Dodgers Sprung in the Spring : Baseball: As a veteran team, they have been hurt more by the three-week training period.

According to Tim Belcher, most major league baseball players were thinking about only one thing in March when their union agreed with the owners on only three weeks of spring training after the 32-day lockout.

They were not thinking about sore shoulders. Or rushed rehabilitations from other injuries. Or the effect of unnatural rhythms on veterans accustomed to having six weeks to get ready for a season.

The Dodger pitcher said most players were thinking mainly about money.

“During our discussions about the contract, it seemed everyone was most worried about getting in a full season,” recalled Belcher, his team’s union representative. “You cancel games, you cancel paychecks. We decided, if we could only take three weeks to get ready to ensure a full season and full salaries, then, three weeks it would be. It was all about money.”

But now, after 72 games, that is no longer the case, at least for the Dodgers. For this fourth-place team that appears headed nowhere, the shortened spring training is all about disappointment, disillusionment and regret.

Belcher, for instance, is afraid to pick up his briefcase with his right arm because he worried about the strain.

Orel Hershiser, in rehabilitation after shoulder surgery, dresses and leaves the ballpark every night before the third inning because he can’t bear to watch what he cannot help.

Jeff Hamilton hasn’t thrown a ball in two months. Jay Howell, the Dodgers’ single-season save leader, has removed himself from a save situation. Kirk Gibson has started only 15 games.

Some Dodgers wonder, has any team suffered more because of the shortened spring? Will the eventual summation of this season be that the veteran Dodgers simply didn’t have enough time to get ready?

“I will make absolutely no excuses,” Manager Tom Lasorda said. “There is no way a short spring is the reason for anything. I ask you this: Did the Cincinnati Reds have the same short spring?’ ”

Sure, but the Reds did not have six players in their opening-day starting lineup older than 30. Nor did they have a former league MVP coming back from knee surgery.

Said Howell: “I know one thing. I hope none of us ever have to see a short spring again.”

Exactly how much of their trouble can be traced to the shortened spring is debatable, but one thing is certain: A team that figured to be greatly improved over 1989’s disaster unit is playing worse.

At 35-37, the Dodgers are one game worse than at this point last season. They are also further away from first place.

The Dodgers’ injury problems this season:

--Hershiser, one of the National League’s premier pitchers, underwent reconstructive shoulder surgery April 27 after starting four games with torn shoulder muscles.

Because the problem stemmed from years of pitching, Hershiser would not have avoided surgery with a regular spring training. But his recovery time might have been shorter if the problem would have been caught before he began pitching competitively.

Ironically, the shoulder problem was diagnosed six weeks after the start of spring training, when the team should still have been in camp.

“It may have been exposed earlier with a regular spring, and I would not have gone out there in game situations in the condition I was in,” said Hershiser, 31. “Whether that would have changed anything, I don’t know.”

Could Hershiser have been ready in August or September? The Dodgers, who have yet to find a competent starting pitcher to replace him, don’t want to think about that.

--Gibson, 33, the National League’s most valuable player in 1988, announced in late February that the lockout eliminated his chances of being ready opening day. He was recovering from knee surgery performed last August, and knew he needed at least six weeks with coaches and trainers.

Still, when the shortened spring was announced, he tried to rush his rehabilitation and re-injured his knee while batting off a tee near his Detroit home. He was unable to do much work for the first week of camp, reducing his spring training to only two weeks.

He missed the first 49 games before appearing in the starting lineup June 2. Most of that time, he was replaced by Juan Samuel, who is batting .205.

--Jay Howell, coming off a 28-save season, began spring training in great style. In one of the first exhibition games, he struck out the side in his only inning of work, and almost everyone thought he was ready.

“But I knew I was rushing it,” Howell said. “I knew I was pushing it, trying to get ready too fast. And all of a sudden, my arm wasn’t there.”

Howell, 34, was unavailable for the first six days of the season because of a stiff shoulder. Then he suffered torn cartilage in his knee, which required arthroscopic surgery.

The knee has since recovered from the operation April 24, but the shoulder is still not 100%.

“Actually, I don’t feel that I had a spring training,” Howell said. “It has been very, very difficult to catch up. When the knee hurt, I put more pressure on the arm to make up for it, and the arm wasn’t ready.

“It has not been very much fun, and if they ever decide to shorten the spring training again . . . I just hope they don’t.”

Neither do the other Dodger relievers, who were forced into unfamiliar roles because of Howell’s injury, and have one of the worst bullpen records in the league. They have converted just 11 of 22 save opportunities.

--Hamilton began spring training with high hopes after surviving a winter of trade rumors and outside criticism. Dodger management had backed him and he figured it was time, in his third full major league season, to show his appreciation.

So when he felt a shoulder twinge the first week at Vero Beach, he ignored it. When the pain got worse, he simply iced it. There wasn’t time for anything else.

After seven regular-season games--it still should have been spring training--he was hitting .125 and hurting enough to finally agree to an examination.

A torn muscle was discovered in his right shoulder and on May 4, he underwent arthroscopic surgery. It appears he won’t be ready until about Aug. 1.

“I was taking more swings during the spring because I didn’t have as much time, and maybe that caused it,” Hamilton said. “I am used to building up my shoulder slowly every spring. I am like my little kid (Kyle), who wakes up at the same time every day and goes to bed at the same time every day. His body is used to that rhythm, and gets upset if it changes.

“I think everybody had to change their rhythm this spring, and that may have affected me. I may not have had problems if I’d had more time.”

--The worst may just be starting for Tim Belcher. His recent problems involve a shoulder that has been tender and sometimes sore since he pushed it to the limit in the season’s second game.

Belcher wishes he would have listened to his common sense when he beat San Diego, 1-0, in the first complete game in the major leagues. Since then he has won four of 14 starts, and his earned-run average has climbed to 4.32.

He also says he wishes he would have listened to catcher Mike Scioscia in March, when Belcher still had a chance to make a difference in both his and the Dodgers’ seasons.

“Back when we were negotiating the contract, Scioscia was one of the guys saying that three weeks was not enough time,” Belcher said, “He kept saying, ‘No way, the pitchers need more.’ But you know how that goes.

“Most of the guys were unsure of this, because we had never been through it before.”

Said Scioscia: “I was very vocal about it, especially since in our case, because of the Freeway Series, we didn’t even get three full weeks. Everyone was expecting the pitchers to be ready, and I knew it wouldn’t happen. Maybe for one guy in five. But not all five.”

Scioscia shook his head. “Everybody honestly thought they could get ready quickly,” he said. “Now they know. They were wrong.”