AS MONDESI RETURNS, SO DO MEMORIES.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

If he had a choice in the matter, Raul Mondesi might pick any other week for his return to Dodger Stadium. It's the schedule-maker, and a devil called interleague play, that brings Mondesi home just as he's slumping, as the player he was traded for is tearing it up, as his team is careening toward last place, as his former team is bucking for first.

Mondesi must feel like the guy who splits his pants getting out of the car at the high school reunion.

When he thinks about showing his old friends what he's made of himself, this isn't what he has in mind.

``I don't care. They know what I can do,'' Mondesi said Tuesday as he took a .218 average into his first game at Dodger Stadium in 2 1/2 seasons. ``I don't have to show anybody anything.''

But you know he'd love to show 'em, anyway.

You know he'd love to remind the Dodgers what they gave up when they traded him and Pedro Borbon to the Toronto Blue Jays to get Shawn Green and Jorge Nunez.

You know he'd love to hear the cheers from the familiar right-field bleachers crowd, to feel the affection that now belongs to Green, to be young and full of Hall of Fame promise again.

You know he'd love to get back to the place where he was the National League Rookie of the Year (1994), where he was the first Dodger to hit 30 home runs and steal 30 bases in a season (1997), where he spent the happiest years of his career before the franchise became too small for him and Davey Johnson and Kevin Malone (1999).

``They always loved me when I played here,'' Mondesi said hours before the Blue Jays snapped a losing streak at five games with Roy Halladay's 2-1 victory over the Dodgers. ``I think I still have some fans. I know a couple are going to boo me, but, you know, that's part of the game. They got good people here who will come to see me play.''

It had to hurt Mondesi to go 0 for 4, on three ground balls and a pop fly, leaving him tonight and Thursday to put on a show.

It had to sting Mondesi to trot out right field Tuesday for the bottom of the first inning and see the right-field bleachers were empty. Attendance was 24,991, the stadium's fourth- lowest of the season. That's what kind of a draw Mondesi's Blue Jays are.

As for whether the fans cheered or booed Mondesi - as always, it's hard to tell.

Is that ``boooo'' they were saying? Or ``Rauuuul?''

``I miss the fans,'' Mondesi said, ``because every game, when I used to play here, when I'd come on-deck, they'd call `Ra-uuuul!' Everywhere I'd go, in a restaurant, walking the street, I had some fans that would give me a hug. I miss that very much.''

In some ways, he misses the Dodgers, his employers for nine seasons.

``I don't have anything bad to say about the organization,'' Mondesi said. ``They treated me good, they gave me the opportunity to play.''

Yet he'll tell you the trade was ``the best thing to happen'' to him.

``In '99, the team wasn't going too good and everybody expected Mondesi to hit a home run every game,'' Mondesi said of the year he hit a career-high 33. ``I can't play like that. One time, I can remember, we were playing in Montreal, I came a couple of minutes after the bus and they started saying things about me. I said, 'That's it, after this year I've got to go play someplace else.'

``Not because of the organization. Because of the two guys here.''

The two guys. The then-manager and the then-GM. Johnson and Malone.

This is the updated, PG version of the famous trade-me diatribe of August 1999, which was Mondesi's reaction to back-to-back benchings, which were Johnson's reaction to repeated tardiness.

The angry outburst gave the front office its opening to trade Mondesi without incurring the wrath of fans to whom the Dominican native - blessed with all-around talent that Vin Scully once called the best of any Dodger since Pete Reiser in the 1940s - had represented everything right about the organization.

There might come a day, or a month, or a season when Mondesi will make the Dodgers regret that trade. It will not come anytime soon.

Not when Mondesi is down to .215, with 14 home runs, on pace for 99 RBI - yet another year of less than 100 - and Green is at 20 homers and counting. Not when Green, in Los Angeles, can reach out and touch first place. Not when Mondesi, in Toronto, yearns to go someplace he can win.

``Something's going to happen,'' Mondesi said with an optimistic smile before Tuesday's game.

Something did: He went 0 for 4.

Stitch up those trousers and try again tonight.

WHO WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE?

The numbers say the Dodgers got nearly all the best of the two-for-two trade that brought Shawn Green to Los Angeles and sent Raul Mondesi to Toronto before the 2000 season. Here are the two right fielders' statistics since that exchange (going into Tuesday night's game).

STATISTIC GREEN MONDESI

Games 389 311

At-bats 1,475 1,226

Hits 417 307

Batting .282 .250

Home runs 93 65

Runs 270 211

RBI 276 192

Walks 200 133

Strikeouts 286 253

Stolen bases 47 61

Caught stealing 10 19

Assists 21 27

Errors 12 17

Days on DL 0 59

Team W-L 233-179 190-200

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WHO WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE? (see text)