Entertainment

PITCH PERFECT – DEAN CAIN TRADES CAPE FOR CLEATS

WHO knew Superman could also play baseball?

Dean Cain – best known as the Man of Steel on ABC’s “The Adventures of Lois & Clark” from 1993 to 1997 – returns to prime time as a different kind of hero, an all-star major leaguer with a heart of gold on CBS’ coming-of-age drama “Clubhouse,” which gets a sneak preview tonight at 8 p.m., before moving to its regular Tuesday, 9 p.m., time slot.

For Cain, who after several record-breaking football seasons at Princeton, was signed by the NFL’s Buffalo Bills and then permanently sidelined with a knee injury, it’s like his career has come full circle.

“I’m not the athlete that I used to be, but I can pretend that I’m much better than I’ve ever been,” says the 38-year-old actor.

“The honest truth is, if I look at my swing from the pilot episode and compare it to my swing now, it’s like night and day,” he says.

On ”Clubhouse,” Cain plays Conrad Dean, a ball player who’s paid $20 million a year to play for the fictional New York Empires, a team loosely based on the Yankees. He becomes a mentor to the show’s star, Pete Young (Jeremy Sumpter) a local kid who gets his dream job as a bat boy for the team.

The role is a change of pace for Cain, who most recently appeared as accused murderer Scott Peterson in a USA Network TV movie. Until last season, he appeared for three years as the host of the syndicated show, “Ripley’s Believe It or Not.”

But sports have always been a passion for Cain, who also ran track and was captain of Princeton’s volleyball team.

“I’ve extremely comfortable playing an athlete,” he says. “I joke that I’ve done more preparation for this role than anything else in my life.”

Cain’s athletic prowess was only one reason he got the part. “He has that sort of matinee idol quality that’s everything you want in the captain of a New York baseball team,” says “Clubhouse” executive producer Daniel Cerone. “It all played in his favor.”

But you need more than a pretty face and a good pitching arm to create a convincing baseball drama; to that end, “Clubhouse” producers decided to tackle some of the biggest issues haunting the Major Leagues today, including steroid use in tonight’s episode.

”In real life it seems like major league baseball doesn’t always want to deal with a drug scandal or a corking scandal,” Cain says.

To lend authenticity, producers also hired real ball players such as former Texas Rangers outfielder Tony Scruggs to coach the actors. The pros also appear as extras during scenes that take place on a baseball diamond.

“On the days we’re working, we spend the entire day out there playing baseball,” says has been romantically liked over the years to a string of big-name babes starting with his college girlfriend, Brooke Shields. Other flames include his former fiancée, country music star Mindy McCready, Pam Ander-son, and volleyball sensation Gabrielle Reece.

Cain says a major perk of “Clubhouse” is that he’s not the star and therefore has more time to care for his four-year-old son, Chris-topher, from his marriage to Samantha Torres, a Spanish model who had been Playboy’s Miss December 1995. Cain split from Torres ended soon after Christopher’s birth.

“I share custody with his mother, we have equal custody, and if I were to shoot 18 hours a day, five days a week, like I did on “Lois & Clark,” I would have no time for him,” Cain says.

Cain says his son still doesn’t really know what his dad does for a living. “The poor guy is not sure what daddy does,” he says. “Daddy is Superman. I play in the NBA entertainment league, and he sees me playing basketball. He sees me playing baseball when I do ‘Clubhouse.’ And I just finished a Lifetime movie called ‘I Do (But I Don’t)’ where I played a fireman. So in his mind, daddy is pretty much everything.”

CLUBHOUSE

Sunday, 8 p.m., and Tuesday, 9 p.m., CBS