They Can Get Booed in Style

The designated hitter, a shrinking strike zone and out-of-this-world salaries remain, but major league baseball is making one important change.

Umpires will be wearing new uniforms when the playoffs start today, featuring black wind breakers, either black or cream-colored shirts, black caps with major league baseball’s logo and sage gray trousers.

The outfits replace the ones used since the start of the 1996 season, which included navy or red polo shirts and turtlenecks.

That ought to lift the TV ratings.

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Trivia time: What major league pitcher has the most all-time victories against one team?

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College reunion: Vince Carter won a gold medal in basketball, but enjoyed even more reuniting in Sydney with an old North Carolina college chum--Marion Jones.

“I’m happy just to say I know her, more than anything,” said Carter of the triple gold medalist and former Tar Heel basketball star. “I just remember we would talk or play pickup.”

A loser wins: Eric Moussambani of Equatorial Guinea swam the slowest race in Olympic history, but on Bondi Beach, where Australians gather to surf, he gaped in awe at all the Olympic athletes wearing “Eric the Eel” T-shirts.

Moussambani met his idol, Australian star Michael Klim, who told Eric: “You are a famous man. I don’t have a T-shirt with my name on it.”

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Sprinter’s life: Boston Globe columnist Michael Holley, on what it’s like to be Olympic 100-meter champion Maurice Greene:

“All they give you is 10 seconds to do the job well. There are no Game 7s, no second quarters, no 20-second timeouts, and no breaks for energy bars. You train four years for a televised, 100-meter, 10-second race, and what most people talk about afterward is how you brought it when the lights came on.”

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Up from the bottom: Minnesota Twin infielder Jason Maxwell was the 1,667th player taken in the 1993 draft (by the Chicago Cubs), making him the lowest draft pick to make it to the majors.

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Was it worth it? Kevin Martin of Edmonton, Canada, was the top money-maker in the World Curling Tour for 1999-2000 with $84,380.

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Turnabout: Until the Sydney Olympics, Harun Dogan was adored in Turkey as a champion wrestler. Now, he is no longer wanted back home.

First, he angered his nation by refusing to wear the Turkish flag on his wrestling suit. He then embarrassed his team by forfeiting a match because he had already lost the chance of making the 128-pound freestyle quarterfinals.

“Who needs such a sportsman?” headlined the Hurriyet newspaper. “Shameful,” lashed the daily Milliyet.

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Trivia answer: Grover Cleveland Alexander, 70 against the Cincinnati Reds, in 20 years.

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And finally: Basketball star Kevin Garnett’s first thoughts after winning a gold medal were of his close friend and teammate Malik Sealy, who was killed last May by a drunk driver in a crash as he returned from a birthday party for Garnett.

“This goes out to my man Malik who couldn’t be here,” Garnett said.