A WORK IN PROGRESS : Recapturing a Childhood Fascination : Baseball: ‘Innings and Quarters’ is Reseda record producer Harvey Kubernik’s first effort at a spoken-word sports recording.

Baseball has been real good to Harvey Kubernik. His childhood memories will always reserve a special shrine to the game he loves, to Koufax and Drysdale, Wills and Gilliam and, of course, Dodger Dogs.

Fast forward to adulthood, where the business of baseball--contract disputes, salary arbitration, television overexposure--has taken the game off his pedestal. Joe DiMaggio is long gone, indeed.

But somehow in his disillusionment, Kubernik, a Reseda record producer, has recaptured his fascination; he is in love again.

“I appreciate the skills and the commitment of the players,” said Kubernik, 39. “I have that back. I just decided I would concentrate on what happened between the lines and not on the periphery business stuff.”

Kubernik isn’t content to keep his passion on the bench. He is producing his first album of spoken-word sports recordings, collected from Los Angeles poets, titled “Innings and Quarters.” Basketball, football and horse racing pieces are also included in the compilation, but Kubernik’s work is, in spirit, his gift to the national pastime.

The work, to be available on cassettes and CDs distributed by New Alliance Records in March, contains 27 selections--16 about baseball. The work ranges from pieces about the high-profile 1969 New York Mets, who went from the joke of baseball to its miracle, to the minor leagues of the 1950s. Others deal with the Negro League, women’s softball and the broadcasting majesty of Vin Scully.

Baseball, it has often been said, is the poet’s sport; there’s Casey at the bat, not Casey shooting a jump shot.

“It’s a beautiful game,” said poet Holly Prado, who contributed two pieces. “It’s artful, and it depends on the subtleties that one misses in basketball and football.”

Kubernik first conceived the idea of a sports album about a decade ago, and confined it to the clubhouse when it was rejected by record executives who didn’t see a market for it.

Yet whenever working with poets on other spoken-word projects, Kubernik always kept a mental log of everyone’s sports material. Among the non-baseball pieces are tributes to Magic Johnson and former Chicago Bears running back Gale Sayers. Quincy Troupe’s recording on Johnson focuses on his basketball exploits and was finished long before the former Laker admitted that he had tested positive for the AIDS virus.

“I knew of all these poets,” said Kubernik, president of BarKubCo Music, Inc., a record production company, “who had sports poems in their cages, and I got to pull them out.”

Last spring, he decided it was time to collect. To synchronize his work with his passion, Kubernik began the project on the first day of spring training in March. When the final out was recorded in Game 7 of the World Series between the Twins and Braves, Kubernik settled on his title.

“I wanted to go through this like it would be a real season,” said Kubernik, who has produced spoken-word recordings by Exene Cervenka and Charles Bukowski, and is currently working on a tape with basketball legend Bill Walton. “I wanted a beginning, middle and ending.”

Kubernik also wanted to use the team concept. He organized the works for “Innings and Quarters” as a manager would select his team--developing a balanced lineup in which each works well with the others. As a writer and poet, he included his own piece--an analysis of the 1991 Los Angeles Dodgers.

“The thing is that I’ve always been a team player,” he said, “and that runs counter to what the record business is.”

He even sounds like a ballplayer.

For the next two months, Kubernik will continue to edit the pieces to prepare for the album’s spring release.

Just in time for another baseball season.