DODGERS NOTEBOOK: BUTLER SITS AND WAITS FOR CHANCE.

Byline: Kevin Acee Daily News Staff Writer

Bill Russell will not say Brett Butler is finished. He knows you never count Butler out.

Butler is too good of a bunter, too smart, too experienced to not contribute somehow in the season's final two weeks.

With Todd Hollandsworth healthy, however, Russell plans to go to a platoon in left field. That platoon will be Hollandsworth against right-handed pitchers and Darren Lewis against lefties. That will leave Butler on the bench in the final weeks of his 17-year career.

It is too late in the season and the Dodgers need to win too badly for Russell to wait out Butler's current slump. Butler, 40, has started just four times in the 14 games since the Dodgers acquired Lewis in an Aug. 27 trade with the Chicago White Sox. He is 7 for his past 51 (.137), and his average has sunk to a season-low .290.

He understands what is best for the team, but finishing his career this way is tearing Butler apart. He swears in a month he will be ready to leave. He is looking forward to it. But not now. He isn't ready just yet to sit at the end of the bench during games dispensing wisdom to young teammates.

He won't speak out, though. He wants Russell to tell him what his role is. That's not Russell's style with anybody. He expects players to show up and check the lineup card.

Butler is hurting, but he doesn't want to hurt the team by stealing the focus. Instead, he says things like: ``It's been too wonderful a season for me to have bad feelings.''

No pain, just gain: Hollandsworth started Saturday for the first time since Aug. 1, when he fractured his right distal humerus (elbow) on a play at home. But his name was not written on the lineup card until he passed a pregame test.

Hollandsworth, who took batting practice for the first time Friday, was back in the cage early Saturday facing every off-speed pitch bullpen coach Mark Cresse could throw. Hollandsworth had to show his elbow could handle the strain of chasing tricky pitches.

Hollandsworth, who had been used as a pinch runner and defensive replacement since coming off the disabled list Sept. 6, had been activated before on Aug. 18. But in batting practice that day prior to what was to be his first start, he felt a sharp pain. He went back on the DL and spent the next 10 days in a soft cast.

``It is totally different this time,'' Hollandsworth said before Saturday's game, in which he went 1 for 3 with a double off the right-field wall. ``I have no pain at all.''

A 9.85: After Todd Zeile made a catch while falling over the railing and into the dugout, teammate Tom Prince may have saved him from injury by breaking his fall. But Zeile jokingly blamed Prince for costing him the perfect ``10'' that would have impressed his wife, Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast Julianne McNamara.