Columnist Ron Kantowski: Pride of the airwaves: Yanks return to Las Vegas

Tuesday, May 9, 2000 | 10:32 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's notes column appears Tuesday. Reach him at 259-4088 or by e-mail at ron@lasvegassun.com.

The New York Yankees are so popular that when souvenir shops sell out of the team's traditional navy blue caps, they put the intertwined NY logo on red or tan or even garish lime green caps, because they know that somebody probably will buy them.

There can be no doubting the proud franchise is more engaging than ever, which may explain why the Bronx Bombers are back on the dial in Las Vegas after a five-year hiatus.

The Talk American Radio Network took over ownership of KRLV 1340-AM on May 1 and immediately announced an 80-game Yankees package through the auspices of Las Vegas-based Elmore Sports Group. The first of those was last Saturday when the Pinstripers hosted the Orioles at Yankee Stadium. The next will be Saturday,, when the Yankees visit Detroit.

"When they were on CBS (840-AM in Las Vegas) they were real popular," said Elmore spokesman Alex Shelton. "They sold out (advertising spots) all the time.

"For us, this was as good as getting BYU (football) and putting them on 1400 (AM). This is a slam dunk."

Or at least a home run.

Shelton said Yankees broadcasts will receive top sports billing in a new 1340 lineup that will include NASCAR, the Indy Racing League and local preps.

* RE-TIRED: Putting tires on backward is something you might expect when a college prep guy signs up for auto shop or in a worst-case scenario, on a bad day down at the local Pep Boys.

You don't expect it from a Formula One race team with a $100 million budget.

Yet that's what happened to Jacques Villeneuve at Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix. Villeneuve started from sixth position but immediately complained to his crew that his car, for some reason, was difficult to drive.

Turns out his crew had put his left front tire on the right side of his car, and vice versa.

"Jacques' car was impossible to drive," British American Racing engineer Jock Clear told reporters. "It's our fault. We put (his front tires) on backward. Jacques doesn't know yet. I'm guessing you'll tell him."

Villeneuve was still running sixth -- a tribute to his skill and tenacity -- when he left the race with an unrelated engine problem.

Sounds like the BAR team might want to pay Manny, Moe and Jack a visit before the next race.

* FOYT.COM: Legendary racer A.J. Foyt is such a dinosaur when it comes to his profession that he still holds all the track records at Jurassic Park Speedway. That's why it is hard to believe he has announced a new marketing partnership for his Indy Racing League team with a "dot-com" company, an Internet business group called GlobeNetix.

This is the same guy who, when one of his drivers ran out of methanol at a recent IRL race, grabbed the laptop computer that was used to calculate fuel mileage and hurled it halfway down the pit lane.

Or, when his gearbox froze when he was still driving in the 1980s, started hammering on it with a rubber mallet.

During the announcement, ol' A.J. wasn't fooling anybody when he said, "We've been successful because we've stayed abreast of the latest racing technology."

He probably meant "in spite of" the latest technology.

* ISOLATION BOOTH: One of the most under-utilized pieces of equipment in the sports television booth is the isolated replay camera. The technology has been around since the 1960s, when Curt Gowdy and Al DeRogatis would talk viewers through some Buffalo Bills offensive lineman opening a hole so Cookie Gilchrist could sneak through for a 3-yard gain. But that camera by and large gathers dust during these helmet-cam times.

In sports such as horse racing, however, the isolated replay is ... well, worth another look. After watching Fusaichi Pegasus go wire to wire after Saturday's Kentucky Derby, I had an appreciation for this majestic animal -- and especially for the job his rider, Kent Desormeaux, did -- that I couldn't have gleaned from watching the race in real time.

Desormeaux was like Tom Cruise in that movie about high school football -- he made all the right moves. And when the announcers talked about the way his horse responded, and how Desormeaux was able to hand ride Pegasus to the finish line while the other jocks were tenderizing the flanks of theirs with the whip, the isolated replay showed exactly what they were talking about.

Upon further review, it was more than a "good trip," as the railbirds say, for Pegasus and Desormeaux. It was a great trip. And thanks to the isolated camera, you didn't have to take Jack Whitaker's word for it.

* AROUND THE HORN: Just when you thought the guy who attended a track meet and wound up getting speared by an errant javelin had to be the quintessential example of somebody who must not be living right comes this report out of the Czech Republic: An 18-year-old woman was killed when she was hit in the head with a hammer thrown by top Czech athlete Vladimir Maska during a regional meet. Zuzana Krejcova was sitting in the infield when the tragedy occurred. ... Are two wheels better than four? The Indy Racing League can't draw flies to its annual race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, while the AMA Supercross motorcycle riders attracted yet another sellout crowd of 38,000-plus to Sam Boyd Stadium Saturday night with little advance publicity. ... This (not) just in: Nearly 16 years after the fact, gymnast Bart Connor revealed on Monday that he won two gold medals at the 1984 Olympics after being diagnosed with arthritis. Either Connor was as tough as the East German judge, the arthrit! is was only mildly distracting, or, more likely, there was no need to disclose it before today, when Connor became a spokesman for the makers of Celebrex, an arthritis painkiller.