THE GOODS : Sales Pitch : Nowadays, you can’t choose baseball or softball equipment on the fly. Be sure you know your options or you’ll make a few errors.

If you’re old enough to remember rooting for Sandy Koufax, you probably also recall that fixing yourself up with baseball or softball equipment back then was pretty much a cinch.

You bought a glove that you could fit all five fingers into comfortably, you picked a wood bat you could swing easily, and you went home with a generic pair of shoes with six spikes on the soles in two triangular patterns.

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But your kid doesn’t have it that easy--and neither do you if you still like to play the game with the Al’s Deli team in the Wednesday night leagues. Today, picking out basic baseball and softball equipment, and taking care of it, can be trickier, requiring a bit of specialized knowledge of such non-sporting subjects as metallurgy, design and ergonomics.

The inevitable bad news is that some items can give you quite a case of sticker shock. The good news, though, is that you’ll be taking home stuff that is a lot more sophisticated and effective than your old Roger Maris autograph model bat and your Gil Hodges mitt.

Bats: Yes, you can still buy a wooden bat, but you’ll probably want to use it to collect autographs instead of base hits. That, according to Kevin Creagan, a manager at Orange Sporting Goods, is why most wood bat buyers seek them out. Creagan, whose store specializes in outfitting local teams, said the venerable hickory or ash just can’t produce the same power as metal alloys.

“Alloy is the king today,” he said.

Most alloys use aluminum as an ingredient, Creagan said, but some employ more exotic metals such as titanium or blends of the same sort used in high-tech aircraft. An all-aluminum bat is cheaper and keeps its resiliency longer, but it lacks the power that alloys provide.

That power, Creagan said, comes as a result of building the walls of the barrel of the bat thinner. “The ball comes off of that like a trampoline,” he said. “You can crank a ball so much farther.”

All-titanium bats with ultra-thin walls were made for a while, but balls flew off them so fast that baseball and softball league officials outlawed them. “Titanium can project a ball much more quickly off the bat,” said Merle Butler, the director of umpires for the Oklahoma City-based Amateur Softball Assn. of America.

Today, he said, the thinnest walls and the most power are provided by an alloy known as C405. That alloy is used by all three principal manufacturers of bats, said Creagan: Easton, Worth and Louisville.

Some of the latest metal bats are also employing a couple of welcome features. “End-loaded” bats disperse the center of the weight into the middle of the barrel, a feature that aids spray hitters. And rubber inserts in some handles damp the sting the hands feel after a mis-hit pitch (this is often marketed under the name Sting Stop).

Dimensions vary between softball and baseball bats. A softball bat, Butler said, can’t exceed 38 ounces in weight, 34 inches in length and 2 1/4 inches in diameter. But don’t bother bringing a tape measure with you to the store. The bat is OK for softball use if it carries the words official softball on the barrel.

Prices for all bats can vary widely, from about $50 to $250 (for a particularly fancy alloy called C-Core).

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Gloves: The first baseball gloves actually looked like gloves, and were used more for hand protection than as aids to field the ball. Today, glove design is highly specialized.

Catchers’ and first basemen’s gloves are easy to spot because of their larger size and shape, but fielders’ and pitchers’ gloves are more subtly designed.

For instance, Creagan said, outfielders’ gloves are often larger than infielders’ gloves, and many are designed with wide straps between the thumb and forefinger instead of solid webbing. The size allows for greater reach, he said, and the straps provide a way to see “through” the glove when fielding fly balls.

Pitchers’ gloves, on the other hand, usually are smaller and have solid webbing to conceal the ball from the batter until the last instant.

Some fielders’ gloves, Creagan said, feature small leather cinches to snug down the thumb and little finger and thereby form a better pocket, and others have an adjustable strap across the back to lock the glove onto the hand. One manufacturer, Mizuno, even developed a “pump” glove that could be snugged onto the hand by inflating it, he said.

The quality of leather--cowhide is best--generally determines the price of a glove, he said. Prices can vary from about $30 for a child’s glove to nearly $200 for a professional-caliber model.

How do the pros care for a good glove? At first, surprisingly violently, said Dodgers clubhouse manager Dave Wright.

“Some soak them in water and then put them in the dryer and then put some shaving cream on them,” Wright said. “Supposedly that softens up the leather quick. Some people dump them in a whirlpool full of water and then take it and tie a ball in it to form a pocket and then let it drip dry. Some dunk them again and put a sock with a couple of balls in it and hang it in the hot sun. Some take a baseball bat to them and keep pounding to soften the leather.”

After all this torture, the players then condition the leather with one of a variety of agents, Wright said. Shaving cream is popular, he said, but some players prefer mink oil or a product called Dr. Glove. Apparently, it pays.

“Some guys have the same gloves they had from when they were kids or from when they started playing professional ball,” Wright said.

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Shoes: Not as expensive as you might think--they generally run between $50 and $100--but hardly a one-note samba. Today, a baseball shoe includes several variables that can keep you in the store trying on shoes longer than you’d planned.

First decision, said Creagan: Do you want a high-top shoe, a three-quarter cut or a low-top? Second decision: Do you want plastic, molded or metal spikes?

Here it’s necessary to consult the rule book of your particular league. Metal spikes are allowed in Amateur Softball Assn. male and female slow- and fast-pitch league play, Butler said. They’re not allowed in youth leagues (age 18 and under) or in co-ed leagues.

Spikes of any kind are not required in Little League play, said Little League Baseball spokesman Dennis Sullivan, but if they are worn they must be molded plastic or hard rubber.

The business end of the shoes--the spikes themselves--once were a uniform design: three prongs under the ball of the foot, three prongs under the heel, both sets arranged in a triangular pattern. No more. Yes, you can have the traditional pattern, but you also have the choice of such exotics as a shoe with spikes around the perimeter of the sole, or a soccer-type shoe with many nubby spikes.

Can’t decide between metal and hard plastic? There are shoes with interchangeable spikes. Simply unscrew the individual plastic spikes and replace them with metal ones when the Ty Cobb in you takes over.

Caring for shoes in the Dodger clubhouse at first seems like plain vanilla: “We shine them if they get scuffed, put regular shoe shine on them,” Wright said.

But it’s the big leagues, after all, and the players want the shoes to really, really shine. So, Wright said, “We use this stuff called 2001, the stuff that makes your tires shiny. It’s like Armor All. It seems to condition the shoes and shines them also. And it kind of protects them from the dew on the grass.”

And the evolution of game gear doesn’t stop with personal equipment. Even the most venerable item of all is being tinkered with: Some Little League teams have taken to using a “soft” baseball. Covered in synthetic material with stitching and filled with a spongy core, it’s touted as a boon to reducing injury and damned as a bad imitation of the real thing.

The day has finally arrived when a softball can be harder than a hard ball.

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Tracking the Changes in Baseball Equipment

The earliest baseball bat was probably a wagon tongue for hitching horses or some similar piece of handy wood that looked club-like. The earliest baseball glove was. . . well, a bare hand, actually.

Since the middle of the last century, the sizes, shapes and designs of these two principal pieces of ball- playing gear have gone from primordial to prime ticket, undergoing spruts of evolution both subtle and revolutionary.

According to the National Baseball Hall of Fame ad Museum at Coopertown, N.Y., the first home- made bats appeared about 1852. The first limitations in their size- no larger than 2 1/2 inches in diameter- came seven years later. The allowable size was increased to 2 3/4 inches in 1895. The first grip enhancement (string woven around the handle) appeared during the Civil War, and a maximum length of 42 inches (which still applies) was established shortly after.

Late 1800s

When the first catchers got tired of bruises and stinging hands, they began to wear kid gloves with the fingers cut off, imitating A.G. Spalding, who first tried it.

Spalding eventually began advertising padded fingerless gloves to be worn in pairs.

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Most bats were long and slender, apart from special bats used for bunting, which were flat-sides and are now illegal.

1880-1889

Heavy padding followed, and the first heavily padded, fingered glove, appeared two years after Charles Zimmer became the first catcher to work closely behind the plate.

1922

All gloves became more squared at the top, rather than rounded, and by 1927, fielder’sgloves had three fingers and a thumb, and there was webbing between the thumb and forefinger.

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Other bat designs, which appeared early in this century, included a curved bat, a bat with handle rings to aid in gripping, mushroom bats and ball- knob bats (the handles and knobs respectively, had those distinctive shapes), fungo bats and bottle- shaped bats.

1942

The “V- crotch” first baseman’s glove was introduced.

1948

A five- fingered glove with a solid piece of webbing between the thumb and forefinger appeared.

Gloves have seen refinements, including solid leather webs sewn into the fingers, a “Big Bertha catcher’s glove (used by Baltimore catchers to catch knuckleballer Hoyt Wilhelm) and the “basket web.”

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1960s

Aluminum bats made their first appearance in the late ‘60s, but have never been allowed in pro games.

Today

Has the evolution helped? According to Hall of Fame library research materials, the fielding percentages for the National League and the American League in 1908 were .961 and .957, respectively. In 1994, those figures were .980 and .981.