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What: Jim Rome Show

When: 9 a.m.-1 p.m.

Where: XTRA (690)

I think I’ve got a take on this Jim Rome Show on XTRA, but my take probably sucks, and Rome would hate that.

Romey, as his congregation of sports talk-radio listeners affectionately calls him, does a mid-morning show. That means that, when it rains a lot and the traffic goes slowly and the news sounds the same every 20 minutes and Rush Limbaugh is tilting at the same old windmills and the easy-listening jazz is just too smooth and cool for your caught-in-traffic mood, Romey is there to save you.

He speaks a language that is from some other planet. Is it Rom-ey-bonics? There is stuff about a jungle and smack and the other day, he had at Eddie DeBartolo over the incident in Green Bay where the 49er owner, according to Rome, “cold-cocked a blue-hair in the creel.”

I got the “cold-cocked” part. I may be old, but I’m not ancient. The “blue-hair” must have meant an older person, I think. The “creel”--or is it “grell?”--was lost on me. Did DeBartolo hit the old guy in his fish basket?

Nevertheless, even though I don’t understand a lot (Is Suck-ramento our state capitol?), I like Romey. When he interviews somebody, he asks real questions. He asked Gene Upshaw the other morning how he felt, as head of the NFL Players’ Assn., having to stand up for all these jerks who do stupid things. Good question. There is the heart of a journalist in there somewhere.

And he cuts off the nerd callers immediately. “This isn’t the Improv,” he yells, and the phone line goes click.

When he rants and raves about newspapers sometimes, he calls me the Domer. I like that because I can figure it out. He is either referring to the fact that I’m losing some hair or he knows that I went to Notre Dame.

At least that’s my take on it, but it probably sucks.