THE RETURN OF JAY JOHNSTONE : Hide the Brownies and Pine Tar--the Prince of Pranks Is Back

Defying time, gravity and order in the cosmos, the Moon Man has landed in Los Angeles once again, laughing all the way.

The homecoming may be short-lived--alien forces could propel him back into orbit at any time--but Jay Johnstone is as likely to pass unnoticed as a supernova. Unless, of course, he arrives incognito for today’s home opener, grabs a rake and sweeps the Dodger Stadium infield, as he and his partner in pranks, Jerry Reuss, did on Johnstone’s last go-round here.

“A lot of people didn’t expect me back in a Dodger uniform, but I always seem to turn up in unusual places--like the Candid Camera people,” Johnstone said.

Small wonder. For much of his career, spanning 17 seasons and eight teams, Johnstone might as well have been auditioning for Allen Funt. He is, after all, the man who put a brownie in Steve Garvey’s glove, then wiped some fudge frosting on Reuss’ uniform to make him look like the perpetrator.

He put pine tar in Al Campanis’ shoes, and trapped Manager Tom Lasorda inside his room in Dodgertown by tying his doorknob to a tree and stealing the mouthpiece from his telephone.

In perhaps his greatest stunt, he slipped into the team’s Dodgertown clubhouse with carpenter’s tools and cut Ron Cey’s locker down to penguin-size, putting a tiny stool in front of it.

“You’ve got to put a beeper on him just to know where he is,” Lasorda said.

Now he is back. Johnstone, released by the Dodgers three years ago on the same night he got his first pinch-hit of the season, was signed as a free agent Feb. 20, after parting company with the Chicago Cubs.

He went hitless in 14 at-bats during spring training, which didn’t exactly guarantee the 38-year-old pinch-hitter a place on the Dodger roster. But Alfred E. Newman will have an ulcer before Johnstone shows signs of worry.

“Who knows what evil lurks in the mind of the Shadow?” Johnstone answered when asked if he thought he might be released when Greg Brock and R.J. Reynolds come off the disabled list in the next two weeks.

“In this game, nobody knows what will happen down the road. In ’81 and ‘82, I had four at-bats in the months of April, after coming out of spring training hitting over .300. I didn’t get any hits out of spring training this year, so I should be ready.

“(In) the role I fulfill, my presence won’t be a help to Tommy (Lasorda) until June or July, when guys start to get hurt. The hardest part for me is the waiting.”

Johnstone has no assurances, of course, that the Dodgers will wait along with him. He didn’t expect to be let go by the Cubs last season, either, one month before they won their first pennant in 39 years. Chicago, eager to acquire Davey Lopes at the last moment, released Johnstone to make room for Lopes.

As Johnstone tells it, Cub General Manager Dallas Green sought a ruling from the commissioner that would have allowed Green to reinstate Johnstone and put another player on the disabled list. But Green was turned down, and Johnstone remained on the scene, ostensibly as a coach.

“Somebody asked me, ‘What are you going to coach?’ ” Johnstone said. “I told him, ‘I’m coaching the showers.’

“The politest thing I can say is that somebody screwed up on the rules. But instead of rocking the boat and everybody looking bad, I just let it go. I figure down the line, somebody owes me a favor.”

Johnstone said that after leaving the Cubs, there were two teams he wanted to play for, the Padres and Dodgers.

“I knew I had a good chance to play for the Padres, who were getting rid of Champ Summers, and L.A. was home,” Johnstone said.

He called Campanis, and when Campanis--mindful of the combined .184 average by Dodger pinch-hitters last season--invited him to work out with the team in January, Johnstone accepted.

And so, Johnstone, who in 17 seasons has played for eight teams, returned to a club that remembered him best for the three-run pinch homer he hit off Ron Davis of the Yankees in the 1981 World Series, then forgot about him months later so it could recall Ron Roenicke, who had graduated from the same high school as Johnstone, only 10 years later.

“I understand why they did it,” Johnstone said. “They were bringing some youth into the big leagues, the same thing they did eight or nine years ago with Garvey and Cey and Lopes and Russell. That’s what you should do to perpetuate your organization.

“Sometimes you get away with it, sometimes you can’t.”

And sometimes you need a few laughs along the way. Johnstone no longer has his primary foils, Garvey and Cey. He continued to bedevil Cey in Chicago, once dressing a stuffed penguin in a Cub uniform and giving it a pep talk while Cey’s teammates howled.

“But now I’ve got (Bill) Russell, although after a while getting Russell is like wearing an old shoe,” Johnstone said.

“But the whole thing is the chance to play for Lasorda again. The guy has been like a father to me. And he’s allowed me to do fun things that most managers, like the guy in Chicago (Jim Frey) wouldn’t let me do.”

So far, Johnstone has been the picture of decorum, to which he pleads guilty. “But I’ve been sick since the third week of March,” he said. “I’m six pounds underweight. It’s tough to have fun when you’re sick.”

Now, Johnstone says, he feels much better.

That’s enough to make anybody giggle in expectation.