BATHROOMS AFFECT BASEBALL, OR VICE VERSA.

Byline: Mark Kreidler Sacramento Bee

I love Las Vegas, with the following caveats: (1) no one should spend more than a few days there at a time; (2) a little dry heat goes a long way; (3) I always, always, always lose.

Any resemblance to the A's is purely coincidental.

In announcing Wednesday the absurd news that it will open its 1996 regular season in Las Vegas, the Oakland baseball team bypassed several attractive alternatives, including New Orleans, Treasure Island and, in a late-breaking development, my backyard. I offered less cash up front but more finished bathrooms for the fans.

Bathrooms have been much in the news lately, one of the great hot seats of debate between enraged A's officials and contentious Oakland Coliseum people. ("Potty Issue Rolls On," screamed the tabloid Tissue Daily.)

The A's have elected not to begin their season in the still-being-renovated -but-it'll-be-done Coliseum because, among other things, there might not be enough nice toilets for the paying folks to use come April 1, and somebody might have to scramble into a Port-a-John. Unless your promotion is Construction Workers' Day, you've got a potential public-relations problem here.

The Coliseum people have responded indignantly to this charge. "We have our good potties and our bad potties," one said. Who doesn't? But, clearly, this is a dilemma that could be resolved only by removing the team from California entirely, for at least one week.

Las Vegas: Now there's a bathroom town.

Cashman Field, where the A's will entertain the Blue Jays and Tigers the first week of April, is not without its Charmins. It has that fun, minor-league bandbox feel to it, this owing to the fact that it is a fun, minor-league bandbox. And, when the wind is blowing in from the desert just so, you can almost see a Mike Bordick pop-up becoming a towering home run as it catches the jet stream mid-flight.

But there are several reasons to be curious about the Las Vegas move, although none of them has to do with money. The Vegas people sewed up that argument, and any potential objections by Major League Baseball along with it, when they agreed to pony up hundreds of thousands of dollars to play host to the dawn of the Art Howe Generation.

Why didn't the A's try to play in Candlestick Park, home of the Giants? The short answer is that the two teams just don't like each other very much, and that is to say nothing of the Candlestick bathroom situation.

A's general manager Sandy Alderson admits that the team never approached the Giants, given "the historical relationship between the two teams, the interest of the American League, the preference of our players."

CAPTION(S):

PHOTO

Las Vegas officials break into grins as they announce the A's will play six games at Cashman Field. Associated Press