Say Hey Kid Tells Searchers to Say No More

Willie Mays has been called the best defensive outfielder in history.

Since Mays’ retirement nearly two decades ago, the search has gone on for his successor. The Seattle Mariners’ Ken Griffey Jr. has now been tabbed as the next Willie Mays, but the Say Hey Kid wishes people would lay off.

“First it was Andre Dawson, then Tim Raines, then Eric Davis, now Griffey,” Mays, 60, told the Seattle Times. “I don’t get involved in that. Don’t put him on a pedestal so quickly.

“I try to stay away from that. Next year, it’ll be someone else.”

Tough sell: Roger Hall, a former college baseball coach, is trying to sell Major League Baseball and the NCAA on his unique invention, detachable bases.

Hall’s base separates from its foundation before a sliding runner can be hurt. A University of Michigan study found that the use of detachable bases reduced injuries 96% during a three-year test, and a sports medicine group got even better results among minor league teams. Still, Hall is finding those at baseball’s top level balking at his safety feature.

It’s not as if these bases would be coming off all the time like the detachable nets in hockey. David Janda of the Institute for Preventive Sports Medicine in Ann Arbor, Mich., found that in 1,174 slides among six minor league teams last season, the detachable base popped off only 13 times.

“The general managers and players all believed,” Janda said, “that the player would have been hurt in each of those cases if the base hadn’t separated.”

Trivia time: The radio call by Russ Hodges, “The Giants win the pennant, the Giants win the pennant . . . ,” that followed Bobby Thomson’s homer off the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Ralph Branca in a 1951 National League playoff has become part of baseball lore. Who announced the game on television?

Who is that masked man?When Baltimore Oriole Manager John Oates returned to Yankee Stadium recently, it was his first trip back since his playing days as a backup Yankee catcher a decade ago. But one memory remained vivid.

“I remember getting the biggest cheer and the biggest boo of my career at the same time,” Oates said. “(Detroit Tiger Manager) Sparky Anderson walked Graig Nettles intentionally three times to load the bases, and (catcher) Rick Cerone got two singles and then hit a grand slam in the eighth inning.”

Oates put on the catcher’s mask and came out to work behind the plate in the ninth.

“(I) got the loudest ovation of my life,” Oates said, “until they figured out it wasn’t Cerone. Then I got the loudest boo I’ve ever heard.”

Telling it like it is: Jimmy Connors has new respect for sportscasters now that he is one, working with veteran Bud Collins, among others.

Said Collins: “Last year at the French Open, I walked up to Ivan Lendl, and he says, ‘Get lost.’ Jimmy saw it happen and he says to me, ‘These guys are jerks. I wasn’t like that, was I?’ ”

Replied the brutally honest Collins: “Yes, you were.”

Trivia answer: Ernie Harwell, Hall of Fame announcer for the Detroit Tigers, was then working for the Giants, alternating TV and radio days with Hodges. It was Harwell’s day to do television.

Quotebook: Ken Griffey Jr., known for crashing into outfield walls, on why the Seattle Kingdome’s location is a big reason it’s his favorite American League park: “It’s the quickest to the hospital.”