They’re Not-So-Happy Campers : Baseball: Free agents get together because they have no place else to go.

Twenty-nine players, a few dozen fans and just one major league scout were in attendance Friday as the players’ union opened a spring training camp for veteran free agents.

Chris Sabo, Dave Stewart, Todd Stottlemyre, Mickey Tettleton, Dave Magadan, Mike Devereaux and Howard Johnson were among the veterans who took part in a light, two-hour workout under a blazing sun at the pink and aqua Homestead Sports Complex.

“We’re calling ourselves the Homestead Homies,” former New York Yankee utility man Randy Velarde said. “We’re all misfits.”

Foremost on their minds was having a place to work out, but the free agents also were united in their uncertainty of returning to a job market in which salaries aren’t what they used to be.

“I couldn’t have picked a worse time to be a free agent,” Velarde said. “Bad luck is really falling my way.”

He made $1.125 million in 1994 and had the best season of his career, but was offered only $200,000 by the Yankees.

“That’s an 80% pay cut--a tremendous cut and it’s just too much,” he said. “Their cutting off everything but my toes.”

Many of the players in this unique camp are coming off good years rather than trying to bounce back from injuries or bad years.

“To see with your own eyes what’s out there, it’s shocking,” Velarde said.

Indeed, the roster of players who showed up on the first day of camp would make a very decent major league squad.

It could have a rotation of Stottlemyre, Stewart, Bobby Witt, Eric Hanson and Scott Sanderson, an infield of Sabo, Scott Fletcher, Mariano Duncan and Dan Pasqua and an outfield of Johnson, Devereaux and Candy Maldonado.

The “manager” is Jackie Moore, who skippered the Oakland Athletics from 1984-86.

“It’s a heck of a team, and I’d take my chances with a team like this,” Moore said. “In fact, I’d give my right arm for a team like this.”

“This is a smart move on these guys’ part,” said scout Don Welke of the Toronto Blue Jays. “They still have to go through the rigors of spring training and get in shape. By being here, they’re showing they’re serious about their business.”

The workout was limited to stretching, batting practice, light throwing and running. Many of the free agents wore T-shirts reading “Property of Players Association,” a statement more ironic than the free agents may have realized.

“These guys don’t have contracts, so we don’t want to get anybody hurt,” Moore said. “Also, if they did get hurt they probably wouldn’t tell me because they wouldn’t want word to get out that they’re injured.”

Lack of a new collective bargaining agreement has thrown baseball into chaos as players have reported back to work.

The Montreal Expos and Kansas City Royals have dealt away their highest paid players, and dozens of third-, fourth- and fifth-year players were wondering whether they’d be offered arbitration or be cast into the free agent pool.

There are more than 150 free agents on the market, many of them with price tags too high for teams with low budgets or teams that only need to be fine-tuned.

“Spots open up, but teams aren’t going to go after you until a spot opens,” Sabo said. “Some teams are calling me, but it’s a matter of getting down to business.”

Many of the most talented free agents are staying away from Homestead, including Larry Walker, Orel Hershiser, John Kruk and Kevin Brown, because they feel deals are imminent.