BASEBALL ‘94: Going, Going. . .Gone : No Light at End of Their Tunnel : Dodgers: O’Malley and players lament what could have been an award-winning finish.

A lamp lit the path from the Dodger clubhouse to the dugout Wednesday afternoon, but at the end of the tunnel, the gates to the field were locked. As one peered through the screen, the now-empty romance of the Dodger season seemed to tease, for what might have been. For what will never be.

“You would like to reflect back on the season, but unfortunately you look back and it was like the season was all for naught,” pitcher Tom Candiotti said.

Upstairs in the Dodger offices, employees watched on television as Bud Selig, acting baseball commissioner, canceled the season, aborting the hopes of the Dodgers’ first postseason appearance in five years and placing some of their jobs in jeopardy as well. That includes Manager Tom Lasorda, whose contract was up at the end of the season.

It is now the end of the season.

“(Dodger owner) Peter O’Malley has more to worry about than me,” Lasorda said while eating another no-game meal at a Pasadena restaurant after leaving the stadium.

Lasorda echoed the reaction of most of the Dodger players, who spoke of sadness for the game and the fans, and disbelief that it had come to this. O’Malley, speaking by phone from Dublin, Ireland, where he is promoting Little League and amateur baseball, said he didn’t think the season would end this way, either.

“I thought both sides were smart enough to do everything possible to prevent it from happening,” O’Malley said.

Back in Atlanta, Brett Butler said he was in shock, not understanding how a $2-billion industry could be shut down. “I can’t believe that the big-market clubs could allow Selig to do that,” he said. “I thought George (Steinbrenner) or Peter (O’Malley) or Ted (Turner) would say ‘Come on, let’s go.’ But to sit on the salary cap for 20 months, everybody lost in this one and this is a black eye for baseball. Baseball will be scarred for life.”

O’Malley, once considered one of the most powerful owners in baseball, was unhappy that Selig excluded him from negotiations, according to sources. But when asked why he take didn’t try to take a more active role, O’Malley said: “I was not a member of the executive council or Player Relations Committee. If I were asked to be on those committees, I would have been. I have been on these committees in the past, but I realize that everybody can’t be on these committees all the time.

” . . . All the time we had hope, and the negotiating group for each side said they were flexible, it wasn’t a situation of take it or leave it,” O’Malley said. “And I said, and was quoted several times as saying, now is the time to show that flexibility. But they never did.”

Dodger first baseman Eric Karros said that from Aug. 11, the day the players walked out, he knew the season was over. “You can ask Mike (Piazza) about this, because the day we walked out I said that was it, I guess I was looking at it from a pessimistic point of view,” he said.

“This was the year that baseball had a chance to make some strides forward, and what happened is that we made 10 strides backward. The thing is you are not talking about one single player or one single team, but it’s disappointing for the game as a whole. I think Mr. O’Malley said it best when he said the players and owners are holding hands and jumping off the bridge together. It’s not one side trying to beat the other side; in the end both sides lost.”

However, Karros, along with many of the other Dodger players, continued to work out, not only in the gym but on playing fields as well. When the strike started, the Dodgers were in first place in the National League West, 3 1/2 games ahead of the San Francisco Giants.

“Well, we won, didn’t we?” Piazza said from Philadelphia, where he is visiting his family. “I told Eric we should get some guys together and have a party, because we are champs. In fact, I just talked to Barry Bonds on the phone a couple of hours ago, and I told him we won, and he said we won by forfeit. I said, ‘So what? A victory is a victory.’ ”

But Piazza doesn’t feel that anybody won in the negotiations, calling it a battle between the small-market owners and the large-market owners, not the owners and players. “It’s a shame, because the fans suffer and we suffer and everybody suffers. But what are you going to do about it? That’s how I seem to end each conversation. What are you going to do about it?”

Pitcher Jim Gott said Piazza was one of the players who worked out for most of the strike. “I came up with a new pitch and have thrown every other day since the season stopped and there were five other guys who were doing the same thing,” Gott said.

“(Kevin) Gross, Orel Hershiser, Candy (Candiotti), Piazza and Karros were some of them. I would call up a few of my friends, who just happened to be some of the best players in the world, and go and throw batting practice. One Sunday morning I met Carlos (Hernandez) and Henry (Rodriguez) on a field at the crack of dawn with dew still on the ground. It was a blast.”

Gott is one of 10 free agents on the Dodgers, many of whom won’t be back next season, whenever that is. “We were in first place and Tim Wallach would have probably been the comeback player of the year and Raul Mondesi would be the rookie of the year, and probably still will be,” Piazza said. “Billy Ashley is having a great year (in the minors) and he would have been up in September to help us and we probably would have seen pitcher Greg Hansell for the first time, who is a local guy. It is clearly the season that could have been, and obviously not only for the Dodgers, but for baseball.”

While most of the players cleaned out their lockers when the strike began, Piazza hasn’t been back to the Dodger clubhouse. His locker, virtually untouched, still has an array of baseball cards hanging above, including one of broadcaster Jim Rome. Mondesi, who left immediately for the Dominican Republic when the strike began, has a package of fan mail. Cory Snyder, also a free agent, still has his multitude of gloves waiting for him to play again.

Five birds that Lasorda kept caged in his office and named after his infield, plus Piazza, had been taken home by a clubhouse attendant. Lasorda put them in the dugout once during batting practice, and when the team won, it became a ritual. He often pointed out how they sung after a victory.

Wednesday, there was only silence.