BASEBALL / DAILY REPORT : AMERICAN LEAGUE

Sometime this winter, Ken Griffey Jr. will have a four-inch plate and seven screws removed from his left wrist. The plate was implanted to aid the healing process when Griffey broke the wrist May 26.

“I’ll be in a splint for a couple weeks, then back to golf,” he said. What kind of golfer is he?

“I can play baseball before 55,000, but put 20 people next to the tee and I’d probably bounce the ball off all of them,” he said.

Griffey returned from the broken wrist on Aug. 15. His reflections on the time he was away?

“On the field, a lot of guys stepped forward and did the job,” he said. “Off the field, I became a professional diaper changer.”

Griffey and wife, Melissa, are parents of a 1 1/2-year-old son, Trey, and are expecting a daughter shortly.

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Orel Hershiser, Cleveland’s Game 2 winner, has the fourth lowest earned-run average among pitchers with 50 or more postseason innings. Hershiser is 6-0 with a 1.47 ERA in 73 1/3 postseason innings. The top three: Sandy Koufax, 0.95; Christy Mathewson, 1.15, and Eddie Plank, 1.32.