He Is on a Roll, Until the Police Can Grill Him

Oakland A’s fans got their red hots, and Thomas Hagins apparently hot-footed it out of town.

San Francisco police are looking for Hagins, 29, a manager for the Oakland Coliseum’s concessionaire, after $700,000 in revenue from the sale of hot dogs, beer, sodas and snacks at last weekend’s A’s-New York Yankees games was discovered missing.

Police do not know where Hagins is hiding, but they are following a green trail: $2,000 wired to his mother, $1,000 in $20 bills left to his roommate and a Ford truck left in the Oakland Airport parking lot.

The money was stolen from a company safe, according to a police report. Food for thought is the revelation that Hagins’ co-workers probably could have been a tad more suspicious since he had asked many of them about how to enter Mexico quietly.

Trivia time: Besides pitcher Jim Abbott, who went from the University of Michigan to the major leagues, what other current Angel player made the same jump directly from college to the major leagues?

In the green: Further proof that old golfers don’t die, they simply go to the bank: In 1980, the first year of the Senior PGA Tour, there were only two events worth a total of $250,000. This year, there are 42 events with purses totaling $19.87 million.

It’s a Bird: Eddie Bird, 24, Larry Bird’s younger brother, is playing for the Sacramento Kings’ team of rookies and free agents competing in this week’s seven-team Rocky Mountain Review in Salt Lake City. Eddie, 6 feet 6, was not drafted after completing four years at Indiana State, where he averaged 14 points.

A vote for touch football: Cincinnati Bengal quarterback Boomer Esiason, an arthritis sufferer and spokesman for the Arthritis Foundation, says nearly all football players end up with arthritis when they retire.

“Football players are so crazy that, including (exhibition) games, we’re out there banging into each other 20 times a year for three hours at a time,” Esiason told Cindy T. McDaniel of Arthritis Today. “That’s not what humans were meant to do.”

Deer season: Detroit outfielder Rob Deer, who struck out 117 times in the Tigers’ first 94 games, is on a pace to become the first major leaguer to fan 200 times in one season.

Also rude: When Kevin Kelley, the WBA’s No. 10-ranked featherweight, knocked out James Pipps this week at Monticello, N.Y., he bent over Pipps, put a glove in his face and yelled, “It’s over!” as the referee finished his count.

Explained Kelley: “I’m colorful.”

Trivia answer: Outfielder Dave Winfield, who skipped the minors and went from the University of Minnesota to the San Diego Padres in 1973.

But no, yes: Winfield, on his nine-plus years as a Yankee: “It went quickly, but it was like an eternity.”

And the ZIP code’s big: Texas Ranger rookie catcher Ivan (Pudge) Rodriguez, 19, was asked on ESPN’s “Baseball Tonight” about his first trip in the major leagues: “I got to go to Chicago, Oakland and California . . . and California is one of the best cities in the United States.”

Quotebook: Seattle Mariner pitcher Randy Johnson: “I know people criticize me, but there aren’t very many sportswriters who are 6 feet 10 and are going to go out there and try to do what I do.”