Columnist Dean Juipe: Stars: Name your tune, Mr. Brooks

Dean Juipe

Friday, March 26, 1999 | 10:06 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

Don't bother trying to register your disgust.

As Garth Brooks is proving with the San Diego Padres and as he may prove this spring and summer with the minor-league Las Vegas Stars, celebrities are changing the face of professional sports.

Now, if you have the money and the accompanying prestige that goes along with entertainment star power, you can bluster your way onto the sports team of your choice.

It's a revolutionary concept for mainstream sports. Unlike the occasional celebrity all-star game or golf tournament at a seaside resort, Brooks and others of his ilk appear as if they're after something a little bigger.

They want to play in games that count.

And there are teams out there -- like the Stars -- who will gladly let them do it on a no-complaints basis.

Where it ends, nobody knows. But it's starting with Brooks and his tickled-you-asked invitation to go to spring training with the Padres earlier this month.

The fact that he and only he fancies himself as a ballplayer seems beside the point. The Padres welcomed the country music singer and, through Thursday, have actually sent him to the plate 14 times in 22 exhibition games.

He has one hit.

That doesn't matter, because in Brooks' case it's his CD hits that count. And as long as he can bang out a couple of gold records every year his status is secure.

So, apparently, is his spot on the Stars' roster should he choose to take the team up on its invitation to spend the season in the Pacific Coast League.

As it is, he'll appear in Las Vegas as a member of the Padres for two games next weekend. While San Diego will not retain Brooks when it has to get down to 25 players next month, Stars general manager Don Logan is taking a more opportunistic approach.

He has invited Brooks to join the Stars.

If the singer accepts, long lines at the ticket windows are envisioned. That, in turn, will force Stars manager Mike Ramsey to do more than let Brooks take a few cuts in batting practice, a la local singer and impressionist Danny Gans.

He would have to play the tunesmith even though Brooks does not have major-league ability and the Stars' supposed reason for being is developing major-league players.

The potential ramifications are obvious. In time, this trend would spread throughout the dog-eared towns that support such trivial pursuits as minor-league baseball, if not reach the major leagues themselves.

Every bush-league team would make room for an entertainer or two from another field. Eventually, even just-plain-rich guys will buy their way on to teams as well.

Who knows, some might even be able to play.

But in most cases, the newcomers will be to Michael Jordan the basketball player what Michael Jordan the baseball player was to Babe Ruth. They just won't measure up.

Yet they'll bring people to the ballpark, create at least a temporary interest in the product and camouflage a few of the lowly game's dead spots.

To complete the circus atmosphere, clowns, jugglers and trapeze artists will be scattered about as well. And Brooks will be lovingly recalled not for his many hit songs, but for proving every man with talent in one field can muscle his way into another.