Ron Kantowski looks for cigar, fedora as old-school sports of horse racing, boxing retake stage today

Saturday, May 5, 2007 | 7:01 a.m.

During their auspicious days in the era of big bands and even bigger automobiles, there were few sports that captivated the sporting public like horse racing and boxing.

Like a Packard backfiring across the back roads of yesteryear, they will rumble back into your living room today. That is, if anybody with a spare $54.95 in his sofa cushions still cares.

First, it's the Kentucky Derby, the so-called most exciting two minutes in sports - at least now that John Elway's selling cars and not leading the Broncos down the field in the fourth quarter. Then a few hours later, big-time boxing returns for the first time since well, since "Stan" was a fighter's name, not a suffix used in conjunction with the heavyweight champ's homeland. An Oscar De La Hoya in rapid decline will try to turn back his own clock against Floyd Mayweather Jr., the current pound-for-pound champion whose immense talent is surpassed only by the immense circumference of his big mouth.

Where are my cigar and fedora?

These are old-school sports for old-school sports fans, so what better time to pick up a big bag of chips and some milk of magnesia and invite your grandfather and crazy Uncle Sid over to the house for some intergenerational male bonding?

But before you do, here are a couple of things to consider:

One, if it makes them feel more comfortable, you might consider draping an afghan across the sofa or encasing it in a clear plastic slip cover. Especially if their arthritis is acting up.

Two, order the fight early and do not - I repeat, do not - mention how much it cost. If you do, you will almost certainly light a fuse on a conversation that begins with some made-up word preceded by the subject and ends with " and we liked it."

Such as: "Pay-per-view, schmay-per-view. When I was a kid we didn't have pay-per-view. Why, we didn't even have television. We listened to big fights on the radio. And we liked it."

Yeah, I know, Grandpa. But what did you think of Calvin Coolidge's foreign policy?

Actually, a more meaningful discourse might be what impact these two major events will have on their respective sports, both of which are said to be well, if not exactly dying, then at least in need of a better health plan.

I'm what you would call a casual horse racing fan, which means I watch the three Triple Crown races on TV and have seen "Seabiscuit" on DVD.

But the Sport of Kings is losing its royal subjects. Based on the cumulative age of the sparse crowd I saw playing the ponies at the Las Vegas Hilton SuperBook recently, it might take Henry Gondorff and Johnny Hooker's crew of grifters from "The Sting" to fix horse racing.

Same for boxing. I used to buy virtually every pay-per-view bout that ABC used to show for free on "Wide World of Sports" because it is now the only way to see the good boxers. Too bad they usually fight stiffs instead of each other.

"Co-main events" might be the worst thing to hit boxing since a spit bucket with a hole in it. How many times have you watched the premiere fighters in one of boxing's 138 or so divisions knock a couple of tomato cans off the shelf to "set the table" for a future fight? And then that fight never happens because one of them A) gets beat in the interim, B) suffers an injury in training, or C) fondles somebody's buttocks without permission?

I swear that if I have to watch one more Joe Calzaghe vs. Peter Manfredo mismatch from some oversized pub that doubles as a European soccer stadium, I'm gonna switch channels to watch the Royals play the Devil Rays on MLB Extra Innings.

That is, if I can still get it on cable and Grandpa and Uncle Sid don't spill anything on the remote.