from Newsday

You will pardon Don Zimmer if he doesn't readily answer his telephone these days, or if he is hesitant to open an envelope addressed to him, or if he warily checks the area around his locker, fearful of finding a pink piece of paper. "It's getting to be my time to get fired," he said last night.

Zimmer's serious expression melted into a smile and that morphed into a look of feigned fright. "I don't take too much for granted, even now," he said through a full grin.

Zimmer's angst is based on his personal history. He is six days short of completing his seventh full season as manager Joe Torre's first lieutenant. And Zimmer never has worked at the same job for the same organization for seven straight seasons.

Imagine that. Baseball lifer, 54 years in the game, and never has Don Zimmer worked for a club for a full seven seasons. "Closest I came was Boston," he said. "I started there [as a coach] in '74. And they fired me [as manager] with about a week to go in '80. I just missed seven years."

And now he is six days away. "It'll be magic, won't it?" he said. "That's if Joe keeps me."

Torre was told what his friend had said as he checked the racing entries. "He stays if he gives me a winner," Torre said.

Zimmer seriously considered leaving the Yankees in July. In fact, the 71-year-old former Brooklyn Dodger and '62 Met told Torre shortly before the All-Star break that he intended to end his in-uniform career. "We were driving in together and I told him, 'Tomorrow's my last day.' Joe knew I hadn't been feeling well. For about two, three weeks. I had a day in here [the clubhouse] I was dizzy. It was all I could do to keep from keeling over. And I was falling asleep at bad times."

Zimmer suffers from sleep apnea, but the dizziness might have been a reaction to new medication for a fluid build-up in his body. "It got real bad," he said. "And I was sure that it was time for me to get out.

"But Joe said, 'Give it through the All-Star break.' So I did. We come back after the break, and I've been feeling better than I have in two years ever since. Joe must have the touch."

Torre wasn't unconcerned. "But you know Zim. He gets emotional, and he thought he wasn't helping us. I told him, 'You'd help if you were lying on the bench.'"

Said Zimmer: "Sometime I'm gonna try that."