Special Father-Son Day at the Ballpark : * Dodgers: players will take time out to thank the men who helped them get started on the road to the major leagues.

He will be working today, but Mike Scioscia will find time to call. The Dodger catcher will pick up the phone, call back to Illinois, get his father Fred on the line, wish him a happy Father’s Day.

Then maybe they will reminisce.

“I remember as a kid, I saw this Manny Sanguillen-model catcher’s mitt in the store window,” Scioscia said. “I thought it was the neatest, nicest thing I had ever seen, and I really wanted it. My father was standing there and he said, ‘If you stick with catching, one of these days you’ll get it.’

“I thought he was just saying that until two weeks later, when I walked in the house, and there it was. It was the biggest surprise of my life. He had bought me that mitt.”

Tim Crews will also be working today, but he will also find time. He will call his father, Jim, in central Florida. And maybe they will also reminisce.

“For 30 minutes every day, my Dad would get down in the dirt in our back yard and catch me,” Crews said. “He was tough, he was always yelling, ‘This mitt ain’t here to look at, it’s here to hit!’ He would scream if we threw anything but strikes. Sometimes I thought it was torture, but I kept doing it.”

In 203 major league innings before Friday, Crews had walked just 61 batters. Scouts agree that if nothing else, he can throw strikes.

“And don’t think I don’t know where that came from,” Crews said. “I finally realized that I would not be in the major leagues if it wasn’t for what my father did. I’m here because of 30 minutes a day in the dirt with my dad.”

Of all the special days that occur throughout the baseball season, perhaps none is more important to major league baseball players than today. For them, Father’s Day is more than just a time to phone home or, if you are Mike Sharperson, rush home a package via Federal Express to make certain the gifts are not late.

Father’s Day is a sort of baseball player’s Thanksgiving. Because to many, the most important person in their career is their father. Their first coach. Their first hero.

To many major leaguers, Dad was the man who, after eight hours of work, walked in the house, changed his shirt and stuck a glove on his hand. The man who drove the entire youth league team to the ice cream store after big victories. The man who was so tired after all this, he fell asleep in front of the television set.

To many major leaguers, Pop was the man who would leave work early and sit behind home plate during the big high school games to make sure they knew he was there. The man who sat behind home plate during their major league debuts and cried.

“I’ll never forget the tears on my father’s face when I was coming off the mound after my first start,” pitcher Mike Morgan said of his major league debut with Oakland a few days after his high school graduation. “He’s a big, tough man. He would come home from a 12-hour day setting tile, all dirty and crusty, and still have strength to play with me. Then to see him cry . . . It was one of the most incredible moments of my life to see him so proud.”

Now, it would appear, judging from conversations with the Dodgers, it is the sons who are proud.

“My father is bad ,” Hubie Brooks said, smiling. “That’s bad, as in, good. He was one of the best baseball players I’ve ever seen.”

Brooks remembers traveling with his father, Hubert, to various semipro games in the Los Angeles area, featuring teams like the Los Angeles White Sox and Long Beach Grays.

“On a Sunday, we would pile everybody in the family into the station wagon--a good wagon fits nine people--and we’d go to church,” Brooks said. “Then we would go to the parks and watch my father play second base and third base. And man, he could hit and run. He was all over the field.

“If my father didn’t have to go into the Marine Corps, no telling what he could have done is this game. A great player at the wrong time.”

Brooks regrets that his father never got to play in Dodger Stadium.

“The closest he got was Elysian Park, outside the stadium,” Brooks said.

So today, as with many other home games, Brooks will leave him free tickets. And afterward they may get together and talk.

“I still ask him, ‘If there is something you see me doing wrong, please help me,’ ” Brook said.

Despite the first-rate instructors and equipment available to them, many Dodgers said they still take advice from their fathers.

“My dad will watch the games on the satellite dish, call me and say, ‘Tim, your location was bad on this hitter,’ ” Crews said. “And I still listen.”

The one player who does not solicit nor receive tips? Guess. It is Stan Javier, whose father Julian was a former big league star second baseman.

“My dad always wanted me to go to school and not play, and I love him for that,” said Javier, who was 7 when his father retired. “When we talk, it is about everything but baseball. There is so much else to discuss.

“And that’s fine with me. I would love my father whether he played the game or not.”

In other Dodgers, their fatherly influence is as noticeable as the numbers on their backs.

Mike Sharperson said that while he was growing up in Orangeburg, S.C., his father, also Mike, bought him, “The biggest Wilson glove that has ever been made.”

Explained Sharperson: “He wanted me to be able to play every position. And so I did just that, and kept wearing that glove until college.”

Today, Sharperson still has the glove in storage. And he is making a career out of being the Dodgers’ most versatile player.

Morgan’s father, Henry, used to take him down to the Las Vegas Little League park and toss baseballs at him. But he didn’t want him to catch them.

“He told me to let the balls hit me,” Morgan said. “He wanted me to get used to being drilled.”

Today, Morgan is considered one of the Dodgers’ best pitchers under pressure. And by going 6-5 with a 3.08 ERA thus far this year, he has repaid his dad in an unusual way.

“Every time I pitch, my father tries to get down to one of the sports books Vegas and bet on me,” Morgan said. “He has a great time.”

Morgan’s Father’s Day gift?

“I’m pitching that day against the Padres,” he reminded last week. “My best gift to him would be a win.”

Sharperson would like to fly his father to Los Angeles for the game, but his father will not fly. That’s why his double off Zane Smith in Atlanta in 1988 was one of the biggest hits of his career. In his second major league season, it was the first time his father had seen him play.

“He saw me when I had 75 homers in the back yard one year,” Sharperson said. “But this was different.”

Scioscia has plenty of gift ideas. But his father, in his 70s, is recovering from two strokes and doesn’t get around so well anymore. At least, not the way he used to when he drove Scioscia and his boyhood teammates to every sandlot game.

So when he calls his father today, they may talk of how Scioscia stuck with catching long enough to become one of the best in the game. They may talk about how Scioscia can now afford not just that Manny Sanguillen glove, but the entire sporting goods store.

Then when Scioscia hangs up, he may hurt. For the many players whose love for their fathers is bigger than all the stadiums and richer than all the contracts, Father’s Day can be as much bitter as sweet.

“Now that I can take care of my father, he can’t enjoy it as much,” Scioscia said softly. “You know, I never had a chance to pay him back for everything. And I guess I never will.”