Ron Shelton believes in high fiber, good Scotch, the small of a woman's back, and taking a big paycheck from Ted Turner

With Martin Scorsese involved in HBO's Boardwalk Empire and AMC's upcoming The Walking Dead overseen by Frank Darabont, TBS has decided it wants in on some of that Hollywood director action.   In a move intended to bolster its shift to hour-long comedy/dramas, the network has announced that it will pick up Hound Dogs, a new show from writer/director Ron Shelton.

Hound Dogs will be about the travails of a minor league baseball team and its general manager, and may be coming at just the right time:  with movies like Bull Durham, Tin Cup, and White Men Can't Jump under his belt, Shelton's bona fides as a creator of compelling sports movies are impeccable.  And the world of team sports, rife for comedy and drama as it is, has never had huge success as the subject of a TV show until recently, with the rise of Friday Night Lights.  Will Shelton be able to parlay his own experience as a ballplayer and his gift for snappy dialogue into a successful show?  Or will this be the Ball Four:  the Series all over again?  We remain optiously cautionistic.