Owners May Be Softening Stand : Spring training: Dodgers are only team to bring minor league players with major league experience to camp.

When they were recently contacted and ordered to be in Dodger uniforms in Vero Beach on Friday morning, these players would normally have been elated. Instead, they were somewhat embarrassed.

“I’m trying to make a team,” pitcher Mike Munoz said. “But there is no team to make.”

Outfielder Billy Bean said: “I saw my reporting date and I thought, ‘Man, that’s early!’ I wasn’t even sure I was supposed to go to camp at all.”

The Dodgers have surprised not just him, but the rest of baseball. A survey of the 25 other major league teams has revealed that, when the owners’ threatened lockout of spring training camps becomes reality Thursday, only the Dodgers will be bringing in players with major league experience.

Munoz, Bean and seven others who have been in the big leagues will begin work at Dodgertown Friday morning as part of the Dodgers’ fourth annual minor league mini-camp, featuring 58 other top Dodger prospects.

Because they are not on the major league roster, those nine players are not affected by the lockout. But they will be major league in every other way. They have been told that they will be paid a major league per diem and they may even wear major league uniforms. They will be watched by Manager Tom Lasorda and Vice President Fred Claire, both of whom were cleared Tuesday by management’s Player Relations Committee to attend the workouts.

Most important, four of the nine players will have legitimate chances to make the big league team.

Bean and Mike Huff could compete for a reserve outfielder spot. Glenn Hoffman could make the team as a reserve infielder. And Munoz is fighting for a spot as a left-handed relief pitcher. The others in camp with major league experience are pitchers Steve Davis, Morris Madden, Edwin Correa; infielder Jose Vizcaino and outfielder Butch Davis.

Officials throughout the league agreed that the Dodgers’ tactics were not prohibited.

“All these guys officially have triple-A contracts, right?” Boston General Manager Lou Gorman said. “So legally and technically, they can show up when other minor league players show up.”

But the survey also showed that the Dodgers are a minority of one. No other team is bringing in its non-roster, major league-ready players until the official major leaguers arrive, or their official minor league camps begin in early March, whichever comes first.

The Texas Rangers, for example, will have 18 non-roster players with 1990 major league potential who will not wear uniforms. Kansas City will keep 15 players away. Seattle will bench 14.

Even the three other teams that have minor league mini-camps opening in the next few days--San Diego, Oakland and San Francisco--are leaving players with chances to make the big leagues at home.

“We will be working with one thing and one thing only--young prospects with a chance to move ahead in our minor league system,” said Al Rosen, the Giants’ general manager.

He was asked if any player with a chance to make the big league team during spring training would be in attendance.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “That is not our philosophy.’

Said Sandy Alderson, A’s general manager: “To bring in an experienced player would change the focus of our mini-camp. It is not designed to be a reservoir of major league talent for 1990. It is for very inexperienced players only.”

If nothing else, the Dodger procedure raises questions:

--Are these Dodger players gaining an advantage over their locked out teammates?

--Are the Dodgers themselves gaining an advantage over the rest of the league?

--When is a lockout not a lockout?

“Everyone has different ways of looking at player development,” Claire said. “We choose to bring in a lot of players early in the spring. We figure they can all benefit from the extra experience. We have done this consistently. If things had gone off on schedule, like last year, nobody would be saying a thing.”

Claire added: “Everyone down there will be minor leaguers, and it will be run like a minor league camp.”

The players, despite some misgivings, are hoping otherwise.

“Originally I worried that if I went down there, I would mess things up for everybody else,” Munoz said. “But now I’m going to try to use it to my advantage. They told me they are going to treat us like major leaguers, so it’s my chance to prove to them that I am one.”

Huff had said earlier this winter: “I figure it’s a break for me. It will be a chance for me to work one on one with people. A chance to make an impression. For once, it won’t be, ‘OK, as backup outfielders we got Chris Gwynn and Franklin Stubbs and Jose Gonzalez and Billy Bean and Mike Huff.’ It will just be, ‘We got Bean and Huff. Period.’

“Before, I think I’ve always just been that white kid with the thinning brown hair. Now, I can really get into the back of their minds as a guy who can play.”

He won’t be able to impress the major league coaches, since Lasorda’s staff is barred from the complex. The camp will be run by instructors Guy Wellman and Steve Boros. That makes another outfielder wonder if players really will have it so great.

“When I played in Detroit, the minor league coaches were never able to persuade the major league people of anything,” Bean said. “The way I’m looking at it is, I just want to use the time to stay in shape and be ready when big league camp opens.”

Then there is Hoffman, an veteran who spent last season with the Angels and signed with the Dodgers as a free agent this winter.

“I’ve had mixed emotions about it,” he said. “I’ve been working out with some of the younger kids this winter, and I tell them, if there’s a lockout, since they aren’t in the union yet, they should take the opportunity to show people what they can do . . . to shine.”

And for a player such as Hoffman, who has spent most of his career in the union? How should that player feel?

“All I know is, it’s a mess,” he said. “The way I look at it is, I signed a triple-A contract, so I am the property of Albuquerque, and I have to do whatever they want me to do. It doesn’t matter what people think. I’ve got to get ready for that Albuquerque team.”