ADVERSITY MAKES BORBON BETTER.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

The Cincinnati Reds are in town, which means you walk into the Dodgers clubhouse and make a beeline for Pedro Borbon Jr.'s locker. You're sure the story you'll find is as plain as the laminated baseball card resting among the relief pitcher's personal articles, between his shaving kit and his mitt.

Borbon's father, Pedro Sr., pitched for Cincinnati in the 1970s, the Reds' decade of riches.

On the mound, Borbon is his father's son, right down to his fierce focus. So you feel like a batter after whiffing one of Borbon's impeccably placed fastballs when he tells you the truth.

Forget about blood being thicker than the water in the Ohio River. In the case of the Borbons, it's barely thick enough to clot an open wound.

``We talk every four or five months,'' Pedro Jr. said.

The conversations don't reveal much. Neither one, he said, dares to delve beneath the now-tranquil surface of their feelings.

``There's a lot of fuel there,'' Pedro Jr. said. ``We don't want to put a match to it because it'll explode. So we talk like we just talked yesterday.''

Pedro Sr. called the Dodgers clubhouse three weeks ago. It was the first time he had spoken with his 31-year-old son since Pedro Jr. made the Dodgers as a nonroster invitee and became the feel-good story in the franchise's otherwise forgettable season.

After his two-batter stint on Monday, he has a team-best earned-run average of 1.85 in 39 innings. He has been an unsolvable mystery to lefties, who are batting .118 against him.

``I take pride in my job,'' Borbon said. ``I respect hitters, but I fear no one. After everything I've been through, I'm just numb to the feeling of fear.''

Borbon's childhood was cut short at the age of 13 by his parents' divorce. Many times since then he has looked back on his preteen years and wondered if it wasn't all just his imagination: the long summers spent hanging out at Riverfront Stadium with Ken Griffey Jr. and Pete Rose Jr., of being spoiled by his father, of living ``la dolce vita'' in his native Dominican Republic.

``After the divorce, my dad was so mentally messed up,'' said Borbon, who had no contact with his father between the ages of 13 and 20. ``He felt like a failure. So he kind of disappeared from my life.''

Borbon's voice betrays no bitterness, no pity. ``I don't carry a grudge,'' he said. ``If that would not have happened, I'd probably be a spoiled brat. I would have grown up thinking my dad was going to take care of me my whole life because he's rich. It was only when I realized the money wasn't there that I started to grow up.''

Albeit too fast. At 14, Pedro Jr. left home and settled in New York with a couple of his mother's brothers. It was an uneasy alliance with his uncles from the start. They did not believe education was essential, so they encouraged Borbon to quit school, get a job and earn his keep.

He didn't, but his heart wasn't in his classes. In the spring of his freshman year, Borbon cut class, heading for the lunch room. He was stopped by a security guard, who asked to see his student ID. The guard did a double-take when he saw the name. ``Are you related to Pedro Borbon, the pitcher?'' he asked.

The guard also happened to be a baseball coach at the school. He asked Borbon if he played baseball and refused to take ``no'' for an answer. He took Borbon outside and had him throw 20 pitches. By Borbon's recollection, 18 were strikes.

And that's how Borbon came to play organized baseball. He had his father to thank in only the most peripheral of ways.

Borbon pitched well enough to earn an athletic scholarship to Ranger Junior College outside Houston but not before parting with his uncles and living for a while in New York City's ugly underbelly. He eventually took an awful apartment in the Bronx with two high school buddies that cost them $540 a month. He worked as a messenger after school to pay his third of the rent.

Long before Borbon shred the medial collateral ligament in his left elbow while pitching for Atlanta in August of 1996, he had gotten the message that life can be hard.

The injury, which came less than a year after he pitched for Atlanta in the World Series, brought with it new trials. Borbon got to feeling so sorry for himself, he forgot about his wife Staci. They separated last year, while he was trekking through the minors on his comeback tour.

The son, without realizing it, had become his father.

``I created a lot of chaos within my family,'' Borbon said. ``I kind of shut down my relationship with everybody. I felt like a failure. I felt like I had lost everything.''

Every day proves him wrong. His arm is all the way back and he hasn't given up hope of a reconciliation with Staci, who lives in Houston with the couple's two young children.

``The injury made me a better man,'' Borbon said. ``That's why I think I'm having such a good year. I don't stress out as much as I did before. Now everything in my life is coming together.''