BASEBALL / ROSS NEWHAN : And the Last Shall Be First--but Not the Dodgers

Consider this:

It is not inconceivable that two teams that finished last in 1992, the Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies, could win their divisions this season, as could a team that finished next to last, the Kansas City Royals.

Will they?

The view here is that the Royals and Phillies will, but the Dodgers won’t.

The predictions:

National League West--1. Atlanta Braves; 2. Cincinnati Reds; 3. Dodgers; 4. Houston Astros; 5. San Francisco Giants; 6. San Diego Padres; 7. Colorado Rockies.

Comment: The Dodgers will be vastly improved, turning around many of those 40 one-run losses of last season, but they simply have too big a jump to make in baseball’s toughest division. The Braves are impossible to pick against. It’s not only their starting rotation, it’s that deep cast of young players waiting in triple A for a regular to slip.

National League East--1. Phillies; 2. St. Louis Cardinals; 3. Montreal Expos; 4. New York Mets; 5. Chicago Cubs; 6. Pittsburgh Pirates; 7. Florida Marlins.

Comment: The only thing flakier than John Kruk is this pick, but with the Pirates no longer dominant, it’s possible to buy into the theory that the Phillies have the best hitting in the division, if Lenny Dykstra stays healthy; and the deepest pitching, if Mitch Williams throws enough strikes to supply the finishing touch.

American League West: 1. Royals; 2. Minnesota Twins; 3. Texas Rangers; 4. Oakland Athletics; 5. Chicago White Sox; 6. Angels; 7. Seattle Mariners.

Comment: No team was more aggressive in addressing its needs than Kansas City, which added David Cone, Greg Gagne, Jose Lind and Felix Jose. It’s a big jump, but the division title is there for the taking. The Angels will take part, but that’s about it. They face too many questions and concerns to be considered a factor. I applaud their direction--overdue by 20 or so years--but their failure to retain or secure protection for their kids seems penny-wise and take-your-poundings foolish.

American League East--1. Toronto Blue Jays; 2. Baltimore Orioles; 3. New York Yankees; 4. Milwaukee Brewers; 5. Detroit Tigers; 6. Cleveland Indians; 7. Boston Red Sox.

Comment: This should be a dogfight among the top three. The World Series champion Blue Jays underwent a massive turnover that raised questions about their pitching, but the Tuesday trade for Darrin Jackson, who should be a 20-plus home run hitter in the SkyDome, helped to sway the vote away from Baltimore or New York in another wide-open race.

DERRICKED

Lackadaisical effort, to an extent, prompted the Blue Jays to give up on Derek Bell, who dominated the International League but couldn’t get started at the major league level.

Bell, traded for Jackson, had a cumulative minor league average of .289, including a .346 average with 93 runs batted in at Syracuse in 1991, compared to .228 for 78 games in the majors.

He follows Sil Campusano, Rob Ducey, Glenallen Hill and Mark Whiten as the latest in a series of touted Toronto outfielders who failed, in Canada, at least, to live up to their billing--a hype-and-burn pattern familiar, perhaps, to followers of the Dodgers.

“I still think Derek will be a good player, but we couldn’t wait for him to come defensively,” Toronto General Manager Pat Gillick said, adding that Bell is simply a free spirit who moves to his own beat.

“It’s not that he’s a detriment or lackadaisical (as Manager Cito Gaston recently charged),” Gillick said. “It’s just that he has something of a different personality.”

Jackson, a center fielder in San Diego, will play left for the Blue Jays, with Devon White in center and Joe Carter in right.

Gillick said that with Manny Lee and Kelly Gruber gone from the left side of the infield--to be replaced by Dick Schofield and Ed Sprague--and Dave Winfield and Candy Maldonado gone from the outfield, the Blue Jays had to have better defensive insurance on the left side than Bell can supply.

“Our outfield will be better than it was with either Winfield or Maldonado and should be one of the league’s best defensively,” Gillick said, adding that the Blue Jays’ defense of their league and division titles hinges on Sprague’s development at third base, the ability of Duane Ward to replace Tom Henke as the full-time closer and the ongoing search for a fifth starter to join Jack Morris, Juan Guzman, Todd Stottlemyre and Dave Stewart.

“We lost Henke, (Jimmy) Key and Cone, and only added Stewart,” Gillick said. “Our pitching is shallow. We’re not as solid as we’d like to be. That’s a concern, but I don’t see the likelihood of a trade. We’ll continue to look within.”

One possible answer was left-hander David Wells, but the Blue Jays--despite a $2.05-million salary guarantee for which they will remain responsible--put Wells on waivers, fed up with his work ethic and attitude whenever he wasn’t in the rotation.

“We didn’t see the stuff, and we didn’t see the commitment,” Gillick said of Wells. “Sometimes it’s better to cut bait with guys like that.”

WERNER SICKCOM

Padre Chairman Tom Werner has produced major TV hits with Bill Cosby and Roseanne Arnold, but his ongoing dismantling of what had been a contending team--as opposed to the rebuilding of the last-place Astros and Indians--is a disgrace.

A commissioner, if there was one, might even find it comparable to the attempted sale by then A’s owner Charles O. Finley of Vida Blue, Rollie Fingers and Joe Rudi, which then-commissioner Bowie Kuhn disallowed as not being in baseball’s best interests.

Jackson, who hit 38 home runs and drove in 119 runs for the Padres during the last two years, went on the block as soon as he won his arbitration at $2.1 million.

“In the 14 years I’ve represented players, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Jackson’s agent, Alan Meersand, said of the San Diego turnover.

“If the owners there think they can con the public into believing they still have a contending lineup, they need to be reminded that Atlanta and Cincinnati are still in the division.

“I mean, once again baseball survives, despite the people who run it--in this case the Padres’ ownership, 15 guys pulling in 15 different directions.”

Asked about Jackson’s expressed “sadness” at leaving San Diego, Meersand said it was largely environmental, more bittersweet than anything. He grew up in Southern California. His mother lives in San Diego. He had little chance to enjoy the rewards of having finally made it with a neighborhood team.

“He wasn’t sad about going to the World (Series) champions,” Meersand said. “He wasn’t sad about joining the team that leads the league in attendance and revenue. I mean, that’s like hitting the baseball lottery.”

ADIEU

Bert Blyleven has shut the door on his chance for 300 victories with his decision to retire, but the door to the Hall of Fame should be opening anyway.

Blyleven is 22nd on the all-time list with 287 victories, third with 3,701 strikeouts, 13th with 4,970 innings, eighth with 685 starts and ninth with 60 shutouts.

“I just thank the Lord that I’m in position to be considered (for the Hall of Fame),” Blyleven said. “Three hundred would have been nice, but I’m very happy with my accomplishments. The statistics are great, but I’m proudest of my two World Series rings.”

Shoulder surgery that forced him to sit out the 1991 season deprived him of 300 victories. He remains disappointed that the Angels didn’t give him the spring shot he took with the Twins, but he says he had too much fun over 23 major league seasons to have any bitterness.

Neither, he said, did he want to go from club to club, seeking to prolong his career and possibly taking a job away from a young pitcher who has the same dreams Blyleven had when he came to the big leagues at 19.

The Twins had signed veteran Jim Deshaies to a guaranteed contract, were out of options with Willie Banks, 24, and had two other young pitchers, Pat Mahomes, 22, and Mike Trombley, 25, competing with Blyleven for the three spots behind Kevin Tapani and Scott Erickson.

“It’s hard to do something for 25 years and then just retire,” Blyleven said. “We all think we can play forever, but I’d had an up-and-down spring, my delivery wasn’t pure like it had been before I hurt my shoulder and there was still some pressure in the shoulder.

“I’m going to miss the camaraderie, the fun of the clubhouse, but in some ways it’s a relief to know I’m going to have more time for my family and to move on to other things, though I don’t know what they are. I mean, I’d like to stay in baseball in some capacity. It’s been my life.”

LOWERING THE BOONE

A .206 spring during which Bret Boone made six errors in 22 games, struck out 14 times in 63 at-bats and drew criticism from Manager Lou Piniella regarding his swing led the Mariners to option the touted second baseman to their triple-A affiliate at Calgary of the Pacific Coast League, where he will again compete against his father, former catcher Bob Boone, who manages the A’s Tacoma affiliate.

The Mariners will open the season with veteran utilityman Rich Amaral in the position formerly occupied by Harold Reynolds, who was allowed to go to the Baltimore Orioles as a free agent because the Mariners were trying to cut salaries and believed Boone was ready.

Now the Mariners suspect that Boone, who went to El Dorado High in Placentia and USC, might have gotten a little too comfortable with the idea that the position was his. They still believe he will be their long-term second baseman, but that he might have needed this jolt.

“I don’t think this is what they expected to happen,” Boone said of the Mariners’ plans. “It definitely wasn’t what I expected to happen, but it’s my own fault. I screwed it up.

“I have to get my head straight, then go down and do what I have to do to get back. I can’t mope. I can’t feel sorry for myself.”

TAG PLAY

Gary Carter, now a member of the Florida Marlins’ broadcasting crew, puts several hits, gentle and otherwise, on Tom Lasorda and the Dodgers in his new book, “The Gamer,” written with Ken Abraham for Word Publishing.

Carter, who spent the 1991 season with the Dodgers, describes Lasorda as “the stuff of which baseball legends are made, and he has made up quite a few of them himself.”

He also describes Lasorda as always motivating and promoting, and not adverse to using exaggeration or anything else to inspire his players. Carter says he is probably the most enigmatic manager since Casey Stengel, with an instinctive genius for reading a personality and using the proper motivation.

“It is no secret in baseball circles that Lasorda can out-curse nearly any man in the game and loves to prove it regularly,” Carter writes. “His motivational mix is blue-streak profanity, combined with a combustible temper, tenuously balanced by boundless enthusiasm, lavish affection for his team and unabashed loyalty to players he helped develop into big leaguers.”

POLITICS

It seems ironic that Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) is a leader of the Congressional attempt to revoke baseball’s antitrust exemption. He apparently had no problems with the exemption when he was a limited partner of Ted Bonda and Nick Meliti during their brief ownership of the Cleveland Indians in the 1960s.