Hardball Loves Rocky's Softball

We shouldn't be surprised that Chris Matthews, the jabbing host of msnbc's Hardball, is a fan of the heroic fighter Rocky series. "I saw the first one; I saw the third one. They were the really great ones," he tells us. So what's he think of the latest, Rocky Balboa? He loved it. "There were some great moments: When he talks to his son and says, 'You know, you were my dream when I held you in my hand when you were small, and then you grew up. But somewhere along the line, you began to look for an excuse for failure, and I'm your excuse.' It was unbelievable. It was so strong," coos Matthews. "The soliloquies—it's an odd word to use for Rocky—his soliloquies that [actor-director Sylvester Stallone] obviously wrote were fantastic," he says. "It was slow moving like all Rockys," adds the critic, "but at the end, it was unbelievable."

With Kevin Whitelaw and Kenneth T. Walsh