Dodgers Feeling Better : Baseball: Strawberry says he has no pain in surgically repaired back and should be ready for spring training. Davis also doing well.

Darryl Strawberry first felt a twinge in his back when he was running the bases in Philadelphia. It was last May and the Dodger season had only begun, but after that game, everything he tried brought pain.

Seven months later, Strawberry says the pain is finally gone. And he plans to be ready to play when the 1993 season begins.

“I’ll be ready for spring training,” Strawberry said this week. “I’m right on time for spring schedule according to the doctor, but I think I’m ahead of schedule both physically and mentally.”

Strawberry, who had back surgery in September, is in therapy daily, exercising to increase the strength of his back muscles. He said he will probably start swinging a bat again in mid-January, when the Dodgers’ winter workouts begin.

Strawberry said his condition has improved considerably since last summer, when he could no longer do the things he was used to doing with ease, such as swinging a bat. Nothing he tried seemed to work.

“Awful isn’t the word to describe it,” Strawberry said.

An exam showed that Strawberry had a herniated disk protruding on a nerve. The Dodgers’ medical staff tried to rehabilitate him without surgery, but that did not work either. He played in only 43 games after averaging 140 games in his eight previous seasons.

For the Dodgers to rebound from their disastrous season, Strawberry’s bat has to be in the lineup. So does the bat of his oft-injured teammate and friend, Eric Davis, who also had surgery near the end of the season--on his shoulder, wrist and hand.

“I feel great,” Davis said. “I’m in one piece.”

Davis works out daily with a personal trainer, running, throwing and lifting weights. The last time he felt this good, he said, was 1990, just before he hurt his knee sliding into third base. In his five full seasons before 1991, Davis played in an average of 131 games. Last season, he played in 76.

“Last season was frustrating because I couldn’t do anything about it,” Davis said. “That’s the hard part, sitting on the sidelines not being able to help.”

Davis reiterated that he plans to change his style of play. No more crash-dives for balls. His focus will be on staying in the lineup.

“It’s an ability thing,” he said. “I have so much ability that it causes me problems. But for the first time, I have to play selfish and it’s going to be hard. The guys on the mound are glad I make those catches, the pitchers appreciate it, but the team management and media doesn’t.”

Strawberry says he knows he and Davis are being counted on by management and the fans, but the pressure he feels is coming from within.

“I’m counting on myself at this point,” he said. “I have to focus on what I have to do, rather on what is being said. I still believe. I’ll be ready.”

Strawberry was involved in a traffic accident last Friday night but said the jolt did not affect his back. He suffered only minor cuts.

Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda returned from the Dominican Republic, where he saw Jose Offerman and Raul Mondesi play and talked with Ramon Martinez about Martinez’s impending marriage. He said Offerman’s fielding looked solid, but his bat was a little rusty because it was only his fourth game of the winter season.

Lasorda said Mondesi, an outfield prospect, is “inches away” from being a solid player.

“He can field, hit with power and has tremendous speed,” Lasorda said. “At the (Dominican) All-Star game, he ran the 60-yard dash just short of 6.4 seconds and won going away.”

Martinez, who had elbow problems last season, is not playing winter ball, but Lasorda said the right-hander said he feels good, possibly because he is getting married in January.

“Ramon asked me what I thought of marriage, and I said to him, ‘Ramon, tell me who is happier, a bird in a cage or a bird that can fly free?’ ” Lasorda said. “But I told him, I like marriage!”

The new math: Lasorda, talking about new second baseman Jody Reed: “What we needed was a good solid second baseman and he is. We would have liked to have a player with a little pop in his bat, but this guy has some extra-base power--he hits a lot of doubles.

“So for every two doubles he hits, that’s the same thing as a home run. Two doubles is a run, two doubles is four total bases. A home run is four total bases, a home run is a run.

“And three doubles is a run and a half.”

Dodger Notes

Sun Cities, Dodger’s minor league team in the new Arizona Winter League, won the championship. Five Dodgers were on the team, which was led by catcher Mike Piazza, who hit .291 with three home runs and 23 runs batted in, and minor league pitcher Todd Williams, who was 4-1 with seven saves and a 0.40 earned-run average. . . . The Dodgers will hold an autograph show on Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Dodger Stadium at the Top of the Park gift shop. Players scheduled to be there are Eric Karros, Jim Gott and Dave Hansen, as well as former Dodgers Tommy Davis and Lou Johnson. Admission and autographs are free.