Oh, Pat!

I only watch “Jeopardy!” and reruns of “Super Password,” so I depend on the L.A. Times sports section to let me know what’s happening on any other game shows. It seems recently, there was a “Same Name” puzzle on “Wheel of Fortune” that had the solution ULTRAVIOLET AND TAMPA BAY DEVIL RAYS. After the puzzle was solved, Pat Sajak quipped, “They’re both invisible to the naked eye.”

Come on, Pat — some might say you are the Tampa Bay Devil Rays of game show hosts, having come out of relative obscurity as a local weatherman to host “Wheel of Fortune.” That’s in contrast to Alex Trebek, who represents the New York Yankees in this analogy, having been groomed for greatness back in Canada and having a succession of fairly successful shows, from “High Rollers” to the non-super-sloppy “Double Dare” to the non-Activision “Pitfall,” before getting the “Jeopardy!” gig — and even then, there was a time when he was being seen on three daily game shows at once (“Classic Concentration” and “To Tell the Truth” in addition to “Jeopardy!”), which is like winning the World Series every day or something like that. Hey, I didn’t say this was a perfect analogy.

Since it’s late March, it must be time for plenty of baseball programming, even on non-sports channels. Tonight on the Travel Channel was, I swear, “Pat Sajak’s American League Ballpark Tour,” followed immediately by “Pat Sajak’s National League Ballpark Tour.” Each one highlighted what somebody decided were the five most unique stadiums in each league, including two of the parks set for this trip, Fenway Park and PNC Park.

The other four NL parks: Dodger Stadium, Coors Field, SBC Park, and Wrigley Field; the other four AL parks were Kauffman Stadium, Safeco Field, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, and The Ballpark in Arlington. The SBC Park segments were taped last year, so Pat Sajak in his introductions had to point out several times that it was “formerly known as Pac Bell Park,” which is what everyone was calling it.

The best segment was the man who was redoing the 778 metal scoreboard number plates for Fenway Park, using paper stencils individually cut by hand, so that no two examples of the same number would look exactly the same.

Oh, by the way: it’s now 22 weeks until the first game on the itinerary.