There is an old baseball joke that is enjoying revival this year.

“What is the difference between a Yankee Stadium hot dog and Fenway Park hot dog?”

“You can still get a Yankee Stadium hot dog in October.”

Baseball teams and area restaurants have a lot in common. Great restaurants are about the team. Only the good ones survive the summer and get to play in the fall.

And the pressure of performing in the public eye brings out some great one-liners.

Yogi Berra was the king of baseball one-liners.

Funerals: "You gotta go to other guy’s or he won’t come to yours.”

He even had one for restaurants. “No one goes there any more – it’s too crowded.”

JP favorite

My favorite restaurant line of all time was delivered by Jeff Park (JP). We lost JP this year – a loss that traumatized all Island restaurant folk. We all miss him very much. JP was the king of restaurant one-liners. He shared the crown with Billy O, the handsome half of the O’Connor twins.

JP had just presented his diner with an abundant rack of lamb. The diner sighed and dropped one of my dad’s favorites.

“I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight?”

JP quipped, “We’re waiting on you, sir.”

Tallying a tip

An Arnaud’s patron visiting the famous New Orleans eatery was trying to calculate the gratuity.

“Waiter, can you tell me what 15 percent of this is, just off the top of your head?”

Offhandedly the waiter replied, “Well, no sir, but I could tell you 20 percent.”

Senior dream

Two elderly ladies were being charmed by one of the bistro’s more senior waiters.

“Tell me young man, is it your ambition to open your own restaurant some day?”

“No, ma’am, it’s my ambition to stop working in this one.”

Price points

Our much-loved manager, Annette, was a rookie 25 years ago. A patron had asked her an encyclopedic list of questions and then, finally:

“What is the difference between the scallops and the scampis?”

Annette, politely said, “A buck.”

Wish you were there

I once had the unenviable task of trying to quiet a female DOA (drunk on arrival). She was being loudly and outrageously profane. When I asked for some discretion she actually reached out and pinched me.

“I have been to the Russian Tea Room in New York!”, she exclaimed.

“Ma’am, I wish you were there now”

Getting fried

My favorite restaurant one-liner returns every year as a Duffy’s rerun.

A beloved gaggle of white-skinned tourists wearing bad hats and socks with their sandals will wander into Duffy’s. They will order burgers, and then their fearless leader will state with authority, “And I want fries with that!”

The room will go quiet. A wave of anticipatory smiles will ripple down the bar and all eyes will go to Peggi.

Everyone waits for it.

The withering look, and then profoundly, the age-old Duffy’s response: “No fries.”

The Sun is featuring some of the artists that have contributed art inspired by loggerhead turtles for the annual artsHOP silent auction.

This week’s artists are Sara Gafvert, Laura Shely and Ellen Riley.

Gafvert majored in studio arts at Ohio University and began working in fiber art in the early 1970s. She specializes in batik.

“Batik is a resist process using melted wax and dyes,” she explained. “I use paint brushes to apply the melted wax and dyes, and the final step is immersing the piece in a bucket of dye.”

She moved to the Island in 2005, and opened her shop, The Color of Coconut, with business partner Peggy Dean three years ago. Her batik clothing and framed art work are available at the shop in Holmes Beach. Her art can also be seen in one-woman shows in the area and at the AMI Art League.

Shely began designing jewelry at the age of 18 in Minnesota. In 1996, when her children reached school age, she opened her first jewelry and clothing store and began silversmithing.

In 2001 she and her husband and children found the Island and were able to move to Holmes Beach in 2005. She opened her store, Tide and Moon Jewelry, in Holmes Beach, three years ago and takes silversmithing classes at Art Center Manatee.

The store, which features her jewelry designs and jewelry and also beachwear that she designs and imports, was named the Small Business of the Year by the AMI Chamber of Commerce last year.

Ellen Riley is a self-taught artist who works in fiber art, beads, drawing and painting with watercolor and acrylics. Her favorites are botanical paintings and native art.

“I’m from Canada and we have a lot of native art there,” she explained. “My parents collect native art. When I was a child, a neighbor had a 20-foot tall hand carved and hand painted totem pole in his yard and it inspired me.”

Riley’s contribution for the auction is seven turtle paintings she did in the style of Maori tribal art. The paintings are ink and acrylics and can be seen at Island Tattoo in Holmes Beach, where she is general manager.

The turtle art will be displayed at The Studio at Gulf and Pine, 10101 Gulf Drive, Anna Maria, on Friday and Saturday, Nov. 12 and 13. Bids will begin at 50 percent of what the artist wants for the piece and increase in $10 increments. Bidding will be closed at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday and winning bidders will be contacted.