‘Greatest’ adventure

BY JULIAN GARCIA, MITCH ABRAMSON & BERNIE AUGUSTINE

IN THE SUMMER of 1977, Michael Gaffney was a 26-year-old news photographer trying to make ends meet when he heard about the training camp Muhammad Ali had set up in Deer Lake, Pa. Figuring he’d be able to snap a few shots of “The Greatest” and sell them, Gaffney hopped in his car and took the two-hour drive from his home in New Jersey.

Following a successful stay in the woodsy Pennsylvania town, which included a run up the same hill Ali trained on — Ali challenged him to do it — Gaffney prepared to head back home.

But when he told Ali he was leaving, Ali wouldn’t let him go easy.

“He literally said, ‘I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse,’” Gaffney said. “I was stunned.”

After consulting with his young wife, who told him he’d never forgive himself if he turned Ali down, Gaffney agreed to become the fighter’s personal photographer, replacing Howard Bingham, who was leaving Ali’s camp to run for Congress.

Gaffney stayed with Ali for a year, taking pictures of three of his most famous fights, including the Sept. 15, 1978 rematch with Leon Spinks that ended with Ali becoming the heavyweight champion of the world for an unprecedented third time.

Nearly 35 years later, some of Gaffney’s best pictures from that era are finally being seen.

The photographer’s book, “The Champ — My Year With Muhammad Ali,” will be released soon. The E-book version is due before the end of April, with the hard copy version arriving soon after. Diversion Books is the publisher.

For the next two weeks, some of the best shots will be on display, and for sale, at the Compton Gallery, a small studio on Main Street in Boonton, N.J. — a 35-minute drive from Manhattan.

While photographing Ali, Gaffney also made sure to record most of their conversations. Some of those chats became inspiration for the words in the upcoming book.

An early copy of the book was presented to Ali at his 70th birthday party in January, and Ali and his wife Lonnie wrote a letter to Gaffney expressing their appreciation.

“Lonnie actually wrote that these were some of the most splendid photographs that she’s ever seen of Muhammad,” Gaffney said.

The book’s foreword was written by Gaffney’s friend, the noted boxing historian Bert Sugar, who died last week. It was, perhaps, the last bit of writing Sugar did on the sport.

JUST SICKENING

Former Met Bobby Ojeda won Game 3 of the 1986 World Series, and started the memorable Game 6 four days later, but it was his days playing Little League, he remembers, that would really cause him to lose his lunch.

“I used to get sick before games because of nerves,” Ojeda said with a laugh. “I used to sleep in my uniform. For me, it was hard but it helped me learn how to control emotions and how to deal with things. There’s so many lessons that you carry on with you throughout life that you learn from being on a team like that. But (puking aside)- it was a wonderful time.”

Ojeda, now an SNY studio analyst, chatted with The Score this week as his employer planned to donate $40,000 to eight tri-state area children’s baseball and softball leagues.

Of course Ojeda overcame that nervous habit, eventually becoming a dependable part of a Mets rotation that included Dwight Gooden and Ron Darling and helped win that 1986 World Series. But his everyday struggles as a kid to keep down his food before games is proof that even the best hurlers on the planet are susceptible to, well, hurling.

The funds distributed by SNY are part of Citigroup’s desire to expand its community outreach through its “Play Ball” initiative. The money will be used to purchase player equipment and uniforms, for field maintenance and renovations as well as other operating costs such as umpire fees.

WHAT A HOOT

We here at The Score take a certain amount of pride in always keeping our eyes open for the next potential GPOTW — for the readers, of course — but for a quarter century we’ve been blind to a beautiful spring training tradition. In Clearwater, Fla., where the Phillies make their spring home, the ballpark has a feature unlike any other in the Grapefruit League:

The ball girls are Hooters Girls.

“(It’s) part of the spring baseball culture that Florida is all about,” Ed Droste, one of Hooters’ co-founders, told The Score. The relationship was struck up in the mid-80s — after Hooters first opened up - and players from the Phillies, Cardinals and other clubs would stop by for a cold one and some hot wings after a day at the yard.

“( John) Kruk and (Lenny) Dykstra. (Darren) Daulton and Keith Hernandez. They would all come in. The Phillies, the Cardinals and the Reds,” Droste said of the early days of the business in the mid-1980s.

Droste has dozens of stories about players cozying up to Hooters girls — Daulton married a Hooters girl turned Playboy Playmate, Lynne Austin (they’ve since divorced) — and GMS striking deals over a basket of wings.

One of Droste’s favorite tales involves Jim Kaat. When the 283-game winner and former Yankee broadcaster was the pitching coach for Pete Rose’s Reds, he was fond of having his players take their post-game treatments in a booth at the original Hooters.

“He’d say, ‘C’mon fellas, let’s ice down from the inside out,’” Droste recalls.

Something tells us Bobby Valentine won’t be taking his Red Sox to Droste’s wing joint this spring to do the same.

COWBOY FAN TO THE END

Jesse Joe Hernandez took the term “die-hard fan” and elevated it to a whole new level.

Hernandez, an all-around bad dude, was executed in Huntsville, Tex., on Wednesday (we won’t ruin your Sunday by detailing his heinous crimes — you can turn to Google for that) and in his dying breath he gave a shoutout to his favorite team: “Go Cowboys!” he said. We’re sure America’s Team is just thrilled that this model citizen had the ’Boys in mind as he met the Grim Reaper, and we don’t mean Jerry Jones.