Now When Women Talk, He’ll (Be Paid to) Listen

I drove something like nine hours last week to Lake Tahoe to play a round of golf with a friend, and he showed up with his wife.

Now, I’m not one of those guys who is going to say something stupid like, “A woman’s place is ... “ but unless she’s driving the beer cart, I know where she doesn’t belong.

If we’re talking equality, then how come they have red tees for women? I’m telling you, without those tees there’s no way she beats me.

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I FIGURED I’d use the nine-hour ride home to replay the 15 shots that robbed me of the chance to defeat my friend’s wife, but then it got to be women’s sports all the time as they were talking on the radio about the success of the U.S. women at the Olympics, “and wasn’t that great!”

Great? Can you imagine how long the lines at the Staples Center box office are going to be to watch the Sparks and their returning Olympian? Now I might never get the chance to see the Sparks play.

The U.S. women’s soccer team was on “Good Morning America” Tuesday, and here in L.A. I’ve been assigned to join the U.S. pixies for dinner tonight, and unless I can persuade my doctor to start working nights and schedule my prostate exam for this evening, I’ll probably have to join them.

Listen, I know how much the women in my family love gold jewelry, so I wasn’t surprised when the U.S. women fared so well in the Olympics. Good for the gold diggers. But the Olympics are over, and we can forget about women’s athletics for two more years.

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AT LEAST that was the argument I used with Don Martin, the programming genius for XTRA Sports Radio 690 & 1150, who has come up with an idea to capitalize on the increased interest in women’s sports -- for the next 15 minutes. He wants me to do a radio show beginning Oct. 3, every Sunday morning, 9-10 (when no one is listening) -- with one of the daughters.

That eliminates the one who was a basketball player and now is married to the Grocery Store Bagger because she wants to get pregnant, and I’d imagine she’d be spending most of her time learning all she can about artificial insemination.

So that leaves the daughter who can’t get a date, an accountant who knows nothing about sports except that USC quarterback Matt Leinart is a “hottie.”

By Vic the Brick standards, of course, she fits right in at XTRA Sports, but holy smokes -- I just got a chill up my spine thinking of the two of them together and Vic the Brick becoming my son-in-law.

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XTRA HAS been paying me to appear on Lee Hamilton’s show, which explains how Hamilton attracts guests. Previously, I had been paid by Fox Sports Net to appear with plaschke on “The SIMERS & plaschke Show,” and by ESPN to appear with Max Kellerman on “Around the [Shouting] Horn.” How’s that for a resume?

I’m no longer doing TV, and if you noticed the picture in the newspaper recently, I don’t think further explanation is necessary, but I never thought looks would be an issue on radio. Look how long Hamilton has been on the air.

But I won’t be doing Hamilton’s show any longer because, as you know, he prefers to talk to himself. So to continue getting paid by 690 & 1150, I’ve been ordered to appear on the “Loose Cannons,” with Mychal Thompson and Steve Hartman, which is certainly going to cut into my listening time of Fred Roggin on 1540.

Thompson used to play for the Lakers and Hartman used to work for the Raiders, so we know which one plays the bad cop. If they were any good, they’d have Hamilton’s time slot, so I understand why I’m being paid to join them. (I wish Roggin’s dinky station had the money to pay.)

Unfortunately, XTRA says if I want to keep getting paid, I’m also going to have to do the Sunday show with the daughter who doesn’t know anything about sports, which on a bright note will give her a chance someday to become a regular on the Southern California Sports Report.

(I’ll just settle for her getting a date out of all this.)

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MARTIN HAS a lot of dumb ideas. He put up all those Shaq billboards around town: “My city, my station,” which prompted another local station to run an old sound bite of Shaq saying he listened to only one station in town, and it wasn’t XTRA.

Martin’s also the guy behind “Breaking Kobe news first, guaranteed,” which never happens. Now he wants me to talk sports to the daughter, who has pretty much conditioned herself not to listen to her father.

Here’s my concern: Do you really think it’s possible for a man to talk sports with a woman for as long as a whole hour?

Sure, there are times -- grueling times -- when I have to listen to the wife talk nonstop, but I’ve trained myself so I can listen and never miss a pitch. It just seems kind of unnatural to actually invite women to pick up the phone, call in, and talk sports, like I really care what they have to say.

There might be a lot of interest in the U.S. women’s gymnastics, basketball, soccer and softball teams now, but by the time Father & Daughter go on the air no one’s going to care again about women’s sports, so what are we going to talk about? Certainly not who she’s dating these days.

The whole thing seems like a dumb idea to me, except, the daughter demanded to be paid to appear with her father on the radio, although I have no idea why. Maybe that’s something we can kick around on the first show.

I don’t imagine there will be a second one.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.