Getting this guy fired up proves too tall of an order

I don’t even know where to begin on this one. I tried talking to The Big Stiff on Tuesday, knowing how desperate the Dodgers are for starting pitching, and the fact that Mark Hendrickson was going to be given the ball tonight against the Braves.

Talk about fireworks on the Fourth of July.

He’s a nice enough guy, I guess, if you like your athletes lifeless. But here I am talking “do or die,” the second or maybe third chance The Big Stiff has been given to prove himself major league worthy and valuable to the Dodgers, and he’s telling me, “All I can do is throw the ball.” And duck.

How about making it appear as if you might care what happens? Or that maybe you are really trying?

“The best way I can compete is to throw the ball where I want, and consistently,” he says. “These guys are good and sometimes they just hit it.”

I’m not sensing he feels tonight’s assignment is as important as I think it is -- especially after starter Randy Wolf gets blasted.

“I look forward to every opportunity to pitch,” he says, and he appears as if he might fall asleep in mid-sentence.

I tell him he was gosh-awful last season, and most fans probably don’t think much of his ability to pitch, and he says, “No one has said anything to me and I don’t care what the public says. I’m an employee of the Dodgers and I care what they say.”

I would’ve thought he would’ve heard the fans booing, but he says, “You know how the people of L.A. are when things aren’t going well -- they want a championship, but nobody wants a championship here more than the people in this locker room.”

That’s a nice battle cry, but it’s delivered without any passion. You want to see competitive spirit, he says, “We were just looking at some of my basketball highlights.”

Highlights? I say, let me see the point you scored.

“Basketball is more than scoring,” he says, and someone who averages 3.3 points in four nomadic NBA years is probably going to say the same thing.

I’m trying to see if it’s possible to get a rise out of him, maybe even fire him up. I suggest his mediocre basketball career is very reminiscent of his mediocre baseball career, and he says, “Check my track record to see what I’ve accomplished.”

OK. So he’s 4-10 so far in a Dodgers uniform and I’m being kind when I say “mediocre.” He has pitched a little more than 68 innings this season and been hit for nine home runs; Derek Lowe and Brad Penny have pitched a combined 233 innings and given up a total of eight home runs.

The Big Stiff has pitched better from the bullpen recently, but the Dodgers’ season might hang on the starting pitching beyond Penny and Lowe.

And tonight he gets an audition, and I’m more excited than he is.

“You’re befuddled, aren’t you?” he says.

And then I’m reminded of the story earlier this year that had him working with some kind of sports psychologist, which might explain now why he’s acting so blase. He probably has been trained to think tonight’s game will be no different than any other for him.

Based on previous results, though, that can’t be good.

SO THERE is all this furor in New York because Cynthia Rodriguez, A-Rod’s wife, wore a shirt with an obscenity scrawled across her back. The New York Post ran her picture on the front page of the paper.

Four years ago, Vanessa Bryant, the Kobester’s wife, wore a shirt to a Lakers exhibition game in Anaheim with an obscenity scrawled across her chest. The picture didn’t make the local papers, although I had it hanging on my office wall for a while, and the incident drew little attention.

I asked the Kobester about it at the time and he said his wife, a mother indeed, as her T-shirt also suggested, was entitled to express herself in any way that she liked. It wasn’t the first time, and certainly not the last -- that we’ve disagreed.

I wonder how the New York newspapers would’ve treated the Kobester had he been playing for the Knicks and his wife showed up wearing an obscenity scrawled across her chest. Well, maybe we’ll find out.

OPENINGS REMAIN for the Jim Hill Celebrity Golf Classic at Industry Hills on Aug. 6, which also includes a fashion show a day earlier. It’s the only chance all year to see Hill not wearing a suit, with all the proceeds going to the L.A. Urban League Youth Foundation (323-299-9660).

THE DODGERS have this thing about constantly telling everyone how many fans they have drawn over the years, as if local folks want to be reminded how they’ve been ripped off -- getting one playoff win since 1988.

The Dodgers had their players sign 175 balls to mark the 175 million fans who have now watched the team play since 1901, and then toss them to the crowd. The players were lazy, though, never leaving their third base dugout to throw the balls to the fans, thereby leaving everyone in the outfield seats and the right side of the field without a chance to participate.

A Dodgers spokesperson said Tom Lasorda and Frank McCourt had 12 balls between them, and gave them to fans down the right-field line. What does it say about today’s players, though, when a 78-year-old ex-manager displays more energy than they do?

TODAY’S LAST word comes in e-mail from Jack Walker:

“You’ve set husbandry (the care and feeding of animals), or the art of being a husband, back 50 years. Though we are superior beings, we can’t let them know. I had to hide the sports page from my wife. I’ve got enough problems. I was in an all-day recording session that kind of captures the essence of this situation. If it becomes a hit, I’m prepared to give 5% of my earnings to Mattel’s Children Hospital.”

Let’s see, 5% to Mattel’s, 50% to your ex-wife -- that doesn’t leave you with much.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.