Mantle, 53, Says Can’t Even Trot

He’s only 53, and he looks younger, but Mickey Mantle told Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post he no longer can play in Old-Timers games because his legs won’t carry him.

“I can’t even trot,” said Mantle, whose career was shortened by injuries. “The last Old-Timers game I played in, I was on first and Willie Mays hit one off the fence. I barely made it to third, and Willie slides in right behind me yelling, ‘Go on, Go on.’

“I told him, ‘Go on, my ass. Go on yourself. Back to second.’

“Besides, I like to remember guys the way they were. I don’t enjoy seeing Hank Aaron playing at 240 pounds.”

Add Mantle: When he appeared at a Washington department store to autograph his new book, “The Mick,” the store sold out all 400 copies halfway through the allotted two hours and had to turn away the rest of the people who were waiting to shell out their $15.95.

“The line went all the way to Pennsylvania Avenue,” a store salesman said. “We kinda underestimated his appeal.”

Trivia Time: Name the only two players who hit home runs before their 20th and after their 40th birthdays in the major leagues. (Answer below.)

Oakland A’s catcher Mike Heath and Boston Red Sox third baseman Wade Boggs are from Tampa, Fla., where they played for rival high schools.

Before Monday night’s game, Heath said: “I’m still trying to remember how we pitched him in high school.”

Then he realized it didn’t make any difference.

“We couldn’t get him out then, and we can’t get him out now,” Heath said.

Boggs got three hits.

Boston pitcher Dennis (Oil Can) Boyd credits new Manager John McNamara for his increased confidence this year.

“He said I was his man, and that’s all I had to hear,” Boyd told Bill Reynolds of the Providence Journal. “He loves me, and I love him. He’s like my daddy. If he weren’t white, he’d look like my daddy.”

Now-it-can-be-told dept.: Joe Hamelin of the Sacramento Bee said there were reports that Larry Bird reinjured an already crooked finger in a barroom fight before the NBA playoffs.

Hamelin: “A waitress at Chelsea’s, a Boston saloon where the Celtic forward sometimes stops to throw darts, said that Bird bounced a fist off a drunk who’d sucker-punched one of Bird’s friends.”

Added Hamelin: “Little jousts involving Bird are supposedly common in the pubs around Boston. He refuses to be a prisoner of his fame and confine himself to his house. He has no taste for the velvet-wallpapered places where Boston’s filthy rich do their drinking, preferring places where he can drop peanut shells on the floor. That sometimes gets him in trouble.”

Trivia Answer: Ty Cobb and Rusty Staub.

Quotebook

St. John’s basketball Coach Lou Carnesecca, asked if Chris Mullin remains a gym rat after being drafted by the Golden State Warriors: “I went to the St. John’s gym the other night at 9:30 to pick up something, and there was Chris in there, alone, working out.”