Hardball is not only for the Giants and the Angels.
On Tuesday afternoon, Penn will become host to MSNBC's interview show "Hardball with Chris Matthews," featuring special guest Rudolph Giuliani.
Giuliani's appearance on the show will top off a round of functions the former New York City mayor is slated to attend on campus next week -- he's giving a speech at Irvine Auditorium Tuesday night and holding a booksigning at the Penn Bookstore on 36th and Walnut streets that afternoon.
The show will be taped in the Zellerbach Theater from 1 to 2 p.m. with a crowd of approximately 1,000 students in attendance. The episode will air on the cable news channel at 9 p.m. the following night.
In the wake of disappointment on the part of many students who did not win the lottery to hear Giuliani's lecture "Leadership in Difficult Times," organizers said a second chance to hear him speak is being happily received.
"They were so disappointed," event organizer Tim McCarten said. "The odds of winning the lottery were so slim, it was really unfortunate. But now we're very lucky to allow 1,000 additional students" to see Giuliani.
Nearly 6,000 students entered the online lottery to purchase pairs of tickets to the lecture, but only 500 were selected.
But while the last-minute TV appearance may seem like a golden opportunity to the overlooked thousands of students, it won't be that easy.
Tents may be pitched.
Those students who entered the lottery but were not previously selected are invited to line up outside the Office of Student Life in 200 Houston Hall tomorrow morning. Five hundred of the $10 tickets will be handed out on a first-come, first-serve basis beginning at 10 a.m.
In addition, the first 100 people to arrive will be given the opportunity to purchase a ticket which will seat them on the stage behind Matthews and Giuliani -- promising them a chance to be both seen and heard on national television.
All PennCard holders will have a chance to grab the remaining 500 tickets on Locust Walk at 11 a.m. tomorrow.
"I would anticipate a similar line to those we have had in the past, multiplied by a factor of two or three," McCarten said.
McCarten added that he expects a turnout similar to the one for the Spring 2000 lecture by George Stephanopolis, a former presidential adviser and host of "This Week" on ABC Sunday mornings.
"People were lined up from [Steinberg-Dietrich Hall] to the compass," he said.
This is the second taping of "Hardball" on Penn's campus. Matthews, a Philadelphia native, also taped an episode featuring then presidential-hopeful Donald Trump as the guest in 1999. In addition, the campus has hosted two unaired episodes of Politically Incorrect as well as a week's worth of episodes of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and an A&E; special which featured Billy Joel's performance last fall.
McCarten said he believes that while the Hardball episode will echo the sentiments of Giuliani's planned lecture, it may show a different dimension to the former New York mayor.
"When he gives a lecture, it's something he has prepared, something he has thought a lot about," McCarten said. "But with 'Hardball,' the question and answer format that Matthews uses, you're more likely to have Giuliani using off-the-cuff remarks."
The television event is being sponsored by the Student Planning and Events Committee's Conaissance branch as well as the Provost's Spotlight Series.
This development in Giuliani's appearance will not affect tonight's late-night ticket sale for the scheduled lecture. Directions to get those tickets will appear on the SPEC Web site, www.specevents.net, at 10 p.m. tonight.
