Rodgers’ Wake-Up Call Is Cause for Alarm : Baseball: Manager of last-place Expos is fired and replaced by Runnells.

Buck Rodgers’ phone rang at 6:30 a.m. and Dave Dombrowski made it short and sweet.

“He said, ‘We’ve decided to make a change and we have to let you go,’ ” Rodgers said Monday after he was fired as manager of the Montreal Expos.

“I said, ‘OK, that’s fine,’ and I hung up and went back to sleep.”

The seven-year reign of Rodgers, the most successful manager in Expo history, ended when Dombrowski, the team’s general manager, replaced him with Tom Runnells. Rodgers, 52, was in the final year of a contract that will pay him about $500,000. His record with the Expos was 520-499.

But victories were hard to come by this season. When Rodgers was fired, the Expos had lost 10 of their last 11 games and dropped to 20-29--last in the NL East and 13 games behind first-place Pittsburgh.

Rodgers was the fifth manager fired this season and the third in the NL East. In April, the Philadelphia Phillies fired Nick Leyva and on consecutive days late last month, the Chicago Cubs fired Don Zimmer, the Kansas City Royals fired John Wathan and the Baltimore Orioles dropped Frank Robinson. All five teams were in last place at the time.

Dombrowski decided Saturday night to replace Rodgers and offered the job to third-base coach Runnells on Sunday. Dombrowski said the main reason for the move was because “I want to get the focus back where it should be, which is winning ballgames. I didn’t see us going into Houston and Atlanta this week playing with a spark.”

Runnells, 36, is the youngest manager in the majors. He joined the Expos last season after guiding triple-A Indianapolis to a title. Runnells signed a contract through the 1992 season.

“I think he’ll have a total commitment to build a championship team,” Dombrowski said. “I think you’ll see that he has a burning desire to succeed.”

Runnells said communication will be the key to his success.

“I’ve learned a lot from Buck, but the one thing I learned the most from him was honesty,” Runnells said. “He was never one to keep anything from the players and the press, and that’s something I hope to continue.”

Rodgers replaced Bill Virdon in 1985 and had only one sub-.500 team in Montreal, where he was extremely popular with fans even though the club never finished higher than third in the East.

Rodgers admitted to friction between himself and Dombrowski over personnel matters but added “in the last two or three months, we probably got closer in our relationship than at any other time.”