There Are .406 Reasons Why He’s Not Really Ted Williams

Ted Williams--not the Ted Williams--is a 30-year-old minor league center fielder in the Pittsburgh Pirates’ spring training camp.

“I can make a name for myself,” Williams told Paul Meyer of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “He was the ‘The Splendid Splinter.’ I’m the ‘Splendid Sprinter.’

“I’d love to meet him sometime and ask him, ‘Have you heard about me?’ ”

Not likely.

Trivia time: How many schools were in the NCAA basketball tournament field from 1939 to 1950?

Garbage men: Reggie Geary of Arizona is captain of college basketball’s All-Trash Talk team as selected by Bud Withers of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Geary, who acknowledges he likes to talk, commented on UCLA’s O’Bannon brothers, Ed and Charles.

“Oh, man they’re real bad,” he said. “One talks, and the other finishes.”

Please, not again: Phil Jackman in the Baltimore Sun: “If Digger Phelps, working as a studio analyst for ESPN, says ‘I agree with Dick (Vitale)’ one more time, I definitely won’t vote for him when he becomes the Republican candidate for the presidency in 2004.”

Fish out of water: The new Canadian Football League team in Birmingham, Ala., rejected more than 400 nicknames in favor of--Barracudas? There’s no saltwater within 200 miles of the city.

Gloomy outlook: Tom Boswell of the Washington Post summarizing baseball’s negotiations: “It’s always darkest before it gets completely black.”

Charger bashing: Gary Shelton of the St. Petersburg Times, responding to the NFL report that it has recycled more than 3,000 tons of waste from the Super Bowl:

“Does that include the San Diego secondary?”

Albert’s brother?Blackie Sherrod in the Dallas Morning News: “How’s that again Dept.: Sez Joe Theismann: ‘Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is somebody like Norman Einstein.’ ”

Boohoo: Kenny Anderson of the New Jersey Nets: “I’m just not the happiest person. It’s just every day living. It gets monotonous. People don’t understand the life of an NBA player. They just understand the luxury of it all.”

Come again?Amy Perlnutter of Manchester (N.J.) High after pinning Hawthorne’s Catrina Carrizales in the state’s first all-female wrestling match:

“I was pumped up for this match. I didn’t want to lose to a girl.”

Trivia answer: Eight.

Quotebook: Shaquille O’Neal of the Orlando Magic on the distracting element of Dennis Rodman’s ever-changing hair color: “You get hypnotized.”