With Dick Vitale, you always get more than you bargain for

His daughters were in Africa on safari, so Dick Vitale spent Christmas in Las Vegas, watching shows in our showrooms. I think this should be an official option when one’s kids spend the holidays on safari.

So when UNLV was shocking No. 3-ranked Arizona two nights before Santa Claus would show once again why he is the ultimate PTPer, Dickie V. and his bride of 43 years were taking in Le Reve at Wynn Las Vegas.

Le Reve was the first big production at the Wynn, so it’s still a diaper dandy among Las Vegas shows.

Dick wanted to go to the the game but this was a no-bounce pass vacation, and Lorraine wanted to see a show.

The hoop-a-holic of the union was having lunch at the Wynn when he returned a phone call because A) Dick Vitale always returns phone calls and B) because he has another book to promote. This one, his 12th, is called “It’s Awesome, Baby — 75 Years of Memories and a Lifetime of Opinions on the Game I Love.”

At the risk of offending UNLV basketball fans who don’t like Vitale because they think he likes Duke too much, it is fairly awesome/a good read, especially if Kentucky’s diaper dandies are beating the dog snot out of somebody on TV.

I asked for five minutes; he gave me 15. With Dick Vitale, you always get more than you bargain for.

Because he was having lunch at the Wynn, he said he would have to keep it down a little.

He didn’t cry “Baby!” once, but you still could tell he was enthusiastic about the book. His enthusiasm for the book, and the game, and the Tampa Bay Rays, and everything else is remarkable for a man of 75 years.

One of the book stories he shared was about being bullied when he was a young boy.

They didn’t call it bullying then, Vitale said. They called it teasing. It still hurt.

Vitale had lost the vision in his left eye when he was 4, the result of a pencil-poking accident. His right eye wandered after that, even on TV after he got fired by the Pistons and started analyzing college basketball games for ESPN in 1979.

He was 40 then. He had been teased about his wandering eye for 36 years. He decided on delicate surgery to correct it.

Off went the soda bottle glasses. In went the contacts. Up went Dick Vitale’s self-confidence, and up went the pitch in his voice when he analyzed a Georgetown game, or a Syracuse game. Up, up, up.

“Uh-oh ... uh-oh ... uh-oh. ... Slam, bam, jam! Hel-lo! Bingo-bongo! Ohhhh! Showtime! Can you imagine the Carrier Dome right now? It would be UN-BE-LIEVABLE!”

His new book is something like that, except with a paucity of bingo-bongos.

The chapters are short, like newspaper columns. Or blogs. There are 75 chapters, one for each year of his life. They are organized into categories and colors: Life Changing Events, blue; My Journey, green; The Most Intriguing Personalities, yellow; History Lessons, purple; State of the Game, burnt orange; Giving Back, turquoise.

With his stories and opinions organized by colors, it’s an easy read. Like USA Today.

The green section is best.

It’s sometimes difficult for people to talk about themselves, but Dick Vitale is the Coack K of telling stories, or the John Calipari. He’s the undefeated master. He’s the 3-D man: He drives, he draws, he dishes.

Reading his book is like sitting down for drinks with Dick Vitale. You with a beer, he with his cranberry juice. You can get a copy though any major book dealer, such as Amazon; you can get a special autographed copy through dickvitaleonline.com. All proceeds will be donated to the V Foundation for Cancer Research.

There’s that turquoise part of the book again. Giving Back.

I didn’t think there would be much in the book about Jerry Tarkanian, but Vitale asked about Tark right away, how he was doing. And then, lo and behold, I came across a Tark mention in the green section chapter called “First Steps.”

Vitale, Tark, Richie Adubato and Mike Fratello were talking hoops in the wee hours at this bar in Garfield, N.J. — this would have been when Tark was at Long Beach State and recruiting one of Vitale’s players, a 6-foot-10-inch center named Les Cason, when Vitale coached East Rutherford High back there.

They were talking over drinks and cranberry juice about dipsy-do-dunk-a-roos, and about how a defender should best get over the top of a screen.

Garbage cans were taken into the street, serving as X’s and O’s. A racket ensued. Cops were called.

Cops do not care much for getting over noisy moving picks set by trash cans at 2 a.m. This is especially true in New Jersey.

I’m sure the story is true, or at least mostly true, with only a tad of embellishment, because Fratello mostly coached in the NBA and nobody in the NBA battles through screens, at least not until the playoffs.

Anyway, the mention of Tark is on page 58.

There is no mention of the Terry Fator show at The Mirage, although there is a photo on Dick Vitale’s Twitter account of him and Lorraine posing in front of a Terry Fator poster on Christmas night in Las Vegas. They appear to be having a wonderful time.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.