GETTING THEIR RIPS IN

The knuckleball tends to lose movement in the dry air of Arizona, so Tom Candiotti went to the hard stuff.

The former Dodger pitcher considered Brett Butler’s rip of Mike Piazza and said,

“I guess when you’re out of baseball you can say stuff like that, but you would think he’d have the time now to look at himself in the mirror.

“If you went to Mike, he’d probably tell you that Brett Butler was a lot of the problem and a lot of people probably would.”

Suddenly, “March madness” has a new meaning.

First Butler, the retired Dodger, lights into Piazza, the Dodger catcher, saying you can’t build around him because he’s not a leader; that he’s a moody, self-centered, ‘90s player interested only in his own statistics and questioning whether he deserves a $100-million contract.

Now Candiotti, who spent six years in Los Angeles as a consistent pitcher and personality and, at 40, is preparing for his first season in the Oakland Athletics’ rotation, snaps back at Butler.

Yes, he says, there was a lack of leadership among the players, but an absence of consistent execution was more responsible for the underachievement of the last three seasons and to make Piazza the scapegoat, well . . .

“It’s ridiculous,” Candiotti said. “Where do you think that team would be without Mike Piazza?

“Brett’s comments making Mike a scapegoat for what happened, to say he doesn’t deserve this or that, are nonsense. Take Mike out of that equation and see where that team finishes.

“Mike’s a force. He’s one of the best hitters you’ll ever see and his catching has improved a lot.

“I mean, he’s a perennial all-star and might be a Hall of Famer. For some person to point a finger at Mike Piazza, well [that person] better take inventory first. Go around to any team in baseball right now and ask them if they’d like to have Mike Piazza. Check that reaction.”

That’s what people will be doing if Piazza is on the market next winter as a free agent.

The A’s, Candiotti’s fifth major league team, will be hard-pressed to provide as much intrigue as the fourth, particularly over the last three years when the Dodgers kept coming up short with a roster that seemed capable of going much farther.

Candiotti agreed, but said he did not think it was a matter of too much diversity or too little leadership.

He said it was a clubhouse of good guys, but not boisterous guys.

“Not a lot of guys who want to step up and assume that type of role,” he said of the leadership vacuum. “Some guys are meant for it and some guys don’t want it, but you can’t force people to be what they’re not.

“And I don’t think anything off the field prevented us from winning. [Executive Vice President] Fred Claire put one heck of a team together on paper, but too often it got between the lines and didn’t execute. I mean, you look at it on paper and say, ‘Gosh, how did this team not win?’

“The talent was there, but the execution and timing wasn’t. We didn’t get the hit when we needed it or the pitching when we needed it. We lost too many one-run games. Chemistry and leadership help, but we had veteran guys who knew how to prepare and had been through the wars.

“There were leaders among the pitchers and the position players. We didn’t need that one guy.”

As for his leaving?

“I have good memories, but it was time to move on,” Candiotti said.

He added that Claire indicated he was welcome to return in a spot starting-relief role, but that his effectiveness when he returned to the rotation as a replacement for injured Ramon Martinez last season reaffirmed his thinking that starting regularly “is what I do best, what I should be doing.”

As a free agent, Candiotti elicited enough interest to receive a two-year contract from the A’s for $2.85 million this year and $3 million in 1999.

A $3.65-million option kicks in--the A’s can buy it out for $500,000--if he starts 57 games or pitches 400 innings over the next two seasons.

Candiotti was 10-7 with a 3.60 earned-run average in 1997, 7-5 in his final 18 appearances as a starter, after he replaced Martinez and helped keep the Dodgers alive in the division race.

“There’s a lot to be said for the knuckleball,” Candiotti said, alluding to the interest that his resiliency and durability generated as a free agent.

He chose Oakland--about 45 minutes from his Walnut Creek home--because of the personal touch shown by Manager Art Howe, for whom he had played in winter ball in 1985, and General Manager Billy Beane, a teammate that winter.

The negotiating process wasn’t all left to attorney Jeff Moorad.

Candiotti received calls from both Howe and Beane, and said he was made to feel wanted by a team that also added Kenny Rogers to its rotation, has begun to plug in some of baseball’s top prospects and may be within a year or two of dramatic improvements on its major league-worse 65-97 record of 1997.

“The ’92 Dodgers lost [99] games, but I saw Eric Karros coming, I saw Piazza the next year, I saw Raul Mondesi, a lot of young guys starting to take shape, and a lot of that reminds me of what I see here,” Candiotti said.

“I see a lot of guys who are hungry and want to erase a lot of the memories of last year if they were part of it.

“There’s a lot of enthusiasm, so many young players that I feel like I’ve gone back to school and am meeting a whole new group of kids on the first day of class.”

One of the kids is A.J. Hinch, only a year out of Stanford and possibly heading for a new course of study as Candiotti’s catcher at 23.

That makes Hinch 17 years younger than Candiotti, who cited the longevity of the most renowned knuckleball pitchers--Phil Niekro, Hoyt Wilhelm and Charlie Hough--and said he will continue pitching as long as “I’m healthy, having fun and the hitters tell me I can get them out.”