BEWARE OF BRENLY IN THE BOOTH; L.A. FANS SHOULD BRACE FOR A DODGERS TORCHING.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH The Media

Saturday afternoon in San Francisco looks to be a Dodgers fan's worst recurring nightmare: Carlos Perez on the hill, Todd Hundley behind the plate and Bob Brenly in the Fox TV booth.

At least Davey Johnson can prevent the oily rag and the leaky can of gasoline from getting out of the shed. But no matter how much wind is swirling at 3Com, the blow torch known as Brenly - who's doing his fourth Dodgers Saturday afternoon regional broadcast in four weeks - will be ignited.

If you're listening to the broadcast with your Dodgers filter on, having Brenly present with access to a microphone will be about as entertaining as the self-proclaimed office comedian doing another Austin Powers impersonation while you're trying to blow off his lunch invitation.

``I'm over that whole Giants-Dodgers thing pretty much,'' Brenly said, trying to sound convincing. ``We kid a lot about it, but as a broadcaster those hostile feelings are left well behind now. I mean, a broadcaster can't afford to play favorites and both organizations have changed so much since my playing career, I hardly recognize anyone. For crying' out loud, there's Dusty Baker managing the Giants and Ron Perranowski and Joey Amalfitano helping him.''

Sure, we believe you.

So how did Brenly, who will do a Dodgers game in eight of the first nine weeks of Fox's Saturday afternoon game of the week, draw the short straw? Location. He and Thom Brenneman, the regular guys for the Arizona Diamondbacks, handle most of the West Coast regional games for Fox while the prime-time team of Joe Buck and Tim McCarver generally stay on the other side of the country.

Even if Brenly says he doesn't delight in the Dodgers' early unraveling, it'd be tough not to read between the lines of things he's said on the air about them already. Doing the Dodgers-Phillies game last week, he commented how much of ``a disaster'' the Dodgers had during pregame infield practice. And they ended up winning that one, 8-1.

``It's not an us-versus-them mentality and I think if anyone from L.A. paid attention to the broadcasts, they'd realize there isn't any pro-Giants or anti-Dodgers sentiments - I'm for good baseball and against bad baseball,'' Brenly said, starting to sound a bit more believable.

``Look at this - a few years ago I did a Dodgers game right after they picked up Otis Nixon and Eric Young near the end of the ('97) season, and they were an exciting team to watch. Then I did a Giants game, and they were flat, and after Rod Beck blew a save I said on the air that the NL race was over, that the Dodgers would win it. I got a batch of you-know-what from friends in San Francisco. `How dare you say that?' But given what I had seen, I felt the Dodgers should have owned the division that year.''

Oh, right, that was the year the Giants beat out the Dodgers by two games for first place. Probably no thanks to Brenly's motivational speech.

``Maybe this is selfish, but all I like to see is a team playing the game the way it's supposed to be played,'' Brenly said in an almost captivating manner of credibility. ``When you see a team looking discombobulated, that's a bad reflection on the whole organization. How can a team go out to take infield practice and not concentrate enough for five minutes to make the right throws at the right bases? That wasn't pretty to watch.''

Brenly, for what it's worth, is dragging the whole family from its Scottsdale, Ariz., home to San Francisco this weekend to catch up with a bunch of his former Giants teammates and watch the series. OK, so he was specially invited because the Giants are honoring their ``Team of the 1980s'' on Sunday and Brenly, who happened to start his S.F. career in '81 and end it in '89, was voted onto the squad.

Actually, Brenly, who'll be at Dodger Stadium a week from Saturday for a Giants-Dodgers rematch, says he doesn't hate the Southern California visits as much as you'd think, either.

``Now that I've discovered the Burbank airport, you get in, do the game, get right out,'' he said.

Now that's spoken like a true fan of L.A.

Rivalry follow-up: After Saturday's regional exposure, the Dodgers-Giants contest Sunday night goes nationally over ESPN at 5 p.m. . . . with Joe Morgan doing analysis.

The spin cycle: NBC's sluggish NBA Finals ratings for the Spurs-Knicks series - through four games, they're about 33 percent down nationally from last year - is because:

A) There's No Michael Jordan.

B) Last year was a record rating, they're actually higher than anticipated this season, and they're only slightly down from a more fair comparison - the '94 Rockets-Knicks series, which was Jordan's first year on baseball sabbatical.

C) No MJ.

D) It's that darn New York media market that always drags the ratings down.

E) No M. Jordan.

You've probably aced it by picking A, C or E. And NBC's spin on it goes with answer B. But can you believe some of those overquoted ``media experts'' who've actually come up with the answer D?

Bottom line is that these all-too-overrated ratings have been better than anything else on TV right now as rerun summer begins. Each of the four games has been the most-watched primetime show of the night, as will tonight's (hopefully) series-ending Game 5.

Besides, who can accurately analyze any part of this aborted NBA season anyhow?

SOUND BYTES By Tom Hoffarth

WHAT SMOKES

NHL broadcast partner ESPN did not sugarcoat the controversial in-the-crease goal after the end of Game 6 in Saturday night's NHL Stanley Cup Finals between Dallas and Buffalo. Following about 20 minutes of Dallas celebration coverage, Gary Thorne came back with the report about Buffalo's dispute of the goal and called it ``the worst way the NHL could've even thought to end this game.'' Analyst Barry Melrose drew on his experience from the rule violation called against his Kings in Game 2 of the '93 Finals - ``that was a rule in the books, it was called and we had to live with it'' - and said repeatedly this non-call of a rule was ``the NHL's worst nightmare come true.''

Set the calendar for July 19: Joe McDonnell and Doug Krikorian reunite on a regular sports-talk show again thanks to One-on-One Sports' L.A. affiliate KCTD-AM 1540. Breaking from their usual feed of syndicated programming out of Chicago, the station has plans to run McDonnell-Krikorian in a 1-to-5 p.m. slot.

It's with great pleasure to report that Fox Sports News' Keith Olbermann did not perform ``Take Me Out to the Ballgame'' at Wrigley Field nearly two Sundays ago as originally scheduled. He said after considering the whole thing, he wanted no part of it and canceled a few days prior.

WHAT CHOKES

NHL broadcast partner ESPN, in what appeared to be a goodwill gesture after its coverage the night before, had this come out of the mouth of ``SportsCenter'' anchor Jack Edwards on Sunday morning: ``If you saw all six games of this series, and you still don't like hockey, you better try another sport. But if you didn't see all six games, you get another chance to get hooked when they drop the puck in October right here on ESPN.''

Bob Stevens' comb-over.

Finally, ESPN has decided to move its annual ESPY Awards to their rightful place - Las Vegas - starting next year. ``Like the ESPYs, Las Vegas has been evolving,'' ESPN president George Bodenheimer said in a press release. ``It's now more than an entertainment capital, becoming more popular with vacationers and families every year.'' Obviously, the verb he meant to use in that quote was devolving.

This whole Latin crossover mania - KTLA Channel 5 has picked Claudia Trejos, the sports director at Spanish-language KWHY Channel 22, as its new weekend sports anchor/reporter to replace the shoved-out Ed Arnold. We're more than happy to see females get work in this city. And we know we're risking bodily harm from the fact that the Colombia native has 13 brothers (she's one of 17 kids in her family). But que?

WHAT SMOKED ON LOCAL TV

The top 10 Nielsen-rated sports events (with their share numbers) on L.A. television from June 17-23:

Event Date Station Rt/Sh.(x)

NBA Finals: San Ant. at N.Y. Game 3 6/21 KNBC  12.0/20

NBA Finals: San Ant. at N.Y. Game 4 6/23 KNBC 11.0/20

NBA Finals: N.Y. at San Ant. Game 2 6/18 KNBC 9.8/19

Golf: U.S. Open final round 6/20 KNBC 7.4/21

Golf: U.S. Open third round 6/19 KNBC 6.4/17

MLB: Angels at Seattle 6/22 KCAL  3.4/6

MLB: Philadelphia at Dodgers 6/18 KTLA 3.2/6

MLB: Philadelphia at Dodgers 6/19 KTTV 2.9/9

Women's World Cup: U.S.-Denmark 6/19 KABC  2.7/9

MLB: Angels at New York 6/18 KCAL 2.7/6

Missed the cut

NHL Finals: Dallas at Buffalo Game 6 6/19 ESPN 2.3/5

CWS Final: Fla. St. vs. Miami 6/19 KCBS  2.1/7

(x) One rating point equals 50,092 TV homes in Los Angeles; a share is the percentage of all the TV sets in use at that time.

CAPTION(S):

2 Boxes

BOX: (1) SOUND BYTES (see text)

(2) WHAT SMOKED ON LOCAL TV (see text)