CAPTAIN KIRK : Gibson’s Ailing Knee Shouldn’t Keep Him From Leading Way Every Day

For the time being, Kirk Gibson’s sore right knee will keep him from swinging a bat, although if this were the middle of a pennant race instead of the first week of spring training, the National League’s most valuable player would be in the lineup, Dodger physician Dr. Frank Jobe said Thursday.

But although Gibson’s physical activity will be limited for at least three weeks, that didn’t keep the Dodger left fielder from exercising his freedom of speech on a variety of topics Thursday, including but not limited to his frustration with his injury, his empathy for newcomer Eddie Murray, and his fondness for tractors and hunting dogs.

Gibson’s most biting words, however, were reserved for Peter Ueberroth, though he never actually mentioned the outgoing baseball commissioner by name.

During an informal question-and-answer session with reporters, Gibson was asked his opinion of the mega-contracts signed in recent weeks by fellow professional ballplayers, including teammate Orel Hershiser.

Gibson took that as a cue to bring up the issue of collusion, and its chilling effect on salaries after the 1985 season, when he was first eligible to become a free agent. When an arbitrator ruled that the owners were guilty of collusion, Gibson won the right to become a free agent again last winter, and subsequently signed with the Dodgers.

” . . . Collusion definitely depressed salaries, no question about it,” Gibson said. “ . . . (But) everything is not said and done as far as my case goes.”

Gibson meant that the penalty phase has yet to be completed in the collusion case, and the speculation is that the owners may be forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars as a consequence of their actions.

“They cost themselves that,” Gibson said of the owners. “They’re the ones who chose to do it and they should be held accountable for it. You know who should really be accountable for it is the guy who designed the whole thing, whoever that might be.”

The scowl on Gibson’s face suggested he had an idea who that might be, but when asked directly, he said: “I’m not that stupid. We all have our opinions who that might be.”

Someone then asked whether, after a certain person suspected of coordinating the collusion is out of the game in a month or so--Ueberroth is due to be replaced as commissioner by Bart Giamatti on April 1--Gibson would finger the culprit.

“Let’s put it this way,” Gibson said. “The guy who (designed) it is really smart, and that’s probably one of the reasons he isn’t going to be involved with it, OK?

“I’ll just make an analogy, OK? It’s like the college football coach who goes from college to college and does everything illegal. The college is put on probation and where does he go? To another college. Here’s the college he screwed over on probation three years and he runs over and does the same damn thing somewhere else and he goes scot-free. Who’s held accountable for it? The wrong person.”

Gibson made it clear, however, that he is not unhappy with the contract he signed with the Dodgers, a deal that paid him $2.5 million in 1988--$1.5 million, plus a $1 million signing bonus--and will pay him $1 million in each of the next two seasons.

Those numbers pale considerably next to the $7.9 million Hershiser signed for last week, but Gibson had no complaints.

“As far as Orel is concerned, he earned it, he deserved it,” Gibson said. “I may feel I deserve more; the market might have dictated differently this year, but I signed last year.

“I’m the guy who signed the contract. They didn’t hold a gun to my head. I got three years guaranteed and I’ll live with it now.”

Gibson grinned.

“Now, if (the Dodgers) want to renegotiate, that’s a different story.”

Gibson has tendinitis in his right knee, which he bruised sliding into second base in Game 5 of the National League playoffs last season. On the same play, he also injured his hamstring.

The injuries limited Gibson to one World Series at-bat--his memorable game-winning home run in Game 1--but after some prescribed rest in the off-season, Jobe said, the knee bruise healed. It was only when Gibson began working out again, the doctor said, that the knee bothered Gibson anew. Arthroscopic surgery was contemplated, but ruled out after Gibson was examined in Los Angeles two weeks ago.

“He hit that knee against the base and bruised it,” Jobe said. “It’s gotten better, of course, but it doesn’t feel quite right to him.”

When Gibson works out, there is swelling and pain in the scar tissue. In addition to rest, the Dodgers plan to treat Gibson with both heat and ice, with the possibility of injections into the knee to soften the scar tissue, Jobe said.

“I don’t think it’s something to worry about,” Jobe said. “But when he’s out of the lineup, everyone is concerned.

“He could play. He could probably play without hurting himself, and by that I mean without permanent damage. He could do it, but there’s no need for it now.”

For now, Gibson’s activity is limited to straight-ahead running and some stretching exercises.

“It’s frustrating because I don’t know what to expect,” he said. “I don’t think anybody knows what to expect.

“I’ll be ready, any way you look at it. . . . I’m sure there’ll come a point in time that if it doesn’t start to improve, I’m just going to say, ‘The hell with it,’ and just go and see how far I can go with it.”

Gibson said he’s never had any serious knee problems, not even when he was playing football at Michigan State.

“That was two decades ago,” said Gibson, who will be 32 in May.

He has swung a bat maybe twice since the World Series, he said, but for now, he will play the role of impatient observer. Asked for his thoughts on the Dodgers’ chances of repeating as champions, Gibson mentioned the improbable numerical odds of that happening.

“How do we know?” he said. “If I get hurt, how do we know what Hatch (Mickey Hatcher) is going to do? Is he going to come through again?”

(Hatcher, only moments before, walked through the press room, calling out, “Don’t worry, Gibby, I’ll pick you up.”)

“Or if Orel gets hurt, maybe Ramon (Martinez) will pick up the slack. We don’t know those things. That’s fate. That’s why it’s so hard.

“We won’t let down. We’ll bust our butts, no question about that. We’ll play with a lot of heart and soul and character. All we can play for is the right to be there in the last month, as far as I’m concerned.

“If it’s going to happen, the Big Dodger in the Sky--I call him the Big Man, but Tommy (Lasorda) calls him the Big Dodger in the Sky--if we do everything humanly possible, he’ll do the rest.”

When Gibson won a World Series with Detroit in 1984, the Tigers finished second in the American League East the next season, but it wasn’t for a lack of effort, he said.

“You know people are going to be shooting for us,” he said. “You know there are people out there who probably say we were lucky and they’re going to show us. Hey, I’d rather be a lucky world champion than an unlucky loser.”

And he and Murray should work well together, he said, adding that Murray left Baltimore under circumstances similar to his in Detroit.

“It’s similar in that a lot of things were falling on his shoulders because of (the Orioles’) downfall,” Gibson said. “There are just times as a player when you just basically wear out your welcome. . . . I would think he has a very refreshed attitude to be over here where he is now. I know I did.

“When things went wrong (in Detroit), whose fault was it? It was mine. I didn’t do this. I didn’t do that. The only thing I didn’t do in Detroit was to live up to everybody else’s expectations.”

When he left Detroit, he said, there were newspaper polls bidding him good riddance. When he went back last fall as a World Series champion, the glad-handers fell all over themselves congratulating him.

That, among other reasons, was why he spent so much time in the off-season hunting, though he did squeeze in some endorsements.

“When we won the World Series in ‘84, I think I made about $30,000 that off-season,” he said. “This year, I stand to make well over 10 times that, and I’m not a guy for endorsements. That’s without even trying.”

But there were no tractor ads, though Gibson lamented that he would do anything for a free tractor to add to the collection of three--plus a bulldozer--he already keeps on his Michigan spread. How attached is he to his tractors?

“A couple of weeks ago, I sprayed them all down, cleaned them all off, patted them, and saluted them,” he said.

Which, no doubt, is more than he would do for Ueberroth.