"I'm a fan of a lot of the guys who have played the game," Hawkins said. "Clemente stands out because of what he stood for and what he died doing. That was pretty impressive. He died the month I was born, and I was born on Dec. 21." ...

"The feedback from the fans was: 'That's not your number.' It was unbelievable," Ensberg said. "The gist of it was that it was Paulie's number, and I understood." ...

"I'm a pitcher," Hawkins said. "I'm a little different. I was uncomfortable wearing No. 22 a little bit, because [Brian] Bruney talked about me so much, calling me 'Roger' the whole spring. They can call me 'Paulie' now if they want."

"It's unfortunate, because one of the first things I looked forward to when I was called up was coming to Yankee Stadium and hearing him say my name," Jeter said on Monday. "I had Bob Sheppard record introducing me. I'll always come to the plate with Bob Sheppard."

[Yankees adviser, Ray] Negron, who has worked for the Yankees since 1973, said Gehrig’s widow once told him the room was a refuge for her husband when a degenerative nerve disease was ravaging his body. When Gehrig needed privacy, he would retreat to that room. His wife would wait by a side door, just up a ramp beside the old bullpen, and take him home.

Chris asked: When you’re dealing with a player agent or a GM, and he tells you that he’s got such-and-such an offer on the table from another team. How do you know that’s the truth? Is there a way to verify it, or do you go on the honor principle?

Brian Cashman: “If you’re dealing with an agent, I can’t verify it until after the fact. Every time I close out a negotiation with somebody with a signing or if that player eventually signs with somebody else, I will talk. What agents will typically do or say is, ‘Hey, I got the following offer from the following club.’ I write everything down and I crosscheck that information after and I keep a list of who tells the truth and who doesn’t tell the truth and here are the examples. I’ll call out the agents on it. I’ll say, ‘I found out you lied to me. I talked to Joe Blow and they said that’s not true and you said it was and I’m just letting you know I take notes to this stuff. Now I know that you’re a bulls***ter.’ Or it builds your credibility. If somebody says they got this and for five years every time I crosscheck the guy’s never been wrong, he’s always told the truth, then he goes up the credibility scale. He’ll be more believable down the line to me when we’re negotiating. General managers have different ways than other clubs when they present things. You have your scouts; we all have our connections in other organizations to tend to find out and verify whether they’re down the tracks with a particular trade. But in terms of potential players or free agents, there’s nothing you can do. You have to fly blind.”

Seeing that Scott Patterson was upset about being sent out, Hawkins headed for Patterson's locker. Hawkins knew Patterson was almost perfect in eight games (one hit, no runs in 71/3 innings) and figured he needed some encouragement.

"I told him to go to his room and have some drinks and charge it to my room, 901," Hawkins said.

Patterson didn't run up Hawkins' room service bill but appreciated the support.

"That was awesome, I probably needed that at that point," said Patterson, who will open the season at Scranton-Wilkes Barre.

The Yankees have told people they plan to carry Morgan Ensberg. So assuming a lineup with Johnny Damon in left field, Hideki Matsui as designated hitter and Jason Giambi at first base ("He's going to play a lot of first base," manager Joe Girardi said today), the bench would be Ensberg, backup catcher Jose Molina, infielder Wilson Betemit and Shelley Duncan. That makes Betemit the only reserve middle infielder.

2008 is an exciting year for purist Yankee fans who have waited a long, long time to see the team break in a significant amount of young talent (Melky getting an everyday job, two rookie starters and maybe three if Joba slots in for Mussina), but it's also a year of risk. In a sense - and this was reflected in the desultory pursuit of Johan Santana - the Yankees and Red Sox almost seem to have entered into an unspoken detente this season, both deciding simultaneously to take a breather from big-ticket acquisitions, prepare for the decline in earnest of their aging stars, and start working more youth into their rotations and lineups - a Melky for an Ellsbury, a Hughes for a Buchholz, a Kennedy for a Lester, a Mussina for a Schilling, a Giambi for a Manny (both of whose contracts finally end in 2008). If there was a serious threat to their two-superpower system this would be risky, but as of now there still isn't.

A-Rod said he was motivated to break free from Boras partly because of his fear that Hank Steinbrenner was serious about closing the door on his possible return to the Bronx, and because he was simply at a different stage of his life compared to when he had signed with the Rangers.

"My wife and daughter both love New York," said A-Rod. "Four days after I opted out (and was living in Miami), my daughter says, 'I really miss my bedroom and my toys in New York.' I wanted to shoot myself. I said to my wife, 'What the --- are we doing?' "

As for Alex Rodriguez, Canseco says he didn't inject Rodriguez, but that he "introduced Alex to a known supplier of steroids." Canseco didn't mention Rodriguez in the first book because he "hated the bastard." He was worried that people would have "questioned [his] motives" had he included Rodriguez.

By the way, Clemens and Rodriguez aren't the biggest names in the book. The biggest may well be Mike Wallace. Canseco describes a conversation the two had after his 60 Minutes interview:

When the cameras stopped rolling, Wallace asked me if we could talk, off-camera. He kept me there for another hour, clearly curious about steroids. . . . He wondered how the steroids and human growth hormones (HGH) might help him, a man in his eighties, live a longer, healthier life. He wanted to know everything. . . . When Wallace was done interrogating me, I could see I had piqued his interest. Whether I'd made a convert of him, I can't say. Still, I know, I was pretty convincing.

Yes, apparently, Mike Wallace could be juiced. It makes sense. How else to explain how Wallace has stayed on top of his game well into his eighties? No word yet on whether Andy Rooney is juiced too.

The Yankees and Mets are in secret talks with the city to buy their old ballparks before the wrecking balls hit - so they can plunder them for lucrative memorabilia to peddle to fans, The Post has learned.

A spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg confirmed the negotiations but would not say how the deals might go down - specifically, whether the city would hope to get a lump sum from the teams or a percentage of the profits of any sale or auction of items.

"The New York Yankees are not in discussions to buy the current Yankee Stadium from the City of New York," Levine said in a statement. "We have been in talks with city officials to determine the best way for the city to realize value in the assets of the current Yankee Stadium.

"The goal is to find the best and most efficient way to make memorabilia items available to the public and our fans."

The 120-foot Louisville Slugger outside Gate 4 -- actually a boiler stack fitted to look like a bat, complete with a knob at the top, tape at the handle and Babe Ruth's signature on the barrel -- seems to have been overlooked as the Yankees prepare to make the move across the street to a new Yankee Stadium in 2009.

"We do not have knowledge of what will happen to 'The B