If at First . . .

The sinews in his neck tightened and his eyes smoldered.

Finally, Eric Karros could stand it no longer and flew into a rage. He cursed. He screamed. He ranted and raved.

The Dodgers were playing poorly and it was time for it to stop.

“I just wanted to rip somebody’s head off,” Karros said. “I was embarrassed.”

Shortstop Jose Offerman took the criticism personally. He screamed at Karros. Karros yelled back at him. Soon, they were shoving one another and had to be restrained.

In that blowup, a leader was born.

Eric Peter Karros may have the Hollywood looks and the smoothness of a politician, but the man is a hard-core, throwback baseball player.

“I play the game hard,” Karros said. “I get offended when people don’t do the same. That bothers me. It bothers me a lot.

“I’m trying to do my best to get to a certain point, and if one of my teammates is taking away my opportunity, I’m going to confront him.

“You don’t just stand up and say, ‘OK, I’m going to be a leader this year, guys. I’m going to carry the flag.’ There’s nothing worse than having somebody ranting and raving just to hear themselves. But sometimes you just have to let it out.

“I had four or five meltdowns last season, but you have to pick your time.”

The Karros of today is quite different from the rookie Karros who, four years ago, declined roommate Brett Butler’s offer to take Karros’ clothes to the dry cleaners.

“Eric told me, ‘I can’t do that,’ ” Butler recalled, “ ‘They might send me back.’ He had a lot of insecurities whether he would make it.

“But you saw then, just as you do now, that this guy one day would be the clubhouse leader. He’s not flamboyant by any means. He’s just an old-school player who plays hard, practices hard, and expects everybody else to do the same.

“And last year, that role was really thrust upon him.”

Karros indeed had no choice but to accept the responsibility. Butler was gone, having signed as a free agent with the Mets. Tim Wallach was hurt. Mitch Webster was a bench player. And Todd Worrell and Ramon Martinez were pitchers, not everyday players.

“If he had his choice, he probably wouldn’t want to be the leader of the team,” left fielder Billy Ashley said. “But we needed him. He was our catalyst. He ran the meetings. He told us the right way the game should be played.

“I hate to even think where we’d be without him.”

Karros would not tolerate anything less than a division championship. The team was too talented and Karros wasn’t about to let Offerman or anyone else ruin his opportunity to be in the playoffs.

Karros made his feelings known loud and clear on June 20 at Busch Stadium in the middle of the Dodgers’ 7-0 defeat by the St. Louis Cardinals.

The Dodgers were awful that game. They were being shut out by rookie pitcher Mark Petkovsek. They had already made one error and three mental blunders.

The defeat dropped them to 25-26, and last place in the National League West. Karros could see the season unraveling and he let loose.

“We had about four mental lapses in the game and it was embarrassing,” he said. “I came to the bench and started yelling.

“I never singled Offerman out. Never once did I even mention his name. Never did I confront him.

“But then he came down and confronted me. Maybe he thought it was a personal attack, I don’t know. Really, I think it was something that was building since 1988 when we were together at Great Falls.

“I don’t regret what I did. I didn’t apologize. I really didn’t have a problem with Offy per se, but I do have a problem with anybody that comes to play that’s there physically and not mentally.”

The Dodgers won the next day, 10-1, and the day after, and the day after that. They won six consecutive games and 53 of their last 93 games on their way to the National League West title.

“There’s only so much a manager can do in the clubhouse,” Manager Tom Lasorda said. “What Eric does is a tremendous help. When he sees a guy [foul] up, he tells him. He handled that incident in St. Louis perfectly.”

Said Fred Claire, executive vice president, “Eric is now in a leadership role, without question. He has all of the ability to do that. He’s a player you can point to and say, ‘This is how you get here. This is how you do it.’ ”

His family is convinced that he could be successful at anything he chose but baseball stole his heart. He refused to quit when he barely made his high school team. He never relented when he couldn’t get a college scholarship and walked on at UCLA. He never lost faith when he opened his rookie season on the bench.

Today he is considered one of the best first basemen in the game. He batted a career-high .298 last season with 32 homers and 105 runs batted in, the first Dodger first baseman to surpass 30 homers and 100 RBIs since Steve Garvey in 1977. He had eight game-winning home runs.

“If your leadership is dictated by the numbers you put up, that’s not leading,” Karros said. “That’s a guy not even worth listening to. Look, I’m not stupid. I know throughout this season there will be comparisons to last year. I don’t want to hear it was one fluke year.

“Am I going to hit .300 and drive in over 100 runs? I don’t know. But you can do this, or do that, and unless you win, it means absolutely nothing.

“If we don’t win it this season, it won’t be because [owner] Peter O’Malley didn’t spend the money to win, or Fred Claire didn’t assemble the talent to win. We’ve got everything we need. Now it’s up to us.”

It’s also possible that if Karros and the Dodgers have a stellar season and reach the World Series, his dream of playing his entire career as a Dodger could then be realized.

“I’d love to stay here forever,” he said. “This organization has been great to me. I have never embarrassed them, and they have never embarrassed me. But I’m not naive enough to think that the organization will keep me around just because I’m a nice guy.

“I mean, already this is unbelievable. I could not write out a better scenario. Going to UCLA, playing for the Dodgers, my dad and brother growing up Dodger fans and idolizing Steve Garvey, being a first baseman myself. . . .It’s like a joke. It’s unbelievable.

“If we bring home a World Series championship, let’s just say it would be the ultimate.

“It would be right out of the movies.”