PHILADELPHIA ? It has been nearly 10 years since that October afternoon when Jeffrey Maier, young, innocent and eager, elbowed his way into the baseball world.

 

Close your eyes and you can still see the 12-year-old kid with the black glove and the black T-shirt reach over the right-field wall at Yankee Stadium and turn Derek Jeter's fly ball into the home run that, symbolically, signaled the start of the New York Yankees' most recent dynasty.

 

Maier's 15 minutes of fame ? uptight folks who've forgotten what it's like to be 12 might call it infamy ? are long gone now.

 

But even at age 22, with his college degree a month away, Maier is still an ambitious kid from North Jersey, reaching for a baseball and all it represents.

 

He dreams of being drafted in June and playing professionally. Beyond that, he hopes to someday become the general manager of a major-league club.

 

But first, there's a record to chase.

 

Jeff (as he likes to go by now) Maier is poised to become the all-time hits leader at Wesleyan University in

Middletown, Conn. How's that for a where-are-they-now tale?

 

"It's pretty cool,'' Maier said by telephone the other day.

 

For years, Maier politely stiff-armed interview requests because he didn't want to live in the past and because he remembered some of the hurtful media slings that accompanied his accidental celebrity of 1996.

 

Lately, though, he's been more willing to talk. "People seem to be noticing that I'm a pretty good ballplayer,'' he said/ "?What happened when I was 12 is finally just a sidebar. It's a part of who I am, and I have absolutely no regrets. But I never wanted that to be the defining moment of my life, and it hasn't been.''

 

Maier, a lefthanded-hitting third baseman/outfielder, entered a three-game weekend series against Middlebury with 25 hits in his team's first 16 games. With 164 career hits, he stood just four shy of the school record.

 

News of the impending milestone reached Phillies general manager Pat Gillick on Friday.

 

"You're kidding me,'' he exclaimed.

 

Like most people who follow baseball, Gillick needs no explanation of who Maier is. In fact, on the day he was introduced as Phillies GM in November, Gillick mentioned Maier's name as he recalled the 1996 American League Championship Series. Back then, Gillick was GM of the Baltimore Orioles, who lost the series, four games to one.

 

That series might have turned out differently had it not been for Maier in Game 1.

 

There was one out in the bottom of the eighth inning when the youngster turned what would have been a Jeter fly out to the wall into a game-tying home run. The Yankees went on to win the game in 11 innings, and umpire Rich Garcia, who was working the right-field line, later admitted to missing an obvious case of fan interference.

 

Gillick has no hard feelings for Maier. Never has, really.

 

"When I hear the name Jeffrey Maier, my first thought is the umpire should have made the right call,'' Gillick said. "I was sitting on the third-base line and I could see he reached for the ball. Nowadays, the umpires would have gotten together, talked about it, and gotten the call right. But in those times, it was in the sole discretion of the right-field umpire.

 

"Any time a ball goes near the stands, the first impulse of a fan is to get it. It's an instinctual thing. I

understand that.''

 

In the days following Game 1 of the 1996 AL Championship Series, Maier was pictured on the front pages of newspapers and he appeared on morning talk shows.

 

His exposure was too much for some media members, particularly those in the Baltimore area. Maier can still recite the words of a column that, at the time, was particularly painful.

 

"Tony Kornheiser of the Washington Post wrote something like, 'This is the pinnacle of this young man's life; it's all nostalgia from this point forward,' " Maier said. "I heard that and I thought, ?Wow, don't people think I'm any better than that?'

 

"From that point forward, I had to go out and prove I was more than just a black glove and black T-shirt and a fan-interference play at Yankee Stadium. I always used that as motivation to excel.''

 

Kornheiser co-hosts "Pardon the Interruption,'' a daily sports show on ESPN. It would seem to us that he should invite Maier to be a guest sometime this week, maybe the day after the kid becomes Wesleyan's all-time hits leader.

 

Even as the media glare faded on Maier, he was continually associated with that day in Yankee Stadium.

 

"My name rings a bell for most fans,'' he said with a laugh.

 

During his sophomore year at Wesleyan, in a game at Williams, in the heart of Red Sox nation, fans threw ice and snowballs at him. Maier rolls with it, though. He's actually come to appreciate some of the barbs he hears on the road.

 

"The kids at these schools are smart,'' he said. "They come up with some pretty decent stuff.''

 

Maier is 5-foot-11 and weighs 195 pounds. He carries a 3.4 GPA as a government major. He's a gap hitter who batted .409 last season and was at .379 entering this weekend.

 

The minor leagues are dotted with guys like Maier, players who put up good numbers at small colleges and were chosen in late rounds of the draft. They get on the pro-ball carousel and see what happens. Maier hopes to get that call.

 

"I'm going to play as long as someone will have me,'' he said. "I'd just like to get a shot.''

 

It would be poetic if Maier were drafted by the Yankees.

 

Owner George Steinbrenner never forgets people who've meant something to his organization, and Maier did help the Yankees win a rather big game in 1996.

 

"People say all the time, 'Why don't you call George Steinbrenner?' " Maier said with a laugh. "Well, he isn't on my speed dial, contrary to what people think.''

 

The Orioles would be another interesting possibility for Maier in the draft. So, too, would be the Phillies.

 

"I'll see what we've got on him,'' said Gillick, promising to check out the scouting reports.

 

Regardless of whether he plays beyond college, Maier would someday like to run a major-league club.

 

"He should try to get an internship in the commissioner's office,'' Gillick advised. "Sometimes that puts you in a better position than being with a club. With his name, he might get someone's attention.''

 

Jeff Maier is getting a lot of folks' attention these days.

 

He's no longer that kid in the right-field seats at Yankee Stadium.

 

He's a ballplayer. Just like he always wanted to be.

 

 

 

 

Story was written in Philadelphia Inquirer

He's gay.

the media sucks

 

unless i'm trying to get drafted and am in my senior year of college

 

why not though - they used him to sell papers at age 12 - hopefully he can use them to get some attention to live his dream

It'd be so awesome/ackward if somehow he got drafted and ended up in the Oriole organization.