Fine, but what will they talk about?

A new sports-talk radio show is surfacing in the St. Louis area, and John Kijowski, who runs the station airing the program, said it will differ from competing shows.

“Talk about bimbos, hookers on our air? No way,” Kijowski told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “There’s no reason to dumb it down. Just because you’re a guy doesn’t mean you have to talk about that stuff.”

Trivia time

The season, September 1999. The passage: “We watch him hoofing in the batter’s box like an angry bull, excavating the earth, twinkle-toeing a pile of it in circles like a ballerina, and then digging in. . . .

“He has a number of little tics and twitches -- cocks his head, messes with his sleeves -- as if being harassed by horseflies. Yet somewhere deep in those brown eyes, he is as calm as a northern pond waiting for ducks to land.

“In that place he is seeing things reflected before they actually happen, and then makes them happen.”

Who wrote this and which baseball player was he referring to? (Hint: The player was from a different era.)

So true

A timely observation from Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times: “Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez will produce just one fewer playoff RBI this year than he did the past three Octobers combined.”

Backup plan

A minor league hockey team in Bakersfield has invited vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin to be the team’s honorary VP.

The reasoning? The Alaska governor “is considered by many to be the most famous hockey mom in the country,” said Matthew Riley, president of the Bakersfield Condors.

The team also has extended a tryout to her son, Track, after his military stint in Iraq.

If Palin agrees, her title would be “Team Mom of Condorstown.”

Empty unit

If there’s a bright spot for fans of the Arizona Diamondbacks, who did not make the playoffs, it’s that they do not have to watch a postseason outing by Randy Johnson. Of the 45-year-old Big Unit, who struggled down the stretch, Greg Hansen of the Arizona Daily Star writes, “It’s Muhammad Ali fighting Leon Spinks.”

Trivia answer

Michael Paterniti for Esquire magazine, about Thurman Munson, 20 years after the New York Yankees catcher died in a plane crash.

And finally

Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press, on last week’s firing of Matt Millen as general manager of the Detroit Lions: “It’s so late in coming, it should be wearing bell bottoms.”

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pete.thomas@latimes.com