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She settles today into the recently vacated seat of knowledge, from where Keith Olbermann used to preside over Fox’s baseball coverage as if he were the High Priest of Hardball, the Sultan of Sabermetrics, handing down opinions and observations as if they were to be transcribed by quill onto parchment and sealed with hot wax.

Certainly, there will be a different air on the set when Jeanne Zelasko debuts as host of Fox’s pregame baseball show. Unlike Olbermann, Zelasko may have to occasionally consult the baseball encyclopedia to check a fact. If homework has to be done, she will open the books. When assigned earlier this year to cover NASCAR for Fox, Zelasko laughingly acknowledges, “Yes, I read ‘NASCAR For Dummies.’ ”

She knows it won’t be easy succeeding Olbermann, but she has filled big shoes before. NASCAR is not only the age-old bastion of good ol’ boys, but, she quickly discovered, also the bastion of extra large.

“That may be the only hurdle I had as ‘the woman coming to Daytona,’ ” she says. “Fox Sports ordered all of the gear, all of our clothes, in large and extra large. When I did my very first broadcast, I had to go back to the hotel room and cut my shirt with one of those little free scissors they have in the sewing kit.

“Needless to say, it wasn’t a great job. I wasn’t smart enough to actually try to sew the bottom--I’m not real domestic. So after a few days, it started to fray up. I was the biggest ragamuffin on TV.”

As for tough assignments, Zelasko figures nothing involving earned-run averages can measure up to the day she spent in a pit crew, surrounded by roaring metal monsters and highly flammable materials at Fontana.

“I was a ‘catch-can,’ ” she says. “You’ve seen the big gas can they dump into the car? It will overflow. It will overflow into what is called a catch-can, and when it starts to overflow, you basically have to tell the gas guy, ‘Hey, stop pouring, we’ve got enough in here.’

“The most terrifying part was that you didn’t realize how fast the cars were going and how dangerous your job was because I so well protected in my fire suit. (Suit size: XXL.) You couldn’t feel the car, you couldn’t hear the noise. You were just focused on your job.

“And it was afterwards as you watch the tape and you realize, ‘I could have gotten hit!’ My main job was to make sure that catch-can was out of there--[the car] could have dragged me along for a while. I have ultimate respect for those guys, because that is pretty hard work.”

After that, following Gayle Gardner and Hannah Storm as the only women to serve as a major network’s pregame host for the national pastime?

Can of corn.

“I’m sitting in an air-conditioned studio with a great guy like Kevin Kennedy,” is how Zelasko describes her new gig. “It can’t get much worse than worrying about getting hit by a car or gasoline spilling on you or lighting on fire. You know, they have the fire department, they’re standing right there with extinguishers. You ask them, ‘This is for the car, right?’ ‘No, this is for you, because you could catch fire.’ ”

Ed Goren, president and executive producer of Fox Sports, admits that Zelasko’s gender played a role in her NASCAR assignment, that Fox executives “had a desire to have a woman as part of the team.” Not so with Zelasko’s baseball position, he says.

“That was a lot easier than when we decided to put her on NASCAR,” Goren says. “I used to listen to her driving into Fox each morning when she was on XTRA Sports doing the news updates. Anyone who works sports-talk radio, you better be nimble. She showed the ability to drop her gloves and mix it up with the boys. She showed a wonderful sense of humor.

“When it came to giving out the information, regardless of gender, you know when somebody knows what they’re talking about. There was no question that she was rock solid. She wasn’t just reading a script, she knew what she was talking about.”

Baseball is Zelasko’s No. 1 sporting passion. Born in Cincinnati, Zelasko, 34, was raised in New Jersey, deep in the heart of Yankee country. She grew up a baseball fan, first reared on the American League and the Yankees, then acquainting herself with the Padres when her family moved to San Diego in 1977.

The Padres have accompanied Zelasko through several professional and personal milestones. With Prime Sports West (now Fox Sports Net), she co-hosted the Padres’ pregame show. With Fox, she covered the Padres as they closed in on the 1998 National League pennant and World Series.

And it was at a Padre game that Zelasko met her husband, KABC Channel 7 sports reporter Curt Sandoval.

“He was working for a San Diego station and came up to me and asked me where baseballs were made,” she says. “I was standing there talking to Ken Caminiti and he came up and asked me that. I was so impressed. Because even at that time, guys were still looking at me like, ‘She doesn’t know what she’s talking about, she doesn’t belong.’ It was still kind of a new arena for women to be hanging out in.

“I was so impressed that he asked me this. It wasn’t until two years later that I find out that it was just a line. But by then, I guess I was already hook-line-and-sinker.”

Now, on a typical day at home, Zelasko and Sandoval spend much of their free time poring over newspaper box scores and watching baseball on television.

“When we come home [after work], I’m the luckiest guy on the planet--my wife wants to watch the baseball games that are on,” Sandoval says. “And it doesn’t have to be the Angels or the Dodgers. The Braves could be playing the Mets, the Yankees could be playing the Red Sox. She’s just into baseball.

“I have a fantasy team that I consult her for advice. She’s incredible. She loves baseball.”

She is also a veteran of the trench warfare that is trying to operate professionally as a woman in an often sexist industry. At XTRA, she was nicknamed “Go Go” by the late Chet Forte because she was always on the go, juggling traffic and sports updates at the station--a story she has had to tell and retell whenever asked, “So, did Chet meet you dancing in a bar?” At Fox, she has had to instruct athletes not to wrap an arm around her while she delivered her remote reports--going so far as to wear a backpack to make the wraparound move too difficult.

But when she walks into the Fox studio today, she will do so without carrying a torch.

Zelasko says a reporter recently “asked me if I feel this pressure for women in the industry. It’s the same situation with NASCAR. I didn’t feel like, and I don’t feel like, I’m any different. I’m just someone getting a job.

“But as I get more calls--Lesley Visser called me, Andrea Kremer called me, Pam Oliver e-mailed me--first and foremost, they say, ‘Hey, congratulations on the job. Good for you. You worked really hard.’ I think most women in this industry would say, ‘That’s all we can ask for--if you work hard, you get recognized.’ If you’re a guy or a girl, I think you feel the same way.”

As for moving into Olbermann’s old seat, Zelasko says, “I don’t think anyone can replace Keith Olbermann. He’s one of a kind. I consider Keith to be a friend. I call him Uncle Keith. I think he did a tremendous job and, as his friend, I was disappointed for him that this couldn’t continue, that [Fox] wanted to go a different direction and he wanted to go his way.”

Zelasko sees herself as a different kind of host, “a baseball fan who enjoys listening to Kevin Kennedy talk, the person who has to get him to share his stories. . . .

“I think Ed Goren’s said that he’s looking for the John Madden of baseball, if you will, and just how John just lays it out there and shares [his knowledge] as a former coach. So I guess that would make me a Pat Summerall, I’m not sure.

“I look at Kevin as the star of the show. I’m just the traffic cop.”