No matter how you slice it, he has some concerns

I blame my parents. They’re no longer here, but they always seemed to look at me as if I was half baked, which explains why I was left in the sun to fry.

Now because of some skin cancer, I’ve got to let some doctor slice open my head, and I will pause here for a few seconds while you get the jokes out of your system.

They tell me there is going to be some pain, so that’s why I went to Angel Stadium on Wednesday night. I don’t know much about drugs, so I thought I might check in with Mr. HGH, who is an expert at scoring such stuff off the Internet, and see what Gary Matthews could do about helping me land some surgery-enhancing drugs.

The oddest thing happened -- he didn’t start swearing at me. I guess we were finally on some common ground.

Now the way I understand it, the doctor is going to carve an “L” in my forehead, and I will pause here for a few seconds while you get the jokes out of your system.

It’s no big deal, Dr. Teresa Soriano tells me, but then no one is carving a “L” in Soriano’s head. My daughter’s worried I’ll scare the granddaughter when I come home -- as if her own father doesn’t already do that, and she wondered if Soriano might turn the “L” into “T J” so the granddaughter knows it’s still me.

Hey, why not let Soriano print the whole alphabet up there so I can help educate the kid and her father?

I’m a little on edge, as you might imagine, because I make my living tracking folks who supposedly excel in hand-eye coordination, but what if Soriano is having the kind of month Chone Figgins is having?

How am I supposed to know if Soriano is any good? What if she’s no better than Smush Parker on his best day? What if she comes to work with Parker’s attitude?

Professional baseball players make errors every day, and they are the best of the best. What’s to say Soriano is only a double-A surgeon? It bothers me that I know more about Shea Hillenbrand than I know about the woman who is going to be standing over me with a knife in her hand. Should I be alarmed at some point if she says, “Oops?” or asks me if I’m the guy who made fun of Barbaro’s death?

I don’t have any idea what grade she got in penmanship and she’s going to be scribbling an “L” into my forehead forever. There are so many troubling questions. How do I know her brother-in-law isn’t Tim Thomas?

She’s going to be doing something called a “Mohs procedure,” in which she begins by cutting a hole in my head the size of a dime.

Then she takes a break because I guess it’s union rules, and returns to make the hole the size of a nickel. I have this image of a protractor in Soriano’s hands and sinking the point into the middle of my forehead and then trying to get the circle just right -- even if it means taking all day long, eventually widening it to the size of a manhole cover.

At some point she takes the skin right above the eyebrows and scrunches it together with the skin right above the hairline so you no longer have a forehead and sews it all together. There’s a good chance I’m going to look like Joan Rivers when I’m done.

One of Soriano’s associates, Dr. Kathleen Sakamoto, just e-mailed to say, “Hope all goes well.... “

HOPE! This isn’t like Figgins going to the plate hoping to hit a curveball, and maybe going one for four.

I expect Soriano to be on top of her game, and when I mentioned this to Sakamoto and what I’d be writing in the paper, she said, “Hopefully Dr. Soriano has thick skin ... excuse the pun.”

I’m telling you, when doctors start to needle you -- it’s just not good.

MARK VERGE, a friend of trainer Doug O’Neill, returned from the Kentucky Derby, visited Mattel Children’s Hospital at UCLA and handed the folks on the pediatric cancer ward a check for $10,000. In return, the kids agreed to give Verge their autographs.

Verge and O’Neill volunteered to wear Mattel baseball caps for the kids’ benefit at Churchill Downs, O’Neill turning down the chance to make money from advertisers wanting to buy space on his cap. The pair, meanwhile, convinced others to donate to the kids for the privilege of wearing Mattel baseball caps. They were obviously successful.

CLEVELAND SCORED two runs against the Angels in the first inning, so I went home figuring the game was over.

TWO YEARS ago, the Clippers opted to play in the Las Vegas summer league, irritating John Younesi, the president and CEO of the Long Beach league.

Younesi told Peter Yoon in a Times’ story published on July 8, 2005, “The Clippers are alienating their fans.” He had Mitch Kupchak stand behind him to show the Lakers’ support for the Long Beach league.

Yoon quoted Kupchak saying, “...To us, there is only one league that makes sense for us to participate in: The one we started 36 years ago in Southern California with our fans. It’s our intention to play in this league for many, many years to come.”

This year both the Lakers and Clippers will be in Las Vegas. They will not have teams competing in Long Beach.

STEVE SOBOROFF, a long-time contributor to Mattel’s, purchased a spot in Monday’s annual Los Angeles Sports & Entertainment Golf Tournament for a junior golfer, and so Samantha will experience what it’s like to play Riviera.

The sold-out event, which has honored such greats as John Wooden, Al Michaels and Pam Shriver, as well as others like Dwyre, will pay tribute this year to Sugar Ray Leonard.

IT’S A small thing, but it says a lot about Angels shortstop Orlando Cabrera. Cabrera completed warm-ups before Wednesday’s game and tossed a ball to a youngster, who dropped it, allowing someone else to get it. Cabrera could have kept moving into the dugout, but instead asked for another ball and made sure the kid with the bad hands got it. That’s great news for Kwame Brown, and any chance he might have of ever getting a baseball.

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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.