Elster Gives Reality Baseball Another Try : Role player: Former Met shortstop returns to majors with Yankees after landing a part in a sports movie.

The only big league experience Kevin Elster expected to have this summer was on the big screen.

Up there, he would be Pat Corning, the somewhat surly veteran in the movie “Little Big League,” a fantasy about a kid who manages the Minnesota Twins. For Elster, whose career with the New York Mets ended after a shoulder injury in 1992, it was about as close to baseball as he wanted to be.

After two surgeries and two comeback attempts, enough was enough. Nothing was going to drag him back onto the field. Nothing. It was Hollywood or bust.

“To be honest with you, I’m not one of those people that’s in love with the game,” Elster said. “I don’t want baseball to consume me.”

Out at Anaheim Stadium this week, Elster was being consumed.

He took infield practice as a member of the New York Yankees. He was working his arm into shape, getting ready to come off the disabled list. He may not love baseball, but he can’t seem to leave it. Not just yet.

Elster is giving it one more shot, putting the fledgling acting career on hold. It wasn’t fame or fortune that dragged him back . . . well, it wasn’t fame anyway.

“Yeah, it was the money,” Elster said, smiling. “No, really I want to get a World Series ring from the other side of town. I think Yogi Berra is the only one to do that (get World Series rings with the Mets and Yankees.) That would be nice.”

And it could happen, even without a Hollywood-type script.

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Elster, who played at Marina High and Golden West College, joined a Yankee team that’s battling for first with Baltimore in the American League East. His experience and fielding abilities were appealing to Gene Michael, Yankee vice president and general manager.

“Kevin has good range and the quickest release I’ve ever seen,” Michael said. “If he’s healthy, he’s one of the best defensive shortstops in the game.”

Elster is working on getting healthy.

He started seven games after being called up June 30 but went on the disabled list because of inflammation in his right shoulder. Michael said the injury is unrelated to the one that nearly ended Elster’s career.

Elster, 30, was 0 for 20 at the time. Hitting, though, was never his claim to fame. He did, after all, hold the major league record for consecutive errorless games by a shortstop, which was later broken by Cal Ripken.

But Elster isn’t a one-dimensional player either. He was hitting .256 at Albany, a double-A team. He won one game with a grand slam in the 10th inning, then came back the next night with a game-winning double, also in the 10th. He was nine for his last 19 when the Yankees called him up.

“We felt he could help this team in many ways,” Michael said. “That’s why we were interested. And we know he’s a better hitter than he’s shown.”

Elster hasn’t had much chance to showcase his abilities the past two years. Before this season, he had last played in the major leagues April 12, 1992. But the pain in his shoulder wouldn’t go away and he went on the disabled list. Two surgeries later, the Mets gave up on him.

He tried comebacks with the Dodgers last season and the San Diego Padres this spring. A leg injury prevented Elster from doing much in spring training and he was released.

End of career, he thought. But Elster was hardly crushed. He had other opportunities.

“I didn’t want to be a baseball coach,” Elster said. “I’ve seen baseball consume so many people. There is so much else out there in life and I wanted to start exploring it.”

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In “Little Big League,” Elster’s character doesn’t care much for Billy Heywood, the 12-year old who has inherited the team from his grandfather and made himself manager. Elster did have some minor disagreements with Met Manager Jeff Torborg in spring of 1992, but this wasn’t wasn’t typecasting.

“I just went in to read for the part and I thought it was great,” Elster said. “They called me back to read again, this time in front of other people, and lo and behold I got the part.”

The movie was shot last summer in Minnesota. Elster, Brad Lesley, a former Cincinnati Red, and Leon Durham, a former Chicago Cub, had roles and also acted as technical advisers. Other players, including Ken Griffey Jr., Rafael Palmeiro and Randy Johnson made cameos.

“It was a great luxury to be able to ask an actor to hit a line drive down third and have him actually be able to do it,” director Andrew Scheinman said in a recent interview.

Elster had never considered acting before, but took an immediate liking to it. It reminded him of baseball.

“It’s all entertainment,” he said. “Acting is not easy, but when everything feels right and you’re really into your character, it can be easy. It’s just like hitting.

“You can talk forever about what’s hard about it. But it’s a challenge and it has its rewards . . . oh yeah, there’s the money and the women.”

Elster smiled.

“No, no. Acting just seemed like a natural thing to get into after baseball.”

But baseball wouldn’t go away.

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The scene was Shea Stadium, October 1986. On the field, Met fans are running amok having just seen their team win the World Series. Elster and several other players returned to the field a half hour after the game.

“We took a couple of bottles of champagne and went out to celebrate with the fans,” Elster said. “It was good for them and it was good for us.”

Elster couldn’t have asked for a better moment.

He played in only one game during the series and four games during the playoffs against the Houston Astros. But he had a ring and his future was still ahead of him.

“I was really relieved, because I was a young kid and I thought I was going to get in there and screw everything up,” Elster said.

Elster didn’t mess up much during the next five seasons. He was the Mets’ shortstop from 1988-91. He went a record 88 games without an error in 1988-89.

Elster didn’t knock down any fences hitting, but he wasn’t a pushover at the plate either. He drove in 55 runs in 1989 and 45 the following season.

He doesn’t know how he hurt his shoulder, possibly during a brawl with the Padres. But after six games with the Mets in 1992, he was done. The team didn’t offer him a new contract.

“I was a stud back then,” Elster said. “I was a rookie touted to go on and do everything. Sometimes those things just don’t work out.”

When the two comebacks failed, he had had enough. Then his brother, Pat, called Michael.

“I told him we would be interested in Kevin if he would go to our minor league facility and do the hard work necessary,” Michael said.

Said Elster: “I got a nice vacation in Florida out of it.”

Elster signed a minor league contract on May 1 and a spent a month in Tampa. He lost weight and gained strength in his arm.

He played 19 games at Albany before being called up.

“I was never going to play in the minor leagues again,” Elster said. “But the Yankees really took care of me. They made it worth my while.

“I view baseball as a business and I go about my business professionally. Really, I came back for the money.”

Elster then smiled. On his finger is his 1986 World Championship ring.

“Well, the prospects of another ring sounded pretty good, too,” he said.

A happy ending Elster would like to help write.