Emilio "Millito" Navarro boarded a jet in San Juan on Wednesday morning, three months before his 103rd birthday.

He was bound for Orlando, Fla., bound for Major League Baseball's amateur draft, bound for the New York Yankees, his favorite team.

And Robinson Cano had better break out of that slump.

"Now that I've been drafted," Navarro said, "I'm ready right now to play second base. I might take his job."

In Memphis, somebody ought to fetch one of those low-hanging, welt-raising switches, because Joe B. Scott is fixing to be a ballplayer again.

He's 87.

"I love baseball," he said. "I used to get a whipping for playing it. My mother used to whip me on Thursdays and Sundays. Those were my whipping days because she knew I was on the ballfield. But I didn't cry when she whipped me."

He'll be selected by the Milwaukee Brewers in the draft. Held, of course, on a Thursday.

....Navarro, Scott, Henderson and 27 other former Negro Leaguers will be drafted in a pre-draft ceremony, a tribute formulated by Hall-of-Famer Dave Winfield and embraced by Major League Baseball.

Aging men (and one woman, Mamie "Peanut" Johnson) who once were denied access to the big leagues but not the national pastime, who abided the rules of a narrow-minded era, who made do in a separate-and-not-equal game, smiled gently and accepted with true graciousness....

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