Dawson Worries About Pride, Not Money : Baseball: Cubs outfielder is the third-highest-paid player during lockout, but he is is eager for season to begin so he can test his recovery from knee surgery.

Andre Dawson could have a better year than the President. Or a worse year. Or, the way negotiations have been going of late, no year at all--and still make 10 times more than George Bush in 1990.

Ain’t baseball grand?

“Not exactly,” the hard-hitting Chicago Cubs outfielder said over the telephone from his south Florida home. “I’d rather be playing than sitting around.”

According to a recent survey, Dawson, at $2.1 million per year, is the third-highest-paid of 38 major leaguers who have contracts guaranteeing a regular check if the lockout virus really takes hold and kills the 1990 season. Only Eddie Murray of the Dodgers, at $2.7 million, and Don Mattingly of the New York Yankees, at $2.5 million, would do better.

So you figure Andre Dawson would be a big winner. But he figures he would be a big loser. Because he has plenty of it, money doesn’t motivate him as much as it used to. Pride still does, though, and Dawson can never have too much of that.

One year after the Montreal Expos suggested he was finished as a player, Dawson gave up buckets of cash to become the starting right fielder for the Cubs. By the time the 1987 season ended, he had compiled the most productive numbers of his 13-year career and become the first player ever from a sixth-place team to win the National League’s Most Valuable Player award.

Last year, troubles with his right knee caused him to miss 44 games in the regular season and to struggle so mightily--yet futilely--in the playoffs against San Francisco that many wondered anew if, at age 35, he was indeed washed up.

And he must have wondered as well just two days after the Cubs were eliminated, when he put his right knee under the knife for the fourth time. Ironically, though the left knee has been operated on only twice, Dawson always called his right “the good knee.”

After a cyst was removed and the cartilage damage repaired, Dawson began rehabilitation Nov. 28, targeting the start of the regular season for his return as an every-day ballplayer. He has worked on the knee every other day since for 2 1/2 hours, lifting weights on the alternate days. He has been running, throwing and hitting in a batting cage every day since the doctors approved half-speed workouts several weeks ago.

The rehab work he does at a nearby clinic, the hitting in cages owned by a longtime friend and the workouts with his cousin at Murray Park in nearby South Florida, the site where he played as a youngster and not far from a street that was renamed Andre Dawson Drive after his MVP season.

He allows that he has spent more time with wife, Vanessa, and the couple’s 7-month-old son than he planned on and that his recuperation is probably being made considerably easier because of the additional rest.

He is comfortable.

He is also dying to get to spring training.

“I realize you can only play so long, and I only want to play two or three more years,” Dawson said. “As long as I’m healthy, I don’t worry about the numbers.

“It was a different story when I was in Montreal when there were a lot of young players and I was counted on to be the catalyst. There, every injury was a hang-up with management when it came time for negotiations.

“That’s not a problem anymore. The thing now is to satisfy my own sense of accomplishment. As you grow older, you learn that you have to make a lot more adjustments, and that’s what I’m interested in--finding out if I can still make those adjustments for another few seasons.”

Yet, for all his eagerness to return to the big-league classroom, Dawson will not go back until he is satisfied that the union is satisfied. He is suspicious of management--and with good reason.

In 1986, Dawson’s exit from Montreal and his first go-round with free agency, collusion among the owners artificially depressed his market price. So strong was his desire to leave--and to find a grass field for his battered knees--that he parked outside the Cubs’ training camp in Mesa, Ariz., the following spring and offered to have the team fill in the salary blank on the contract.

They did, and he made somewhere in the neighborhood of $600,000--with incentives--while ballplayers half his worth earned twice as much.

His current contract evened that score, just as the lockout language that he had the foresight to include erased another past mistake.

“There wasn’t much talk about that (the lockout) when I made this deal, but I remembered what happened in the 1981 strike,” he said. “Because of a clause in that contract, I wound up reimbursing the Expos for time lost.”

How much?

“I’m not sure,” he replied casually. “About $60,000.

“But the thing that bothers me now is what guys have been saying the past few days. From a player’s standpoint, you better know the issues before you make public statements about going back. If they’ve got something to say, let them attend the (union) meetings and be heard.

“Arbitration isn’t the only snag. The 25-man roster, the pension plan and some other things haven’t been settled.”

There is always, Andre Dawson reminds, the future to look out for.

“And it helps to have someone looking out for you,” Dawson said. “Believe me.”