It was a slow day yesterday at National League office headquarters in Manhattan, according to ex-Yale President A. Bartlett Giamatti.

"I had an intellectually stimulating conference call in the morning with Nelson Doubleday, August Busch and Chub Feeney, but after lunch I felt like I was slowly twisting in the seventh circle of hell," said the Renaissance man and medieval scholar. "Things really get slow around here in November. You know, there are no games being played this time of year. I think I'm going to go sign a few baseballs."

Giamatti discounted rumors swirling about the city that New York Democrats were courting him to enter politics.

"They have this thing for overly intellectual Italians with a weakness for baseball, but I'm not their man," he said. "I've had enough time in the public eye and dealing with fundraising types. I just want to spend the rest of my days working on my sestina about Ted Williams's fifth-to-last at-bat."

There was a tense moment at the beginning of the day when Giamatti first entered his plush Park Avenue offices, however.

"I don't know what got into me," said Giamatti's secretary, Kathleen O'Wiggins. "Bart--he lets us call him Bart--expects to have a fresh carnation for his lapel every day, bright and early, as soon as he gets here in the morning. You should see how his face lights up just after he pins it on. But I just forgot. I hope he doesn't spank me like the last time."

Giamatti denied that he expects a carnation every morning. "Sometimes I show up to the office naked, so I'd have no place to stick it, anyway."

Bart, as he also let his Yale minions call him, was of course a legendary Red Sox fan and is a rumored candidate to replace baseball impressario Peter V. Ueberroth should the commissioner, as expected, enter politics with a race for president of Austria. (Polls indicate a "Vote Ueberroth, He's an Uebbermensch" campaign is a surething.) But the legendary Red Sox fan has begun to drop subtle hints that his year at the helm of the Senior Circuit has tempered any hopes he may have harbored to be appointed philosopher-king of the national pastime.

"In all honesty, I'd much rather prefer avoiding all contact with the American League," he said. "George Steinbrenner probably is the only person in this country who's a bigger asshole than Serge Lang."

So what's in store for the former Yalie bigwig tomorrow? "Oh, I don't know," he says, stroking his goatee. "I think I'll probably sign some more baseballs."