Friday's sports media "Smokes and Chokes" gray box makes a segue from newsprint to the blogville this week:

WHAT SMOKES:
==The Dodgers have orchested what they're caling the "Home Base Network" -- basically, 25 local bars and restaurants where fans know they can go to see Dodger games all season long, especially with the season opener in Milwaukee on Monday at 11 a.m. Yankee Doodles in Woodland Hills is one of the primary targets, with former Dodgers third baseman Ron Cey scheduled to appear during Monday's game to help launch the program. Dodgers owners Jamie and Frank McCourt, along with Tommy Lasorda, are supposed to be at Barney's Beanery in West Hollywood. Other ex-Dodgers are also scattered around town, including -- and we're not making this up -- Steve Garvey is at the Hooters in Burbank and Fernando Valenzuela is at the Hooters in Pasadena. Maybe as the Dodgers continue their sponsorship deal with the restaurant banned by the airwaves during the NCAA basketball tournament, they can get the waitresses to wear outfits like this one. Wonder if Frank wanted the Hooters' assignment but had it shot down by the Mrs. For a list of all 25 locations, go to the Dodgers' website. The only other San Fernando Valley location (aside from Yankee Doodles in Woodland Hills) is appropriately named The Other Sports Bar, in Thousand Oaks.

==Is that Fox sportscaster Joe Buck we hear doing radio commercials on sports-talk stations in town expounding upon the beauty of the “MLB Extra Innings” package that’ll be available on DirecTV this season? Everything seems cut and dried to him that, despite all these Capitol Hill hearings on the fairness of the deal, the new home of the out-of-market pay-service for baseball games has definitely found a new home, no matter how many other cable operators or competing dish companies whine about it. Are we to assume then that Buck’s stop here means he’s next in line to offer testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation? Somehow, someone will tie Buck’s promos coincide with News Cor's announcement that David Hill, who had been the DirecTV Entertainment Group president, resigned to return fulltime at his position as chairman and CEO of Fox Sports. And in one of Hill’s first moves back, it was announced Thursday that he’s agreed to remove Buck from the “NFL on Fox” pregame, planting the program back from a road production to its Studio 2A home on the Fox Center in L.A. and giving the host chair to Curt Menefee fulltime. Buck, who got an Outstanding Studio Host Emmy nomination for his “NFL on Fox” work last year, remains the lead play-by-play man on the NFL with Troy Aikman, and on MLB with Tim McCarver. Hill said Buck was given a choice to keep doing the pregame or resume full-time play-by-play, and he took the latter as Fox will gear its 2007 NFL season toward the coverage of the Super Bowl in February ’08.

==Are the local sports-talk shows becoming the new platforms for presidental candidates to connect with the people? Wednesday, Petros Papadakis and Matt "Money" Smith had Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani on their 570-AM afternoon drive show. Within hours, Steve Mason and John Ireland were talking war policies with Republican presidental candidate John McCain (pictured) on their 710-AM afternoon drive show.

== Before ESPN2 covers the opening of the Major League Baseball season with Sunday’s New York Mets-St. Louis contest (5 p.m.), ESPN will help launch the first Civil Rights game, Saturday at 2:30 p.m. when Cleveland meets St. Louis in Memphis, Tenn., home of the National Civil Rights Museum and at the stadium of the Cardinals’ Triple-A affiliate. The telecast, with Jon Miller, Joe Morgan and Peter Gammons, will include a five-minute documentary that Spike Lee did on the civil rights movement and the MLB. It’s part of ESPN’s coverage of the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the major league baseball color barrier, which will climax with coverage of the Dodgers’ home game against San Diego on Sunday, April 15.

WHAT CHOKES
==Former Georgetown basketball coach John Thompson will be back as the Westwood One radio analyst for Saturday's Final Four -- including calling the game that his son, John Thompson III, coaches for the Hoyas against Ohio State in the first game of the doubleheader. The senior Thompson was tolerable at best while calling last Sunday's Georgetown overtime win over North Carolina, but the post-game celebration was hardly the kind of quality stuff you'd want to hear outside of the D.C. area.

==In George Solomon's farewell to ombudsmanship on the ESPN website, the former Washington Post sports editor admits he wonders "why ESPN still doesn't have an independent media reporter -- as many newspapers do -- to cover such stories as Ron Jaworski replacing Joe Theismann in the 'Monday Night Football' booth, the dismissal of Harold Reynolds and the departure of Michael Irvin? Such a reporter might have gotten a response from Theismann and his former boothmates, Mike Tirico and Tony Kornheiser, for the March 26 ESPN.com story, and ESPN TV reports, on Jaworski replacing Theismann." Because that would mean their independent reporters would get as stonewalled in trying to get a response out of the ESPN heirachy on any of those stories as the mainstream press, and it wouldn't look so good that the company was kicking one of its own to the curb -- or worse, exposing it for something it did really wrong. Solomon also says that the network "should be proud of reporters such as Bob Ley, Jeremy Schaap, Andy Katz, Tim Kurkjian, Rachel Nichols, Michele Tafoya, Buster Olney, Sal Paolantonio, George Smith, Tom Rinaldi, Mike Fish, Shaun Assael, Chris Mortensen, Jim Gray, Shelley Smith, John Clayton ..." Wait a second. Go back there a few names. Jim Freakin' Gray? Because, as he continues, they "subjugate their egos working and breaking news stories." Maybe it is time for Ol' Sol to hang 'em up. He's obviously not watching the same TV shows as I've been the last two years.

== And speaking of Theismann, it doesn’t take a Norman Einstein to figure out why ESPN has thrown Smokin' Joe for a loss on its “Monday Night Football” package, and it’s not because the network fears Jaws will scramble to another network. Theismann may go on the record as saying he was “shocked” by ESPN’s decision just days after they told him he was doing a great job, it again reinforces the fact that the former Washington Redskins quarterback didn’t see the blitz coming and now lies prone on the TV landscape without Lawrence Taylor standing over him in a panic. Sure there’s plenty of mixed signals when your boss, Norby Williamson, tells a group of reporters that Theismann was (and is) “a phenomenal game analyst” and “did everything we asked him do to” and “I don’t think we’re unhappy with him,” and then proceeds to make even less sense describing why Jaworski is a better fit with Tony Kornheiser and Mike Tirico. If anyone watching that threesome at home during a “MNF” game could figure it out, then way can’t Theismann? Now the greatest fear in all of college football is the idea that Theismann may take his employers up on their offer to join Brent Musburger in the booth for ABC’s Saturday night college football package. Those college football followers with access to blogs are already trying to sabotage any such occurrence. The fact remains that Theismann is still under contract with ESPN for four more years. He’s not going away without a loud, drawn-out, argumentative fight with someone.

== Jack Haley , after finishing talking over some highlights on Tuesday’s “Lakers Live” postgame show on FSN West, made the astutue move to toss it back to “Paul and Stu” for more on the contest. Since they had pre-taped their followup report, neither Joel Meyers nor Stu Lantz reacted to Haley’s mistake (a reference to Paul Sunderland, the former Lakers play-by-play man who was replaced by Meyers two seasons ago). Nor did Haley correct it.