AS A MATTER OF FACT, HE'S A WINNER.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

Trying to figure out why Davey Johnson wins, you could go back to his childhood in Texas, when his baseball education began with brother Fred explaining the physics of the curveball.

Johnson once wrote, ``It's as though I've been going to a school for managers since I was 7 years old.''

Or, you could go back to his early days as a major-league second baseman under Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver, when he got the clubhouse reputation for asking too many questions.

Johnson was so inquisitive, the other Baltimore Orioles nicknamed him Dum-Dum.

Or, you could just put it all down to a keenly developed mathematical mind and a knack for reading people.

Johnson does seem perfectly suited to a job that requires both the left-brain talent for playing tactical percentages and the right-brain talent for soothing massive egos.

Or, you could do what a lot of Davey watchers have done, which is to quit wondering why he wins and just try to get him to do it for you.

Which is what the Dodgers did Friday when, on the happiest day of the club's post-O'Malley era, they introduced Johnson as their new manager.

The mystery, how he has made winning look so easy while managing in the tough baseball neighborhoods of New York, Cincinnati and Baltimore, is part of what makes his hiring here so appealing. Let's all try to solve the puzzle together.

``Being around him, you don't always see the A, B, C, D,'' said Dodgers general manager Kevin Malone, who observed Johnson when both were with the Orioles in 1996 and '97. ``You see point A and you see the end result. . . . He's one of those guys who just win.''

Never mind that, as noted by a writer who covered him in Baltimore, some evenings Johnson would stroll into the clubhouse a mere two hours before game time, a golf bag over his shoulder, so casual it was as if he expected the team to manage itself.

He holds the highest winning percentage (.575) among active managers.

He's riding an astounding streak of finishing first or second in his division in each of the 10 complete seasons he has managed, including the 1986 Mets' World Series championship.

He's the greatest ``impact'' manager in baseball, his teams' records having improved by an average of 15 games in his first year on the job and declined by an average of 14 games in the year after he leaves.

The combination of all that has imbued Johnson, 55, with the substantial quality that political people call ``heft.'' It's the difference between Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson. It's the difference between Davey Johnson and Bill Russell.

Now, for the first time in a long time, the questions about the Dodgers won't start with the manager.

Whatever the shortcomings of the new Dodgers - a disconnected assortment of veteran players, fewer young prospects than before, an owner with unclear ambitions - they're nothing worse than Johnson battled with the ego-ridden Mets, penny-pinching Marge Schott's Reds and belligerent Peter Angelos' Orioles.

As Johnson responded wearily Friday to a reporter who asked if he's ready for this ``big market'': ``I've been there before.''

The only question about this Dodgers manager is going to be, Why wasn't he their first choice all along?

Malone explains that he had to pursue Felipe Alou and Jim Leyland first because they had to decide whether to leave their '98 teams, while Johnson had been unemployed since he quit the Orioles in '97 and could wait.

Whatever. The manager search might have been bruising for Malone and worrisome for fans, but all's well that ends well, and this ended very well.

In Johnson, the Dodgers got a manager whose extraordinary self-confidence already seems to have washed over the organization.

They got a manager with strong opinions, among them the beliefs that people perform best in familiar roles, that ``auditioning'' young players wrecks their confidence, that honesty is the best policy in dealing with employees, that discipline in matters as small as grooming and dress are important, that selfish players are perfectly all right because ``they strive for perfection,'' and that chemistry comes from winning rather than vice-versa.

Is something on that list the secret to averaging 98 wins a year, as Johnson has done?

It'll be fun trying to figure that out.