COLLINS LEFT DODGERS FOR BETTER OPPORTUNITY.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

More than two decades ago, on a summer night in Waterbury, Conn., a Dodgers executive sitting in the stands, charting the progress of some Double-A prospects, found himself distracted by the other team's second baseman, a guy he'd never even heard of before.

``He was a pepperpot, very active and vocal, into the ballgame,'' recalled Bill Schweppe, who was the Dodgers' vice president of minor-league operations at the time. ``I knew he wasn't a prospect because he wasn't playing every game. It wasn't anything he did as far as base hits or anything. It was just the aura he created and the way he did his job.''

You could say that was the night Terry Collins, a weak-hitting infielder on his way out of the Pittsburgh Pirates organization, started on the path to being a major-league manager.

Recognizing the kind of person the Dodgers wanted, Schweppe sought a trade but wound up signing the Eastern Michigan grad after the Pirates released him, and Collins soon became a player-coach with Los Angeles' Triple-A club in Albuquerque.

There, veteran Dodgers scout Goldie Holt caught his act and reported back to Schweppe: ``I think that Terry Collins will make a good manager for you someday.''

Which brings us to one of the curiosities of the first-ever regular-season Freeway Series game, won by the Dodgers 4-3 Tuesday night at Dodger Stadium.

When you think about it, Collins has as much right to be managing the Dodgers these days as Bill Russell does.

Collins - who managed eight seasons in the Dodgers organization, the last five at Albuquerque, helping to develop current L.A. pitcher Ramon Martinez and most of the young stars of the club's recent past.

Collins - whom the Dodgers practically discovered.

The same Collins was on the Angels side of the park Tuesday, poised at the first-base dugout steps, or leaning forward on the edge of the bench, or reading between the lines of the lineup card on the wall, managing a game under National League rules for the first time since the Houston Astros fired him last fall after a season-ending slump.

``I hoped (to manage the Dodgers),'' Collins said before the game, thinking back to his steady climb from Lodi to Vero Beach to San Antonio to Albuquerque. ``I thought if you worked hard and were given the opportunity, you could get to the major leagues.''

If Collins had been patient - very patient - today he might be where Russell is. But the Dodgers system was full of manager prospects in the late '80s - Russell, Kevin Kennedy, Phil Regan, Mike Scioscia. And it looked like they'd all wait a long time before Tom Lasorda made room for one of them in Los Angeles.

Besides, Terry and Tommy reportedly weren't getting along, clashing over whether the farm wasn't producing the prospects or Lasorda was misusing them. So Collins quit the Dodgers following the '88 season for a managing job in the Pirates organization.

``I thought it was time to go,'' said Collins, now 48 and graying but still a pepperpot. ``(Leaving) was the best thing I ever did.''

But he said that with no apparent bitterness, simply acknowledgement that he had to leave the Dodgers to get the chance to manage in the big leagues, the chance that came in Houston after two seasons as the Pittsburgh bullpen coach.

``I'm standing here today because of the Dodgers,'' Collins said, ``because Bill Schweppe gave me a chance.

``But you know,'' he added with the spunk that caught Schweppe's eye long ago, ``tonight I'm going to try to beat 'em.''

He likes the whole idea of interleague play, the way people are arguing about baseball this week, like the 50 guys who brought up the subject to Collins at a golf tournament Monday. He relishes the chance that interleague play gives him, to manage without a designated hitter again, if only for the few games the Angels will play in NL parks.

Managing NL-style isn't harder, he said, but it's different. Physically and mentally more intense.

Of course, intensity is never a problem for Collins, and certainly not when he's at Dodger Stadium, where he expected to be managing all along, just not in regular-season games with the Anaheim Angels.

``It's an object lesson,'' Schweppe said of Collins' success. ``A guy who doesn't have star ability (as a player) but goes in a different direction by the simple act of doing his best whenever called upon.''

Whenever. And for whomever.