WINFIELD A Player’s Life <i> by Dave Winfield with Tom Parker (Avon Books: $4.50) </i>

This vainglorious memoir by the New York Yankee slugger made headlines when it was first published. Winfield’s account of his years in the minor leagues, then in the majors, first with the San Diego Padres and now with the New York Yankees, is a run-of-the-mill sports biography, written as if dictated into a co-writer’s tape recorder. Winfield himself comes off as not eminently appealing, chronicling the day-in, day-out life of a modern ballplayer, and casually dismissing a love affair that produced a daughter out of wedlock.

But it is Winfield’s depiction of Yankee owner George Steinbrenner, baseball’s own Capt. Bligh, that vaulted this book onto the New York Times’ best-seller list.

For baseball fans who can’t wait for opening day later this month, “Say Hey,” the autobiography of the immortal Willie Mays, has been reissued by Pocket Books ($4.50).