BASEBALL REALIGNMENT IS BAD FOR L.A. FANS.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

Team owners' plan to destroy baseball in order to save it - otherwise known as ``radical realignment'' - has been properly pummeled by traditionalists in the nation's clubhouses and press boxes.

Unfortunately, appeals to the virtue of continuity have not succeeded in killing the hastily hatched scheme to switch 15 of the 28 existing teams to National and American leagues redrawn along purely geographical lines.

But fortunately, ``tradition'' may not be the strongest rallying cry in the campaign against the proposal that needs the approval of three-fourths of the owners and the cooperation of the Major League Players Association to go into effect next spring.

A stronger rallying cry, particularly for cities like ours, may be good old-fashioned selfishness.

Ever since the then-Los Angeles Angels joined the American League in 1961, L.A. and Orange County baseball fans have been able to watch all of the teams and stars in person in the regular season. This is the same privilege enjoyed by two-team major-city centers Chicago (since 1901), New York-Brooklyn (1903-57 and since '62) and San Francisco-Oakland (since 1968).

Radical realignment - and even some of the compromised plans being discussed - would take that away from us.

It would do so by placing the Dodgers and Angels in a new NL West, a grouping of the eight westernmost major-league teams.

The advantages of such a drastic departure from baseball history are entirely economic and therefore thoroughly persuasive to the majority of owners: A schedule emphasizing intradivisional play would reduce travel costs. Increasing the number of games played in the visiting teams' time zones would make starting times more attractive for TV viewers and, more to the point, advertisers.

The majority of owners, among them acting commissioner and bean counter Bud Selig, also seem to believe that promoting rivalries between neighboring teams will send the game's popularity to a new - or old - level. They seem to believe the attendance boomlet that accompanied this year's experiment with interleague play was the result not of curiosity but of intense interest in Dodgers-Angels games - and Houston Astros-Kansas City Royals games.

We in Southern California know better than to think rivalries are based on geography. We have only to look at the Dodgers and the San Diego Padres, whose ``rivalry'' flared for the first time in 28 seasons in September 1996 and quickly dimmed again.

We in Southern California know that the newfangled NL West would be bordered by teams - the Padres to the South, the Seattle Mariners to the North and the Colorado Rockies to the East - with absolutely no geographical connection besides TV-friendly time zones. We can understand if fans on the cozy East Coast embrace the plan, but we can't share their appreciation.

We in Southern California know the value of having teams in (say) Los Angeles and Anaheim play lots of games against teams from (say) New York and Boston. That's because so many fans here are from there.

Last season, the Dodgers hosted the Mets for six games and the Angels hosted the Yankees for seven. This season, under a schedule reconfigured for interleague play, the Dodgers again hosted the Mets six times and the Angels have hosted the Yankees six times. But in the interleague schedule under the extreme plan being considered, the Mets and Yankees of the AL East would visit the Dodgers and Angels only once every four years.

The plan would also make the Dodgers strangers to the Cincinnati Reds and Atlanta Braves, rivals based on long-remembered pennant races, in order to give us more-frequent games with the Mariners.

Can anyone east of Phoenix - or in Phoenix, where Jerry Colangelo, owner of the 1998 expansion Arizona Diamondbacks is behind the realignment - fully comprehend the irony here?

Even opponents of interleague play, which debuted in June, had to concede it had one advantage: Fans in isolated, one-team cities like Atlanta and Denver got to see a few star players up close for the first time.

But the Selig-Colangelo plan would mean that the sport's biggest markets, including Los Angeheim, would see the guys from the other league far less than before.

See, to hate radical realignment, you don't have to be a stick-in-the-mud traditionalist. You don't have to mourn the potential loss of the sport's basis in comparable statistics and records. You don't have to question the need for such explosive change or ask if anybody is really as dissatisfied with baseball's current configuration as the money-grubbing new breed of owners seems to be.

You don't even have to notice the duplicity of owners who cite 2-1 support for realignment in a poll of 801 ``baseball fans'' - when, it has been reported since, 13 percent of the ``fans'' said they weren't familiar with the Rockies and Florida Marlins and 44 percent hadn't heard about the Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

You, the Southern California baseball fan, have only to think of yourself and what you will lose if greed wins.

A blast of good old-fashioned selfishness might be just what the owners need to hear before they weigh this and less dramatic realignments at a meeting in Atlanta Sept. 16-18. It is, after all, a language they clearly understand.

EXTRA INNINGS

Jaime Navarro is considered the White Sox's ace, but Tuesday's 17-8 loss to Texas pointed out just how badly he has pitched. Navarro allowed 11 runs (10 earned) in just three innings, raising his ERA to 5.85. In the last half-century, the highest ERA of a regular starting pitcher in a non-strike year was by Boston's Jack Lamabe (5.89) in 1964. Navarro has allowed nine runs or more six times this season. ``I lead the league in earned runs, hits, everything,'' Navarro said. ``I should trade numbers - with a hitter.''

It may no longer be a secret why the New York Yankees placed top prospect Ruben Rivera in the Hideki Irabu deal with San Diego. Rivera wates 25 minutes late for a team meeting last Sunday, just days after a lecture from Tony Gwynn and Ken Caminiti about his work habits. He was back in the minors by Monday.

The Rockies season may be over, but Todd Helton and Neifi Perez are giving them reason to smile. With eight regulars 30 or over, the two rookies have played well since being called up. Helton's pinch-hit single drove in the winning run Friday with one out after Perez tied it with an RBI triple, giving the Rockies a two-game sweep of Seattle. Through Friday, Helton was batting .309 with four homers in 55 at-bats. Perez, who will start at short next season, is batting .290.

CAPTION(S):

Photo, Box

Photo: Jeff Kent is congratulated by teammate J.T Snow.

Associated Press

Box: EXTRA INNINGS (see text)