A LIFE ENDS TRAGICALLY: REMEMBERING STEVE HOWE.

Byline: Matt McHale BASEBALL

For 20 years, the phone could have rung at any time announcing that Steve Howe was dead and no one would have been surprised.

Yet, when it happened Friday afternoon, in the midst of Reggie Bush, the NBA playoffs and all those replays of the umpire getting hit by the bat, the room went cold.

The funny Steve Howe stories suddenly seemed not so funny, the train wrecks far too grim. That's the way it is with addiction. The contradictions and uncertainty that consumed him and almost everyone around him are never easy to explain.

There is no seamless timeline from his troubled childhood in Michigan to his death at age 48 from a truck accident near Palm Springs. Just a lot of jagged edges.

He was fearless on the mound. Clearly he was not fearless in life. No matter how you try, it is impossible to put a bow around this story.

The ex-teammates who professed love for his tortured soul in yesterday's eulogies also hated what he did to their teams in the early 1980s.

He was funny and gregarious. He was five innings late for a Sunday afternoon game, claiming his wife took his car keys to Magic Mountain.

He was National League Rookie of the Year for the Dodgers in 1980, the face of the clinching moment in the World Series a year later. He wound up getting suspended seven times for substance abuse.

He appeared done in July 1985 when the Dodgers released him. Almost a decade later, Howe helped pitch the New York Yankees into the postseason.

Of all the voices who remembered Howe on Friday, perhaps it was his first manager, Tom Lasorda, who captured it best, not for what he said, but for what he did not know how to say.

Lasorda is someone who can talk for hours about everything and absolutely nothing, but this time his comments were understandably vacant.

"Steve played for me for five years, and I thought the world of him," Lasorda said. "I am truly sorry to hear about his passing, and my deepest sympathies go out to his family."

Howe's greatest season of 1983 (18saves, 1.44 ERA) also was his most painful. He did not allow a run in his first 14 games. Then he went into rehab. He returned but was suspended in September. Without him the Dodgers lost to Philadelphia in the postseason.

When they finally released him in July 1985, the Dodgers thought their problems were over. They were just starting.

In the next few years, the search for the next Steve Howe led them through left-handed relievers Carlos Diaz, Ed Vandeberg and Matt Young. It cost them promising left-hander Sid Fernandez.

And because problems like Howe's often lead people to fix blame, the Dodgers got rid of Dusty Baker because Baker appeared to have had too much influence on the young left-hander.

Oh, and Howe's trouble probably cost the Dodgers a couple of World Series.

Howe caught on with Minnesota but not for long. He was mostly out of baseball the next five years when he popped up in 1990 in the Northern California town of Salinas, trying to regain a spot in the game by pitching for an independent league team.

ESPN had been by the day before. Howe was dressing in a tiny locker room with ice-filled Ziplock bags pressed against his left elbow. He took a long drag on a cigarette, then paused.

The big leagues seemed so far away. He looked tired, but he never asked for pity.

"I won't be here long," he said. He pitched 14 games, finishing with a 2.11 ERA.

It is not a stretch to say that being a left-hander meant getting nine lives to go with those seven suspensions.

After Salinas, he caught on with the Yankees. He pitched with them for five years and had a 3-0 record, 15 saves and 1.80 ERA in 1994.

By June 1996, it was over, just as the Yankees were heading for a World Series title.

During those final years he earned more than $6 million and lived comfortably in retirement.

Recently, he lived in Valencia and bought a $15,000 scoreboard for the high school football field. For work, he spent time promoting an energy drink.

There was one drunk driving arrest, and when his son, a pitcher on the baseball team, was pulled over last year it was feared there was trouble ahead for the next generation.

"I just saw Steve last year when his son and my son were playing a summer league game in Valencia," former teammate and Angels manager Mike Scioscia said. "Everything was looking up for him; he looked great. That day, we talked like we were back on the Dodger plane."

If he had lived, Howe would have been part of a 25th anniversary celebration the Dodgers are planning in September to commemorate their 1981 World Series title.

It is certain he would have been asked about his past, and about today's baseball problem with steroids.

Steve Howe was not the ancestral link to Barry Bonds. Steve Howe was an addict. Everyone knows one and it is a problem that will remain messy long after his death.

CAPTION(S):

photo, 7 boxes

Photo:

Former Dodgers reliever Steve Howe, whose career was cut short by substance abuse, died Friday in a car crash near San Diego. He was 48.

Lenny Ignelzi/Associated Press

Box:

(1) DAILY NEWS/CBS 2/KCAL 9 SPORTS CENTRAL POWER RANKINGS

- Matt McHale

(2) THEY SAID IT

(3) WHO'S HOT

(4) WHO'S COLD

(5) ROOKIE WATCH

(6) NOTES

(7) SERIES OF THE WEEK