Shear Fantasy Realized for New York Collector

Has the sports memorabilia craze gone too far?

After the New York Yankees had forced Don Mattingly to get a haircut, a fan paid $3,000 to buy Mattingly’s shorn locks.

A New York radio station auctioned the hair, selling it to New York policeman Tom Tumminia. The money went to charity.

Along with the first baseman’s hair, Tumminia got a certificate of authenticity autographed by Mattingly, coach Carl Taylor, who did the shearing, and Manager Stump Merrill.

Kicking up a storm: John Daly has been spending almost as much time kicking footballs as he has hitting golf balls since winning the PGA Championship.

After working out with the Indianapolis Colts, Daly, a former kicker, visited a Denver Bronco practice.

He kicked three consecutive 25-yard field goals, with about 10 yards to spare, getting the Broncos out of practice early. Coach Dan Reeves had said that the players could leave early if Daly made the third 25-yard field goal.

Then Daly grabbed Reeves’ driver and hit three, 300-yard shots into a nearby field, drawing cheers from the Denver players and coaches.

“The players love him,” Reeves said. “They love anybody who gets them out of practice early.”

Trivia time: Who holds the NFL record for most yards rushing by a quarterback in one season?

Thirtysomething gang: Who says that a football player is finished after he turns 30?

The four highest-rated quarterbacks in the NFL last season were 30 or older.

Buffalo Bill quarterback Jim Kelly, 30, was ranked first, followed by the Houston Oilers’ Warren Moon, 34; the Kansas City Chiefs’ Steve DeBerg, 36, and the New York Giants’ Phil Simms, 35.

Now you tell us: The Soviet Union’s America’s Cup team has been battling the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard for months for the right to enter San Diego Bay, which is one of 12 designated U.S. ports off limits to certain nations for security reasons.

The Port Security Committee has said it is concerned about the Soviets using their sailboat as a spy ship, although the Red Star syndicate is privately sponsored by the Ocean Racing Club of Leningrad, not the government.

This week, as the crisis cast doubt on whether the Soviets would be coming at all, Red Star’s American representative, Doug Smith of San Diego, received a phone call from the commander of the Coast Guard’s Port Security Division in Washington.

“It was, ‘We don’t see any problems,’ ” Smith said. “They said we could come into the bay any time we wanted to. They just asked that we place a phone call in advance to let them know.”

Thanks a lot.

A dying breed: Caddies are becoming extinct.

Golfer Lee Trevino says golf carts are preventing youngsters--especially the poor and those from minority groups--from working as caddies and learning the game.

“I wish they’d burn (golf carts) up,” he said. “That way we could get the kids back out to caddying, and we’d have more minority players, more blacks, more Mexicans, more poor Anglos.

“The only reason the poor kids made it in golf before, like myself and Lee Elder and all these old pros, is because they didn’t have golf carts when we came up,” Trevino said. “We were caddies. Every golf course had caddies. We got exposed to the game. We got a chance to play the course. Today, they’re exposed to drugs on the streets.”

Trivia answer: Chicago Bear quarterback Bobby Douglass, who rushed for 968 yards in 1972.

Quotebook: Former Raider Tom Keating on Al Davis: “Al shuns the spotlight, but it’s like Greta Garbo shunned the spotlight. . . . By shunning the spotlight, you become the act.”