The National Pastime Turns Into a Real Rip-Off

Ibelieve the reason football is more popular than baseball--the Redskins-Cowboys’ stinker outdrawing the decisive A’s-Yankees’ thriller--is Velcro.

Velcro has slowed the American pastime down to a frustrating crawl, the pace of the game between pitches now allowing the Fox Fan Cam to show us every paying customer at least twice an inning.

In fact, when I see the Fox Fan Cam at work, I think of “Survivor,” wondering if we will survive the moment--the camera lingering on a face--before that person does something gross and disgusting to himself.

My favorite Fox Fan Cam moment to date came in the seventh inning of a playoff game last week, the camera working the crowd as everyone was singing “God Bless America” and settling on a father holding a young child--but also catching a man in a lower row chugging a beer down to the very last drop.

Fox’s idea of an American moment, I guess.

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I MENTION Velcro and look what happens--even the column slows down.

OK, here’s the deal. You stop every batter from backing out of the batter’s box after every pitch to undo the Velcro on the back of each batting glove and then cinching each glove up again--you will cut two hours off every baseball game and put the Fox Fan Cam out of business.

If Gary Sheffield was playing in a postseason game, and that can’t happen because he plays for the Dodgers, Fox could show “Gone With the Wind” between pitches while he redoes his batting gloves. I caught a quarter of the Redskin-Cowboy game between the first and second strikes thrown to Paul O’Neill.

I’m surprised, though, Fox hasn’t given us the sound effects from the Velcro release and then the Velcro cinch between pitches since it seems intent on giving us every other whoosh, bang and boom. I get the feeling I’m being punished every time I watch a baseball game broadcast by Fox, and as slow moving as baseball has become, a nine-inning game has now become a life sentence.

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JEFF BLECKNER, an e-mailer, spotted another thing that irritated me the other night, an example why Fox should only be allowed to air the SIMERS & plaschke Show and be prohibited from any other sports broadcasting.

I’ll let Bleckner set the scene: “The Yankees win a very exciting game, 5-3, and New York is celebrating. This is the same New York that is embroiled in the aftermath of a terrorist attack that killed so many of its citizens one month earlier.

“Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York, and Joe Torre, the manager of the Yankees, embrace each other shortly after the final out and begin to walk arm in arm toward the jubilant Yankee players to join them in their celebration. Both men are battling prostate cancer and they are arm in arm ... joyously. They take two steps and Fox cuts to a car commercial.”

I was disappointed too, and quickly turned to football only to hear Dennis Miller’s voice. That almost had me losing my will to maintain a grip on the remote control, which would have brought the wife back into the room.

I said, “almost.”

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THE FIRST person I ran into at the Jim Murray Memorial Golf Classic this week was James (Bum) Garner. We were walking toward each other down the narrow aisle in the Lakeside Golf Club locker room, and I said, “There’s my friend,” putting my hand out to shake his hand, and he did the same before he realized who it was.

Too late--he shook my hand, but shaking his head, he said, “Ughaxgagsh.”

I guess without a script he has a tough time knowing what to say.

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ACTOR ROBERT Stack, an old golfing partner of Murray’s, joined our group as a tournament celebrity, and he couldn’t have been any more friendly, talking in the middle of everyone’s backswing like we all had been buddies for years.

I asked him who was the hottest babe he had ever worked with in Hollywood, and Stack, host of “Unsolved Mysteries” and TV’s version of “The Untouchables,” said, “Monroe.”

But then he stopped, and said, “No,” before giving it more thought. Now if you start your list with Marilyn Monroe and then have to drop her down a few pegs--that’s impressive.

He was torn between Lana Turner and Ava Gardner, he said, which seemed to affect his putting for a few holes, but it also prompted him to tell a great story about Gardner, a teddy, expectations, disappointment and losing a lead role opposite Gardner in “The Sun Also Rises” to Tyrone Power. I wish I could tell you more, but during our round I recall him telling me how he sued a tabloid magazine for something they wrote about him, and getting awarded $1 million.

Murray sure had some fascinating golf partners.

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FOR THE benefit of the Terry Johnson Memorial Fund, established to help the wife and three young sons of the longtime Southern California sportswriter who died of a heart attack while driving to Dodger Stadium on July 4th, the Kings are offering two tickets and a visit to the locker room on e-Bay beginning Friday.

Hold me back.

Other auction items, which might actually interest someone, include an autographed Tony Gwynn jersey with the U.S. flag patch, an autographed hockey stick and King jersey by Wayne Gretzky, an autographed Mike Piazza game bat, autographed Mark McGwire baseball, autographed Tiger Woods’ PGA Championship flag and autographed size 22 Shaquille O’Neal shoe.

A Tom Goodwin game bat will also be auctioned off, which means you could be the first to hit a ball with it.

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TODAY’S LAST word comes in an e-mail from Sonic:

“You should just shut up about Chan Ho Park . You’re just jealous because he makes wayyyyyyyyyy more than you do.”

You left out a y.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com