If Not in the Front Row, Put Him in Front of the TV Camera

If baseball really wants to solve its major league boredom problem, its owners should insist that the new TV contract with NBC, ABC, ESPN (and whatever other network they’re negotiating with) includes the following provision: Hire Bob Uecker.

You want fun in the booth? Forget Tim McCarver and his silly puns. Bring on the Ueck.

A sampling, from the book, “Baseball’s Even Greater Insults”:

“In 1962 I was voted minor league player of the year. Unfortunately, that was my second year in the majors.”

“Not .201 or .199. A cool .200. A lot of retired players joke about being a career .200 hitter, but I was the genuine article.”

“If I was playing today, I’d be a million-dollar player. Is that scary, or what?”

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Trivia time: Since 1966, when the NBA’s territorial draft was abolished, which three schools have had the most players drafted No. 1 overall?

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Bird cereal: Basketball fans and collectors who returned to Springfield, Mass., for last week’s Hall of Fame induction ceremonies discovered a new hot item.

It seems that a Larry Bird commemorative edition box of Wheaties (serving size: less than one ounce) now fetches $25 in the New England area.

For that price, you better not eat those Wheaties.

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Spin doctor: Tom Werner, owner of the San Diego Padres and a member of the Major League Baseball Television Committee, can’t understand the negative reaction regarding the tentative deal negotiated with ABC and NBC.

“I’m surprised how the deal is being reported,” Werner said in USA Today. “We consider it as pro-fan. We’re trying to protect something, but we work in the real world.”

This from the man who let Roseanne Arnold sing the national anthem and whose favorite pastime is pinching pennies.

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Lights, camera . . . action: Oh, sure, he was great in those Isotoner gloves commercials, but can Dan Marino make it on the big screen (and we’re not talking Jumbotron, either)?

The Miami Dolphin quarterback is currently filming “Ace Ventura, Pet Detective.” He plays--and what a stretch this is--a Dolphin quarterback who gets kidnaped shortly before the start of the Super Bowl.

Considering the actual result of the last Marino-led appearance in Super Bowl XIX (San Francisco 49ers 38, Miami 16), a kidnaping might help the Dolphins.

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Another import: First it was the PGA Tour. Now it’s the LPGA circuit that finds itself the plaything of talented foreign players.

Getting most of the attention these days are Swedes Liselotte Neumann and Helen Alfredsson, two of the best players on the tour. Only one thing stands between them and possible domination of LPGA events: practice time back in Sweden.

“You could stretch the season to about nine months if you wore about 10 sweaters,” Neumann told Jerry Potter of USA Today. “We always went to Spain for a month in the winter.”

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Trivia answer: Houston (Elvin Hayes, Hakeem Olajuwon); UCLA (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton) and North Carolina (James Worthy, Brad Daugherty).

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Quotebook: David Letterman on life after death: “I heard the doctors revived a man after being dead for 4 1/2 minutes. When they asked what it was like being dead, he said it was like listening to New York Yankee announcer Phil Rizzuto during a rain delay.”