agora e este é o quadro da COPA 2026:
• As equipes do Senegal e do Uzbequistão foram tratadas na chegada como criminosos, com buscas completas em seus orifícios.
• O melhor árbitro da África foi enviado de volta à Somália, apesar de seu passaporte diplomático.
• O Fotógrafo da equipe do Iraque foi impedido de entrar mesmo com visto válido.
• Foi negada a entrada nos EUA de 90% dos fãs marroquinos com ingressos já adquiridos.
• Foram recusados vistos a 14 membros da equipe de apoio do Irã.
• Foi negada a entrada no país do principal atacante da Suíça, o camaronês Breel Embolo. A equipe viajou sem ele. Após a forte repercussão, o visto foi enfim concedido.
• A equipe iraniana, cujos jogos serão todos nos EUA, foi proibida de pernoitar no país. Imediatamente a após cada partida, os atletas voarão de volta ao México, onde se hospedam.
- Qual é o sentido de sediar a Copa do Mundo se não pretendem que o MUNDO faça parte dela???

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

Never mentioned his name but we all know who he is talking about.

[Aaron Ward @NHL_AaronWard]

#WhiteRoadBlouse #StanleyCup2026 @NHL @ESPN
Ok @rayferraro21 time to raise your game!

[Gianl1974 @Gianl1974]

Trump Tower rises from the center of downtown Chicago on a major north/south street called Wabash Avenue. A petition is circulating to have the city formally rename a four-block strip of Wabash after a certain famous Chicago resident.

If enacted, it would make Trump Tower’s official address 401 N. Barack Hussein Obama Avenue. I’d love that for him.🖕😁🖕

[Farm Girl Carrie 👩‍🌾 @FarmGirlCarrie]

On the day John Ratzenberger walked into an audition room in 1982, he had a plane to catch.

He had been living in London for nearly a decade — acting, writing, performing improv comedy across Europe with a two-man theatre group that had played to standing-room-only audiences for 634 consecutive shows.

He had appeared in small roles in some of the biggest films of the era: *Star Wars:
The Empire Strikes Back*, *Superman*, *Gandhi*, *A Bridge Too Far*

He was a working actor, but
nobody's idea of a household name. That day, he was in Los Angeles on a writing assignment, and his ticket back to London was already booked.
He had one audition before he left.
A new sitcom about a bar in Boston.

Both Ratzenberger and another actor, George Wendt, were reading for the same role — a minor patron named George who had a single line: "Beer!" It was barely a part at all.

But Ratzenberger wanted the work, so he went in, and the moment director Jimmy Burrows told him he was there to audition, not have a conversation, he felt the energy in the room go cold.

By his own account, all the blood rushed out of his body. He delivered a forgettable read. The casting director thanked him on the way out — the polite, final kind of thank you that everyone in show business learns to recognize.

He was almost through the door when something stopped him. Not calculation. Not strategy. Just the instinct of a man who had spent a decade doing improv and knew that the moment before you leave a room is sometimes the best moment you'll ever have.
He turned around.

"Do you have a bar know-it-all?"
The producers didn't know what he was talking about. So he told them. Every bar in New England, he explained, has one — some guy who acts like he has the knowledge of all mankind stored between his ears and is not even slightly shy about sharing it.

He had grown up around exactly this type: a man named Sarge at his father's regular bar, who could answer any question with absolute confidence whether he actually knew the answer or not. The room would ask Sarge the length of a whale's intestine and Sarge would shoot back: "Baleen or blue?" And somehow, everyone deferred to him anyway.

Ratzenberger launched into an improvisation right there — the Boston accent, the lean against an imaginary bar, the slightly too-long explanations of facts nobody had asked for. The producers watched. Then they laughed. Then they asked him to do more.

George Wendt got the role of the bar regular, renamed Norm Peterson. And the producers, convinced by five minutes of improv from a man on his way out the door, wrote an entirely new character into the show.

His name was Clifford Clavin. United States Postal Service.
Cheers debuted on NBC on September 30, 1982, to nearly catastrophic ratings — finishing 77th out of 100 shows that week.

The network came close to canceling it in the first season. But the show found its audience, and then it found a much bigger one, and then it became one of the most beloved television series ever made. It ran for 11 seasons.

Ratzenberger appeared in 273 of 275 episodes.
Cliff became the man at the end of the bar with the white socks and the questionable facts and the magnificent certainty — the guy everyone tolerated and secretly enjoyed, the kind of person every room has and everyone pretends to find annoying and would immediately miss if he disappeared.

Ratzenberger was nominated for Emmy Awards in 1985 and 1986. By the time the show ended in 1993, Cliff Clavin was embedded in American culture as one of the great comic characters in the history of the medium. Cheers! 🍻