This World Series is an all-inning stretch

I did something the other night so out of character I felt the need to talk about it, so I phoned a friend the next day. As we talked, however, I detected some rustling in the background on his end. He eventually acknowledged that he was making a sandwich while we talked and that he “might have set the phone down” once or twice as I went on.

OK, so he isn’t a true friend.

That’s why I’m turning to you, the reader.

Would you mind listening to a guy’s problem?

It’s about the World Series. You know, that best-of-seven set of games now being played between the Cardinals and Tigers.

I like to say there’s no bigger baseball fan than myself. I love the game in all the ways that baseball lovers write about that make non-fans retch. I watch it all season long, every stinking night after work, even watching multiple games on the cable package to which I subscribe. Instead of getting outside on beautiful summer nights, I’m usually parked in front of the TV watching whoever is playing.

So why, I ask you, am I not interested in this year’s series? Why, with Game 2 in full swing the other night, was I roaming the TV dial, in some aimless search for who knows what? Why wasn’t I doing what any good American should have been doing -- watching every pitch of the dadgum World Series?

Isn’t this the whole point of the season?

I wait six months for the grand finale of the baseball season, and now that it’s here, it seems about as interesting as a Phil Angelides ad.

Am I depressed? Can’t be, because I’m really interested in college football. In fact, last Saturday I was watching as much of various college football games as I was of Game 1 of the series.

In need of perspective, I made a quick call before Game 4 to Ashley Ragland, a production honcho at the ESPN Zone in Anaheim. She knows a thing or two about sports, a good trait to have when your job involves monitoring 150 TV sets that show sports, including a 13-by-15-foot big screen.

She did something my so-called friend wouldn’t do: She listened.

She understood. She told me it wasn’t just me.

“We’ve gotten a lot of complaints,” she says, “about football not being prioritized.”

In other words, people were griping last weekend that too many TVs in the Zone were showing the series instead of college football. And that was with only roughly one-fourth of the sets tuned to the series.

What is happening to us as a nation? Sadly, Ragland says, unless high-profile teams like the Yankees, Red Sox or Cubs are in the mix, “it’s just not going to be a draw” in Southern California or elsewhere in the country where casual baseball fans are tuning in.

What worries me, though, is that I’m not a casual fan. I buy the cable TV baseball package every year, which means I watch bits and pieces of hundreds of games from April 1 to Oct. 1. I’m nutty enough to waste a perfect evening to watch lousy teams like Tampa Bay or Kansas City play, if only to see how former Pirates (my favorite team) who play for them are doing.

And yet, here we have two storied franchises like the Tigers and Cardinals in the World Series and my mind is wandering. I cared more about former Pirate Ty Wigginton’s home run totals for Tampa Bay than I do about Kenny Rogers’ stick-um.

Again, Ragland tried to help. Despite the feel-good story line of the Tigers, Ragland says, the Cards-Tigers matchup isn’t strong enough to pull in large numbers. In contrast, she says, her joint was jumping two years ago when the Red Sox swept the Cardinals in the Series.

“It was amazing,” she says of the scene when Boston finally won a series after decades of frustration. “We had a guy who dropped his pants and ran around inside the building. I think he had a bet with one of our bartenders.”

In diagnosing my problem, all I can come up with is a vague sense that it’s too late in the year to be playing baseball. I’ve never liked to watch baseball when fans are wearing mittens. The baseball has stretched in recent years with expanded playoffs, but for some reason this playoff run strikes me as going a week or two too long.

Wednesday’s Game 4, for example, will coincide with NBA preseason games and NHL telecasts.

Ragland says it saddens her that the World Series can’t dominate the attention of sports fans. She says she’s watched every game and is very interested.

I’m happy for her.

I envy her. I miss not loving every minute of the series, as I once did.

I want to be a guy who drops his pants after Game 7.

And yet, sad to say, I don’t think I will.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana

.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.