ONCE MORE last night, Phil Simms stood on the field at Giants Stadium, 16 years after it all began for him there. The boos he heard as a kid quarterback were gone, and so were two lost years under Ray Handley, when Simms stood on the sideline and held a ball in his right hand and watched Jeff Hostetler quarterback the Giants. This was the fine football night when everyone was supposed to forget that the Giants fired Simms when all he wanted was one more season.

So they finally retired Simm's No. 11 at Giants Stadium. It is the official way of saying goodbye in sports. And the safe way. There are never any problems once the story is over. It is the last act that can be a problem sometimes, making a graceful exit. That is why this ceremony for Simms was held a year later than the Giants wanted.

Even Phil Simms did not leave the stage the way he wanted. And Simms was as big as Lawrence Taylor at Giants Stadium. It means he was as big as the Giants ever had.

"I remember how disappointed I was when they released him," Don Mattingly was saying yesterday morning. Mattingly was on an exercise bike in the clubhouse at Yankee Stadium, near the locker that always has been kept empty in memory of Thurman Munson. "I thought to myself, `Jeez, if it can happen to Phil Simms, it can happen to anybody.' "

Mattingly leaned back, sweating as if he'd already played the game, took a deep breath and exhaled loudly.

"I don't really know Phil," he said. "Once our season ended, I was never around in the winter, I always went home to Indiana. But I was definitely a big fan, because he seemed like my kind of player. So I knew he was coming off a real good year. Then they dumped him, just like that. It was like, What's that all about? I hated to see it end that way for him." Now Mattingly forced a smile.

"There aren't many guys," he said, "who get the last chapter they want. Not everybody gets to be Ted Williams, and hit one last home run, and then just go home."

There was a time, in the middle of the 1980s, when Simms was one of the best quarterbacks in football, a Super Bowl quarterback, and Mattingly was the best player in baseball. There were other stars in New York then. Taylor was at the top of his game for the Giants, Dwight Gooden was striking everybody out at Shea Stadium and the young Darryl Strawberry was hitting baseballs out of sight. It all seemed a long time ago yesterday, at Giants Stadium and at Yankee Stadium, where it is now fair to wonder how many more summers in the Bronx there will be for Mattingly.

The night before, I had talked to Simms, in the middle of a family party at his home in New Jersey. And over all the noise, Simms' voice got quiet when he was asked what the retirement of his number really meant to him.

"How fast it went," he said. "I mean, my God, it can't be 16 years ago that I played my first game, can it?" He paused, and all the telephone picked up behind him were loud voices and laughter. "Where did it all go?" Simms said.

He thought the Sundays would last forever. This was always the best time of year, football played in bright baseball weather, and the whole season stretched out in front of him. Then it was gone for him and not without very hard feelings. He had been the best quarterback in Giants history, and played a nearly perfect Super Bowl for them, and got cheated out of a second Super Bowl because of an injury. Then Handley took his job away, but Simms never complained, and when Dan Reeves became Giants coach and gave him the job back in 1993, Simms showed he was still one of the most valuable players in the league. The Giants went back to the playoffs.

The Giants cut him the next summer. Simms thought they waited because they did not really want him to hook on with another team. He felt both Reeves and George Young had played him for a sucker. So he nearly went off to Arizona to play for Buddy Ryan and the Cardinals. Last spring, he nearly signed with the Browns before deciding he was retired for good, and taking a big new job with NBC Sports.

"I wasn't ready for this kind of night last year," Simms said. The Giants wanted to retire Simms' number when they retired Taylor's, during another Monday night game. "There were some feelings I needed to let go. Now I have. I just hope there's not too many feelings of a different kind tomorrow night, and I start to cry."

Simms moves on now. He is very good broadcasting football games with Dick Enberg and Paul Maguire, and will get better. Mattingly is still across the river, still at first base for the Yankees, no longer the player he was when he and Simms were on top of their respective worlds. Mattingly has 38 RBI this year. He used to have 100 more RBI than that at the end of a season. The Yankees have not yet let him go the way the Giants said goodbye to Simms. But they might, and soon.

Mattingly spoke only of the immediate future yesterday. He was asked how he is doing and said, "Good. And I'm going to do good the rest of the way." He believes enough has been written and said about him this season. He made headlines a week or so ago when he said he might finish his career in Japan, and thinks he has said enough about the future. He just wants to have enough of a September that he gets into the playoffs for the first time. Simms made the playoffs all the time. No matter how things ended for him with the Giants, Simms has his championship ring.

"The problem with sports is that you can't write the ending," Mattingly said. "It's not fantasy, it's real life."

There are all kinds of endings. Gooden's career might end with his last drug suspension, Strawberry's nearly ended the same way. Mickey Mantle's body broke down one way, because of ruined knees. Mattingly's has slowly broken down another, because of his back. Lawrence Taylor was supposed to be through because of an Achilles tendon injury, but he came back for one more season, and was standing at the end of it, and said goodbye then, after a playoff loss in San Francisco.

Pat Riley exits the New York stage screaming his head off, obsessed with his image to the end. He begins to sound a bit like Nixon as he tries to explain away everything that happened to him. Riley resigned. Simms was shown the door by the Giants but left with his head high anyway, his dignity intact. Last night, to cheers he understood completely, he finally said a proper goodbye.

And in the morning, Mattingly got ready for another game in what might be his last race at Yankee Stadium, not knowing how things will end for him there, or when. Not even knowing for sure if he is making an exit of his own.

"You can't write it," Don Mattingly said. "You gotta live it." Noble, Marty

Copyright 1995, Newsday Inc.