Bleeding Blues : Hook & the Hitchhikers do the rockin’ roadhouse style of R & B. Be sure to wear your Dodger cap.

Imagine Twinkie hors d’oeuvres at the Slim-Fast convention. Or Mike Tyson as judge at the Miss America Pageant. Or Tiny Tim standing in for Axl Rose. Worst of all, imagine Tommy Lasorda Day at Candlestick Park.

Or imagine Hook Herrera as a little kid--a tough little kid--and the only Dodger fan in San Jose, a town that does not bleed Dodger blue and never will.

“I’ve been a Dodger fan since I was a little kid,” Herrera said in a recent phone interview. “I still have the clipping when Marichal clobbered Roseboro with a bat way back when. All the neighborhood Giants fans didn’t dig the Dodgers, but I was a Raiders fan, so it was OK.”

Unless your last name is O’Malley, there isn’t a lot of work for someone who is primarily a Dodgers fan. So over the years, Herrera expanded his repertoire to include “bluesman.” Hook & the Hitchhikers will be the main attraction at Blue Monday at Alexander’s in Ventura. Wear your Dodger caps.

“At first I played accordion to death at everybody’s house when I was a kid,” Herrera said. “I had a brother who was nine years older who was really into the blues. He taught me to play the rhythm guitar and bass guitar--that 1-4-5 blues progression thing--so he could play lead guitar. That’s all I could hear in my head.” Then he saw a guy playing the harmonica and “just flipped.”

“I became the neighborhood jukebox,” he said.

Obviously, it’s nice to do something you like.

“Man, this is the only thing I could possibly do,” Herrera said. “My music is so far into me, it’s hard to even have a relationship or to even think about doing anything else. I can’t even pay my rent, but what else am I supposed to do? I couldn’t serve food--I’d be throwing stuff at people.”

There are worse jobs--safety inspector in Sarajevo, bulletproof vest franchise in Beirut--the list goes on and on. The blues as a career seems to be holding its own, not exactly taking off like Ross Perot but not exactly fading away like Jerry Brown, either.

“I think the blues are getting bigger after Bonnie Raitt won four Grammys and Charlie Musselwhite was nominated,” Herrera said. “The buzz for blues is just right. People are starting to know the difference between good blues and bad blues. If someone is doing it right, it can break. But it has to be right--it has to be played by somebody that can play it.”

Hook & the Hitchhikers do the rockin’ roadhouse style of rhythm and blues, and unlike most such acts, it’s not rhythm and booze. They save a lot of money on beer--they don’t drink.

“I’ve been sober for two years now,” Herrera said. “When I was in Texas, it was a party band, but now nobody in my band drinks. We play all over L.A., but we need to get out of town, out of state, and over to Europe. There’s nothing like taking a whole room of different people, lettin’ them have it, then splittin’. It’s sort of like a drug thing. I can’t wait to get to the next night.”

The band has a demo tape and Herrera has a couple of songs on sale overseas that were produced by Dave Alvin. But mostly they’ve got blues dreams.

“Gotta get a record deal,” Herrera said. “I’m having trouble with my management firm. None of it involves me but it affects me. I need to put a product out. It’s ready. I’m ready. Everything I ever do will have a blues base, but it’s hard, man. I wanna play forever.”