A ZEILE FOR GIVING; EX-DODGER LEFT A LEGACY OF CHARITABLE WORK IN L.A.

Byline: Eric Noland Daily News Staff Writer

Since shedding his Dodgers uniform in May, Todd Zeile has donned two others. Nothing new there. The Texas Rangers ensemble he pulled on Tuesday afternoon in Anaheim before a stretch-drive game with the Angels was the seventh different set of colors this baseball Bedouin has worn in the last four seasons.

In light of this, it's probably comforting to know that Zeile's influence on a community is not altered as readily. It does not diminish when he departs.

Danielle LaMarre, director of development for the Make-A-Wish Foundation in Los Angeles, has no doubt of this. She was making small talk recently with Kenneth, 11, of Compton, one of the kids assisted by her organization. Kenneth is infected with HIV.

``I asked him what he did all summer,'' LaMarre said. ``He said (excitedly), `I went to a Dodger game!' And I asked him what else he had done over the summer. He just kind of looked at me.''

Then she realized. The only out-of-the-ordinary activity this boy had engaged in all summer was to go to a single Dodgers game. Zeile, two uniforms and thousands of miles removed, had provided the ticket.

As soon as he joined the Dodgers in December '96, Zeile, whose athletic career had been spawned at Hart High and UCLA, approached the team's front office and said he wanted to support 10 different children's charities in Southern California, writing each a $10,000 check each year. Additionally, he bought 10 season tickets - good seats - that would be rotated among the charities throughout each season.

Dodgers officials have since remarked that no player in club memory comes even close to matching Zeile's philanthropic fervor.

When Zeile was shipped off to the Florida Marlins on May 16 as part of the Mike Piazza trade, he sent each charity a letter apologizing that he wouldn't personally be able to host each group on home Saturdays, as planned, but that they were encouraged to continue using the tickets.

That's how Kenneth was able to enjoy a rare bright moment in a life that will end soon.

``Todd was just delightful, in a very low-key, comfortable way,'' said Susan Franklin, executive director of Camp Ronald McDonald for Good Times, another of Zeile's charities, which hosts kids stricken with cancer. ``He would meet the kids on the field and pose for pictures, and it wasn't about, `Are you going to put it in the newsletter?' It was almost done in an anonymous way.

``We're so disappointed that he's gone. But not only that, to be replaced by what?''

Something, indeed, is wrong with this picture. At a time when professional athletes are widely viewed as greedy mercenaries, here was a player who wanted nothing more than to put down deep roots in a community and be extensively involved with it.

Zeile says his wife, former Olympic gold-medalist gymnast Julianne McNamara, developed a similar passion for charity involvement during her years as a world-class athlete. Together, they looked forward to indulging it in Los Angeles.

Early this season, the Zeiles moved from Santa Clarita to what Todd calls ``an interim house'' while their dream home was being constructed in Westlake Village. Son Garrett, 4, was preparing to enter kindergarten. Daughter Hannah had been born just four months before.

And then, baseball reality arrived like chin music.

The Marlins required Zeile in the Piazza trade because they wanted a veteran third baseman who would be marketable to a pennant contender looking for help. Accordingly, he was sent on to Texas in the middle of the summer, where his steady production over this season - .268 average, 18 home runs, 91 RBI entering Tuesday night's game - has enhanced the Rangers' chances of putting the Angels in their wake over this final week of the AL West race.

But he puzzles over the way his hoped-for stability in L.A. was so swiftly dashed. Wouldn't this be the type of player a club would want to hold onto?

Zeile smiled and said: ``That was one of the sentiments Fred Claire (the Dodgers' since-fired executive vice president) and some of the people I knew internally expressed: This might be an early chapter in the Fox baseball scenario, but one of the potential disappointments was seeing things from a corporate vantage point as opposed to the family emphasis, the way the O'Malleys had run the club for so many years.

``I might have been victimized by that.''

Certainly, anyone who has been traded four times and switched teams as a free agent twice over a four-year period cannot be surprised by the vagaries of baseball's business.

Still, Zeile, who is signed through next year, is hopeful of remaining with Texas at least for a while. ``I certainly would like to try and find some sense of a home for a few years,'' he said quietly, ``and not have to go through that worry at the (July 31 trade) deadline.''

In the meantime, some of those needy kids back home have to make due with the explanations they receive.

``It made for interesting conversations,'' Franklin, of Camp Ronald McDonald, said of the 10-or-so dates her young cancer victims had at Dodger Stadium this year. ``They'd ask, `Will he come back?' `Who's at third base now?' `Will he be in Texas for a long time?' ''

For that latter query, Franklin provided the best response she could: ``Well, we don't know.''

PROFILE

Name: Todd Zeile

Position: Third baseman

L.A. ties: Born in Van Nuys; turned 33 earlier this month. Was Hart High baseball MVP in 1983. All-Pac-10 catcher at UCLA.

MLB career highs: .291 average ('95 with St. Louis), 31 home runs ('97 with Dodgers), 103 RBI ('93 with St. Louis).

Suitcase stickers: Spent first 9-1/2 pro seasons in St. Louis organization. Since the middle of '95, has been with Cardinals, Chicago Cubs, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Dodgers, Florida and Texas.

Quotable: Texas manager Johnny Oates said of Zeile: ``It's good to have veterans like him on a team (during a pennant race). They get nervous, but they don't panic.''

CAPTION(S):

Photo, Box

PHOTO ``Todd was just delightful, in a very low-key, comfortable way.''

- Susan Franklin, executive director of Camp Ronald McDonald for Good Times, on Todd Zeile

LM Otero/Associated Press

BOX: PROFILE (see text)