Today's cuppa: Yorkshire Gold tea
On Tuesday, Nov. 25, after seven seasons on FX, "The Shield" finally comes to an end, and fans learn the ultimate fate of rogue LAPD Detective Vic Mackey, played by Michael Chiklis.
By then, we will also know the outcome of this year's Major League Baseball World Series. But right now, one thing's for sure -- the New York Yankees won't be in it, since the pinstripers didn't make it into the American League Championship Series.
Instead, the defending World Champion Boston Red Sox take on the Tampa
Bay Rays tomorrow, Friday, Oct. 10. And this will make Chiklis -- a native of Lowell, Mass., and a dedicated Red Sox fan -- a very happy man.
But it might be hard to tell which makes Chiklis happier, the fact that the Red Sox are in the playoffs and possibly on their way to another Fall Classic, or the fact that the Yankees are not.
(Photo below: Red Sox relief pitcher Jonathan Papelbon)
In late Oct. 2007, during filming in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles for the penultimate episode of "The Shield," Chiklis took a few minutes to discuss his feelings about the New York team.
"You know me, right? I can truly say to you that I have no hate in my heart, no hate for any person, place or thing. I hate the Yankees. I hate them with a white-hot seething intensity of a thousand white-hot suns. I hate them, really.
"I'm making a T-shirt that says, 'The Yankees Hurt Children.' They bent me as a child. There were things
that happened when you're seven -- you don't forget things. The Yankees, it's sort of biblical, my hate for them."
(Photo on right: Yankee relief pitcher Mariano Rivera)
Apparently, though, Chiklis doesn't let these strong feelings alienate him from those closest to him.
"My lawyer was raised in the Bronx," he said. "He's a hardcore Yankee fan. Listen, I also, at the same time, love the Yankees, because what would baseball be without that? We need that. We are the best rivalry in all of sports.
"The fact that we have that sort of cellular hate for each other, in a fun way, it's all sports at the end of the day. Let me tell you what, my lawyer's a good friend, he's a dear friend of mine, but we kill each other."
While the action will be long over for baseball fans by late November, fans of "The Shield" will be ramping up to one of the most eagerly anticipated finales of the last few years.
Said Chiklis in 2007, "This one feels visceral. This feels right; it feels organic. I don't think anybody will be disappointed, because you're getting a real unwinding and unraveling and a real ending to this great story.
"I'm sad. Listen, I'm at the center of it. It's miserably sad. It's like a part of me is being torn out. I can't even go there yet. I have to run this ship. I have to be strong for everybody. ... Two months from now, after the holidays, it'll be like being hit by a balpeen hammer in the head."
Over the years of speaking to Chiklis about "The Shield," he has consistently refrained from revealing his personal opinion of Mackey, always saying he would wait until after the finale airs.
In early September of 2007, I sat down at USC with Chiklis' friend Jim Cramer, host of CNBC's "Mad Money" -- Cramer calls himself the "President of Cramerica," with Chiklis as the "Majority Leader" -- before he was to give a lecture to business students there.
Cramer's as big a fan of "The Shield" as Chiklis is of "Mad Money." Asked whether Chiklis ever opened up to him about Mackey, Cramer said, "He will not tell me now. The closest he came to it -- my sister has two autistic kids, and I said, 'Look, I've got to tell you, my sister would kill to get the money to send those kids to a special school.' And he said, 'That's why Vic Mackey is a great man, because remember what he had to do. He had to rob the Armenian money train in order to pay for the special school (for his autistic son).'"
Told in October that Cramer said he called Mackey a great man, Chiklis grinned. "I said that? Sorry, but he's misquoting me heinously. No, no. That's not what I said. I promise you. Sorry, James, but he's mistaken."
I hope to hold Chiklis to his promise to open up after Nov. 25, especially because I don't expect to get 
that answer in the finale itself.
Speaking on Aug. 21, 2008, series creator Shawn Ryan said, "We have avoided for a number of years, as a show -- or me, as a show-runner, or Michael as an actor -- tipping our hand in terms of our own moral judgments in terms of the character or the other characters in the show.
"I didn't feel like the final episode was the right time to change that up. I didn't think it was the right time to say, 'Now you're going to hear, through dialogue,' the perspective of the show-runner.' It felt more like the last chapter of a book, the last act of a play, the last verse of a song.
"Whatever we did in that last episode should feel like part of whatever came before it."
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