Bagger Might Need Paper, or Plastic, Over His Head

I’d guess most of you have a relative you wouldn’t like to be seen in public with most of the time, the kind of person who maybe paints his face before going to a football game. They show people like this on TV all the time, and you know they have embarrassed families at home.

I know what it’s like. We recently stayed in The Hotel at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, and I would imagine if we ever return, there will a neon light above the door flashing “weirdo alert” to greet the Grocery Store Bagger’s arrival.

I’m still trying to figure out what the daughter saw in the slug, but I know what people see when he ventures outside, and some of them shriek.

It starts with the shaved head with the moles, although sometimes he covers his football-shaped noggin with a Pittsburgh Steeler stocking cap pulled down tight -- accentuating the humongous ears, that, like a donkey’s, just kind of stick up.

His idea of dressing up is to wear those oversized pro sports jerseys with the names of real athletes across his back, although he’s built more like a bowler and has to keep pulling the front of the jersey down over his belly. And I thought it was his wife who was pregnant.

You walk into The Hotel at Mandalay Bay dressed like that, and you’re either a big celebrity or you grew up in El Cajon. The Hotel takes no chances, and fortunately allows either to enter.

I’ll say this, though, one of the pluses of staying at The Hotel is that it has plasma TVs in the bathrooms, so you don’t see a lot of the Bagger over a long weekend. My hat’s off to The Hotel too, because it didn’t charge for fumigation.

Now, after spending a weekend with the Bagger, I thought that was it for the year, until Sunday, when he showed up to watch his Steelers play.

He was wearing the stocking cap, an oversized Ben Roethlisberger jersey, Steeler sweatpants and cradling a Steeler football as if somebody was going to take it from him.

“I got paint on my Steeler flip-flops,” he said, which I guess was supposed to explain why he was in his bare feet.

Had he gone to the game, you know he’d have painted his face, and I suppose by now he’d be sober again. And this is going to be the father of our first grandchild.

*

MISS RADIO PERSONALITY also stopped by for the game, and there’s no getting rid of them when they grow up. I thought if I stopped stocking groceries they might go away, but that’d mean putting the wife on a diet, and I think I know who’d be asked to go away.

For the last 25 years, I’ve usually been at one of these Sunday title games to determine which team is going to the Super Bowl, so I haven’t had to watch a game with the family. Frankly, I don’t know how people do it.

There’s no cheering in the press box, but in our house it was bedlam. The Bagger got so excited he tossed a handful of pretzels over his shoulder and they landed behind the couch with all the other stuff that’s there. We all looked at each other with the unspoken understanding that if he was going to clean them up, it’d be later, when he got hungry.

Every time a Steeler tackled a New England Patriot, the Bagger yelled, “Nada,” which will probably be the baby’s first word, although we’ll know he’s talking about “da da.”

When the Steelers picked up a first down, he jumped off the couch into a karate stance, as if he wanted to fight our curtains. And he wasn’t drinking beer yet.

“You don’t know what it’s like to be a real fan of a team,” Miss Radio Personality said when she noticed me looking oddly at the Bagger, who was yelling, “Defense! Defense!” as if they’d hear him in Pittsburgh.

Listen, I yell at the Dodgers all the time, I told her, but the Bagger interrupted, and said something about “Mr. Mo changing addresses.”

Miss Radio Personality said, “Who’s Mr. Mo?” and given all the time away from home on football Sundays, I never realized how lucky I was.

That’s when sideline reporter Bonnie Bernstein came on, the Bagger shushing everyone so he could hear her every word, and Mrs. Bagger tells me he never listens to her -- so she might want to pass future messages through Bonnie.

“There’s a little more fire in the Steelers’ eyes,” Bernstein said, and I’m not sure she could’ve whispered anything more exciting in the Bagger’s ear.

“If the Steelers win,” he said, “can I cry?”

I might have to spend more time with the grandchild than I thought.

Miss Radio Personality began the game talking about her desire to marry Roethlisberger, but she was asleep now, missing the geek’s appearance in a soup commercial, saying, “This hearty rookie is no turkey.”

Then he played like one, the Steelers lost and the Bagger offered to take everyone to dinner so he could be with family, he said, at this difficult time in his life.

When we took over the Coco’s in Brea, well, let me just say this: I wouldn’t be surprised to return someday and find a flashing neon light above the door.

*

JOE MONTANA spoke Monday to firefighters at the Frank Hotchkin Memorial Training Center about his problems with hypertension.

When it came time for questions, he said, “New England,” knowing the question before it was asked. As for his alma mater, Notre Dame, I wanted to know if it’d be another decade before the Irish beat USC, and he said, “How about eight months or so?”

Not wanting to drive up his blood pressure, I didn’t laugh as loudly as I might normally, or like I do when Sports Editor Bill Dwyre says dumb stuff like that.

*

THE DODGERS signed pitcher Scott Erickson, who is married to Lisa Guerrero, to a minor league contract. It’ll be interesting to see which one of them returns to the big leagues first.

*

TODAY’S LAST word comes in e-mail from Rick Hitesman:

“Rest assured, T.J., when another writer in the future pens an article about spending some time with a legend, your name won’t be mentioned.”

I can’t even get my stories on Page 1 of the sports section.

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