Mantle Hopes Ban Will Be Lifted

Mickey Mantle, after a meeting with Peter Ueberroth, is hopeful the new commissioner will lift the ban imposed by Bowie Kuhn because of Mantle’s job with an Atlantic City casino.

“I think he’s going to do what he thinks is right,” Mantle said. “And whatever his decision is, it won’t change my feelings for him. I think he’s going to be a great commissioner.”

Of the ban, which forbids him from holding a job in baseball, Mantle said: “I think if they put it up to the fans, it would be no contest. But this is a man who made $250 million out of a losing deal (the 1984 Summer Olympics). I’m going to start telling him how to run his business?”

Mantle said the ban mostly hurts his pride.

“No one wants to get banned from anything,” he said. “I don’t even like to get kicked out of a bar.”

Said St. John’s center Bill Wennington when asked what Coach Lou Carnesecca told the team after it struggled to a 33-28 halftime lead over Providence Wednesday night: “It was nothing outside of the usual. He screamed and yelled.”

With Doug Flutie coming aboard, Herschel Walker no longer is the No. 1 target of the media on the New Jersey Generals, and that’s just the way he likes it.

“I’ve got more time to concentrate on football now,” Walker told George Usher of Newsday.

Said New Jersey backfield coach Clark Gaines: “Herschel is a force out there right now, the way he is ripping that line. To me he is night and day from the way he looked last year. He has matured so much in a year. He’s more confident in what he’s doing. He’s running harder, and he’s knowledgeable of what’s going on on the field.”

Said Walker: “I’ll be doing a lot of things this year. I’m I’m going to be a different player. My shoulder is OK now. Last year I worried about it and couldn’t take that many shots on it. I dislocated it my first year at Georgia and every year after that, but now it’s been corrected and I feel good physically.”

Although he barely survived the first one, Tom Heinsohn said he would be back for the NBA Legends game next Saturday at Indianapolis.

Said Heinsohn, 50, of last year’s game: “The first couple of times, the basket was waving. It looked like I was in the desert and you can see waves of heat. But in the second half, I felt pretty good. I could have played at least another 30 seconds.”

Doug Giomi, on the grades of son Mike Giomi, kicked off the Indiana basketball team for not meeting Coach Bob Knight’s scholastic standards: “I was not upset with his grades in any respect. I was satisfied. I expected an average student, not Einstein. And that’s what Mike was. He was coming along good.”

Quotebook

Outfielder Dave Winfield of the New York Yankees: “Everything you read about George Steinbrenner is true. That’s the problem.”