A YOUNG BOY'S HERO LANDS IN LOS ANGELES.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

One of these days, depending on how long I can put it off, I'm going to have to embarrass us both and tell the new Dodgers manager the truth.

When Davey Johnson was 31 and I was 13, he was my favorite baseball player.

I think I know what he'll say, because it's what they all say.

He'll say, ``You're making me feel old.''

To which there's nothing to say except, ``No, no! Don't feel that way!''

Every young sports fan has idols. The disadvantage of growing up to be a sportswriter is that you might get to meet them and even cover them.

Then, the question is what to say - ``I pasted your autograph right next to Joe DiMaggio's!'' - without risking everybody's dignity.

When I was a kid in the San Fernando Valley, before the sports autograph business went big-time and the fan-athlete relationship lost its sincerity, I would write away for autographs and attend players' promotional appearances at local stores. It wasn't unusual to find a superstar pitcher signing photos for free at a plumbing store.

In my autograph album, dug out of a closet along with ``Winning Tennis by Arthur Ashe'' and a Partridge Family record, an odd cross-section of '70s sports stars is represented on photos and scraps of notebook paper: football's Rosey Grier, Deacon Jones, Joe Kapp and Lance Rentzel - the first a preacher and the last a convicted sex offender - are in there. So are basketball's Pat Riley - then a mustachioed Lakers guard - Gail Goodrich, Rick Barry, Louie Dampier and Bill Keller; if you've never heard of the last two, you weren't a fan of little ABA 3-point specialists. And here are baseball's Hank Aaron, Vida Blue, Brooks Robinson and Nolan Ryan (a tiny but stylish ballpoint signature over an unwrinkled young face in Angels cap and sideburns).

Three baseball players qualified, at one time or another, to be called my favorite.

The first was Bill Grabarkewitz, a Dodgers infielder whose mouth-of-marbles name was part of his charm. Charlie Brown had Joe Shlabotnik; I had Bill Grabarkewitz.

He played shortstop in the first Dodgers game I remember attending, on May 22, 1970. The ticket for a seat on aisle 2 of the reserved level cost $2.50 then, and it's in my wallet today.

Early in that game, which the Dodgers lost 1-0 to Pat Jarvis and the Atlanta Braves, Grabarkewitz tried to cut off a throw from the outfield. The throw sailed over his head, and as Grabarkewitz back-pedaled desperately, he tripped over second base and fell in the dirt, arms and legs flailing.

Forty-thousand people laughed at the poor little guy wearing a dirty number 1.

That season, Grabarkewitz hit 17 home runs, enough to lead the Dodgers, and played in the All-Star Game, where his 12th-inning base hit moved Pete Rose into position to crash home with the winning run on a Jim Hickman single. Grabarkewitz was a good player, popular with writers and teammates, quotable and funny.

But as I remember it, what made me a fan was the sight of him belly-up on the Dodger Stadium infield.

Grabarkewitz was traded around and injured a lot over the next five years. Back then, before ESPN and USA Today tied the sporting nation together, a player traded out of town might as well have been sent to Mars. The fastest way I could devise to find out which number Grabarkewitz was wearing with the Chicago Cubs was to write and ask him.

``Thanks for the nice letter. I appreciated it,'' he wrote back, the only athlete in my short autograph-hunting career who replied with more than a signature and some sort of best wishes. ``Team - Cubs. Number - 10. Billy G.''

In 1984, before a Dodgers old-timers game, I used my press credential to go on the field, brush past Koufax and Drysdale and meet Grabarkewitz. I asked if he remembered tripping over second base.

``How could I forget?'' he said. ``The Herald-Examiner (which had a tabloid sports section in those days) had a full-page picture of it the next day.

``That was embarrassing,'' he said. ``But I'll bet you didn't know I once threw up on the field.''

That's my hero, ahead of his time, throwing up on the field 25 years before Cade McNown made it cool.

A similar haplessness defined the career of my last ``favorite.''

Duane Kuiper was a second baseman best known for hitting precisely one home run in 3,379 at-bats - off future Cy Young Award winner Steve Stone in 1977 - in a 10-year major-league career with the Cleveland Indians and San Francisco Giants. Though he was a valuable pinch-hitter at the end of his career, he didn't try to live down his legendary powerlessness, even posing for one trading-card photo with a broken bat over his shoulder.

I introduced myself to Kuiper at the batting cage one day after I joined the Dodgers beat in 1985. He was on the disabled list and told me the Giants were keeping him just long enough to give him 10 years of major-league service and the pension that goes with it.

I wasn't sure if he'd want to talk about the home run, but I asked about his weird claim to fame.

``I'm just glad I never hit a second homer,'' Kuiper said, under no illusion about his place in baseball history.

By now you might have guessed I was a light-hitting infielder as a kid (with the Cubs and Orioles of the Sepulveda Park league). But my hero between Grabarkewitz and Kuiper was a heavy-hitting infielder.

Davey Johnson had 43 homers for Atlanta in 1973, leading a team that had Aaron (40) and Darrell Evans (41) and one behind Willie Stargell's league-leading total.

The following season at Sepulveda Park, I wore Johnson's number, 6. To no avail: My swing always was more Duane than Davey.

Now it'll be my job to critique Johnson's managing and I promise to do it objectively. Still, I'll be waiting for just the right time to tell him that somewhere in my closet is a blue, white and red Braves souvenir batting helmet with number 6 stenciled on the back.

I'd better wait until after the Dodgers win a game. You know how sensitive they get when they're old.