Slam-Bang Comeback : C’mon, admit it: You used to watch Roller Derby. Skaters are on a roll again . . . at least for now.

Redheaded Honey Sanchez stands in the cinder-block bowels of the Olympic Auditorium, hands on hips, staring into the cracked dressing-room mirror like some saucy, gum-chewing San Bernardino waitress having a bad-hair day.

To the contrary, this is a night to cherish, one the 54-year-old Sanchez has waited nearly 20 years to see realized: the Los Angeles return of Roller Derby, the flamboyant, hell-on-skates sporting spectacle that had given her a career of bruised cheeks, cracked ribs and international travel before succumbing in the late 1970s--the last time the long-haired Honey had skated under the white-hot house lights of the Downtown auditorium.

Of course, everyone with a TV set remembers Roller Derby, the alternative sports television event of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s that packed such venues as New York’s Madison Square Garden, San Francisco’s Cow Palace and Pasadena’s Rose Bowl with heckling, horn-blowing, beer-chugging, decidedly blue-collar fans who screamed for blood and worse.

Maybe that’s because Roller Derby was always less of a sport than perhaps some Peyton Place on wheels, a bitter faceoff between rival teams of high-speed skaters with names like the Bombers and Thunderbirds who raced around a perversely banked track, seemingly dead-set on doing bodily harm as cue-ball headed referees resembling convicts on weekend passes eyeballed the action: The late Howard Cosell would have had a field day here.

How the fans went wild! They loved their weekly dose of the often-dirty, cheap-shot action that seemed to mix the smarminess of professional boxing with the camp of championship wrestling--all balanced precariously atop a pair of eight-wheeled roller skates.

And now, under the glare of the room’s naked light bulb, as she peers into the mirror with a tear welling in her eye, Honey Sanchez knows exactly what the 1,000 or so foot-stomping, chanting fans outside know:

Bam! Boom! Zowie! Rrrrrrrrrrrrroller Derby is back! At least for now.

Tonight, Honey will take to the track as the female captain of a revitalized L.A. Aztecs team as they go against their archrivals, the San Francisco Bombers. On her squad will be daughter Gina Valladares and niece Debbie Van Doren.

In this latest revival, this Roller Derby redux--the second in as many decades--some old-time pros are returning to pass the baton to the newest generation of roller-skating roughnecks, bringing sometimes three generations of one family to the same banked track.

But, hey, Roller Derby always billed itself as a family sport.

“I was up at 3 a.m. this morning, I couldn’t sleep,” Honey says, donning her flashy Aztec uniform, perched upon a pair of potholed 20-year-old skates. “I was going over plays again and again in my mind, trying to think up things for the girls to do, to better help them score.”

This is the Honey Sanchez who first fell in love with Roller Derby as a teen-ager glued to the tube, watching the woman skaters zip around the Masonite track like human racing cars, whipping each other like slingshots for even greater speeds, slamming opponents into an unforgiving rail with National Hockey League-force blows. It’s the same Honey who made the sport her career before a forced retirement when everything went south and she became a homemaker who never gave up hope of a return.

“I always had this dream to come back,” she says, dabbing her eyes and running makeup. “I never gave up. You can’t give up your dreams. Jeez, I get goose bumps just thinking about it. I feel like I’m back at age 16, that I’m starting all over again.”

She pauses: “Now, get out of here, OK honey? You’re gonna make me cry.”

There are lots of veterans like Honey, skaters who consider themselves every bit the athlete of a professional basketball or baseball player. Skaters who swooned over the Roller Derby sport that got its start on Aug. 13, 1935, staged by founder Leo Seltzer at the Chicago Coliseum as a marathon skating event.

Eventually, the game evolved into its present-day format: two five-member teams of men and women who rotate time on the track in 40-minute halves. Each team’s grouping consists of two jammers, who wear helmets, two blockers and one pivot person. A scoring play, called a jam, occurs when one or two jammers pull away from the pack, receiving one point for every member of the opposing team they lap, or pass.

John DiCarlo explains such details at a recent skating practice. He is one of the game’s endearing, smaller-than-life characters, a nervous man dressed in an ill-fitting suit: Joe Pesci could play this guy to a T.

DiCarlo is the CEO of Roller Derby Inc., the latest version of the sport that has seen several incarnations in various leagues--the last a mid-1980s resurgence that brought with it weekly ESPN coverage under the plug “Slam ‘n’ Jam.”

This time, however, Roller Derby is here to stay, its promoters say. Because DiCarlo, you see, has a plan: His league, he says, won’t fall prey to the same front-office indecision that plagued past leagues, along with the failure to develop new talent and keep the game fresh. And this time, DiCarlo says, the front office has “deeper pockets,” including money from his magazine publishing concerns.

DiCarlo and his top investors established a converted Pomona bowling alley where tryouts were held for the present teams and where he plans to maintain an ongoing training camp. He even wants to establish Roller Derby little leagues.

The league is also considering a move to employ in-line skates to quicken the action. Right now, DiCarlo is looking to expand his present handful of teams nationwide to 24 over the next year. While seeking a television contract, the league plans to stage regular games at the Olympic Auditorium. The next scheduled event is Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

“This sport has equal opportunity written all over it,” he says, pausing for a dose of breath spray. “In what other sport do women play a role that’s just as important as men? Anybody can play this game--short, fat, old, young, in shape, out-of-shape, smart, stupid, we don’t care--as long, that is, as you master the skating.”

On opening night, a ragtag cast of misshapen veterans and newcomers hits the track: Used car salesman look-a-likes with Brylcreemed hairdos, East L.A. teen-agers and rotund men who roll along like out-of-shape bowling balls blundering toward the pins.

Still, the fans eat it up.

“I love this sport,” says Ed Foster, a piano player. “It moves along fast, there’s lots of scoring. There’s no dull time, no downtime, like baseball and football.”

As the Bombers warm up under the spotlight, half a dozen hecklers hound the players like bad hangovers: “Ya skate like yer crippled!” And “Where’d ya get those uniforms, Kmart?”

Meanwhile, the public address man works the crowd: “Roller Derby is here to stay, folks! Roller Derby isn’t going on strike!”

And then Honey, like some leader of a chain gang of tough broads, hits the track, her face beaming, tears welling, as, to whoops and cheers, she thrusts her hand into the air like some Roller Derby version of the Bambino, or a female Rocky Balboa.

Indeed, both Honey Sanchez and her beloved sport are back.

“Welcome home, Roller Derby!” yelled one beer-drinking fan.

And then he belched.