CREDIT BY NUMBERS.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

Tom Lasorda never was a numbers guy, the kind who knew his players' batting averages with runners in scoring position or claimed to play ``the percentages,'' yet he wrote some big, round numbers into Dodgers history:

20: Seasons managed.

8: Rookies of the Year managed.

4 and 2: Pennant winners and World Series champions managed.

And this one:

112: Individual raw oysters consumed in one sitting while regaling sportswriters with off-the-field baseball stories.

That particular stat, an official major-league record, was posted before a game 10 years ago in the visiting manager's office in the Houston Astrodome. The eating, by the spoonful from plastic gallon jars sent over by an admiring restaurateur, was followed predictably by a trip to the adjoining restroom, during which Lasorda was polite enough to keep talking and the writers were too entranced to walk out.

I relate this personal memory not merely to suggest that Lasorda's career-ending medical problems are surprising in light of his obvious appreciation of seafood's health-giving properties.

I propose that one good reason Lasorda has rarely received the credit he's due for the World Series and the Dodgers' almost perennial contention is that he didn't use the pregame hours or his legendary gift for gab to debate strategy.

Some managers who achieved far less are renowned as geniuses because they talked the tactical talk. Lasorda talked about everything but.

And he did it, usually, with his mouth doing double, gluttonous duty, to the revulsion of first-time clubhouse visitors.

In relaxed moments, he talked about his next speaking engagement, his latest batch of fan letters, his old minor-league fistfights, almost anything except the stuff between the chalky white lines and between his ears.

``I never talk about my strategy,'' Lasorda was quoted as saying. ``You'll never hear me say, `We won the game because I did this move or did that move.' The minute I do that, I'm taking the credit. I didn't win games, players win games.''

Lasorda won games.

His frenetic button-pushing won the 1988 World Series against all odds. If that's not what his career will be remembered for, though, it's the choice he made.

It's hard to be famous for pasta sauce and bullpen management simultaneously.

Granted, he should never be asked to write a book on the finer points of skippership. For one thing, he handled pitchers like machines. Tanks, at that.

You may think Lasorda's mistake in 1985 was letting Tom Niedenfuer pitch to Jack Clark with first base open and the pennant on the line. Actually his mistake was turning the strongest relief arm in the National League into boiled linguine with seasonlong overwork.

In the long run, and 20 years is a very long run, Lasorda made up for that shortcoming by being one of the game's great judges of talent and a football-style motivator.

Unfortunately, writers want to ask about the sterile details of pitching changes and sacrifice bunts, because that's all we can judge from press-box range.

As for those details, you were better off not asking, at least that's the recollection of someone who covered the Dodgers in the roller-coaster mid-'80s.

Lasorda hated to be second-guessed. And to him, it was second-guessing him if you got down on one knee and said, ``I don't know a fraction of what you do about baseball. Please help with my education. Could you discuss what goes into a decision like that bunt in the third inning?''

Maybe he hated those questions because they robbed his players of the credit, or whatever it was they deserved.

There was on-camera Tommy and off-camera Tom. Here's news: Tom uses the occasional obscenity. Oh, you knew that?

Tom has a loyal streak as wide as a buffet table. The weird thing is he expects the same of everybody around him.

In my first spring on the Dodgers beat, Lasorda was reported linked to an underworld character and found his reputation clouded. The Daily News had a photograph of Lasorda with a man believed to be the one, and the newspaper needed confirmation.

In Vero Beach, Fla., I carried the photo to Lasorda behind the batting cage, before a game. He reacted with a hurt expression and this: ``Kevin, I thought you were my friend.''

He thought friends don't ask friends about defensive switches, either.

Out of all of this, Lasorda takes hemispherewide fame and popularity, which, in the end, matters more to him than a solid comparison with Gene Mauch. When Lasorda opened his mouth, whatever went in and whatever came out, there always was someone around to listen.

MEMO: Kevin Modesti is a Daily News staff writer.

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Photo: (color) no caption (Tommy Lasorda)