MAKING THEIR PAINFUL MARK.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

Wednesday morning, Dick Dietz's obituary was in all the papers. That night, Craig Biggio broke a record when a pitch plunked him in the back.

The coincidence this week sent a shiver through a man's left kneecap.

Dietz and Biggio are heroes to us fans of the manly art of getting hit by pitched baseballs.

Dietz, 63 when he died of a heart attack in Clayton, Ga., was the Giants' catcher the night the Dodgers' Don Drysdale went for his fifth consecutive shutout in 1968. The story is the stuff of legend.

In the ninth inning, San Francisco loaded the bases with none out to bring Dietz to the plate. Drysdale buzzed a fastball inside, Dietz threw up his left elbow, and the ball struck the batter's arm, apparently forcing in the streak-breaking run.

But umpire Harry Wendelstedt immediately ruled Dietz hadn't tried to avoid the pitch and called it ball three. After Giants manager Herman Franks got thrown out protesting, Dietz hit a fly ball too shallow to advance a runner. The Giants' threat fell apart, and Drysdale's streak went a then-record 58 2/3 innings.

``That was a bad call,'' Jim Davenport, the Giants' third baseman that night, told the San Francisco Chronicle. ``Nobody in their right mind would want to stay in the way of one of Drysdale's pitches.''

Most of us would tremble if we merely stood at the plate with a 90-mph pitch hurtling down. If Dietz was willing to take the bruise, more power to him. Why should a batter have to try to move, anyway?

Think about taking that bruise 268 times, as the Astros' Biggio had done as of Wednesday, when the Rockies' Byung-Hyun Kim drilled him in the fourth inning.

The HBP in the scorebook gave Biggio the post-1900 major-league record for a career, one more than Don Baylor and 25 more than Ron Hunt.

It doesn't matter that Biggio is somewhat protected by a billowy uniform, a massive helmet and an elbow guard that Dodgers announcer Rick Monday calls ''a combination of a stuffed armadillo and a wheelbarrow.''

You could dress me up in the Michelin Man suit and I wouldn't take a stance against a big-league arm.

This may have something to do with the fact that the first pitch I ever faced in a real baseball game spun in and, having a wide choice of bony limbs unpadded by muscle, attacked my left kneecap. I didn't cry or commit the cardinal sin of rubbing the wound. I did spend my 10- and 11-year-old seasons in the Sepulveda Park league paralyzed at the plate by fear of the ball.

I should have talked to Rick Monday back then.

Monday this week recalled the day in 1967, in his first full season with the Kansas City A's, when he was beaned by the White Sox's Gary Peters at Comiskey Park. The ball struck just to the right of Monday's nose.

``My wife and I were in Chicago last year for Cubs Fest,'' Monday said, ``and a man came up to me and said, `You don't remember me, but I was one of the four guys who carried you off the field on the stretcher.' He was right, I didn't remember. The only thing I remember is a thud. I woke up in the ambulance with the siren on.''

Monday was back in the lineup three days later.

``Alvin Dark was my manager. He said, `Kid, the best way to make it go away is to hit the first pitch,' '' Monday said. ``Earl Wilson was pitching for Detroit. The first pitch he threw, I was going to hit it regardless. It was a fastball chin-high. I swung and it fell in. It was over.

It was 10 weeks later, he notes, that the Red Sox's Tony Conigliaro was beaned, the pitch striking on the left side an inch higher than where the ball struck Monday. Conigliaro's vision was never the same and his career was ruined.

Ray Chapman (killed by a pitch, 1920). Dickie Thon (vision impaired, 1984). Conigliaro. They're the only ones everybody thinks about.

The hazards of the batter's box are such that when Jayson Werth had his left wrist broken by a pitch in an exhibition game, costing the Dodgers outfielder the first 44 games of this season, he says he felt lucky.

Werth was watching on TV in 1994 when his uncle Dick Schofield, playing for Toronto, was hit in the head and hospitalized. Whatever he was given for his concussion was the wrong medication. His lungs filled with fluid.

Schofield got over that soon enough. The experience of Werth's stepfather, Dennis Werth, wasn't as quick and easy. Dennis was in the Yankees' farm system when a fastball hit him in the mouth.

Surgery?

``A whole new grille,'' Jayson Werth said.

This winter, Dennis had pain in his jaw. Doctors went in and removed a cyst - likely the product of a blood clot left over from the beaning a quarter-century ago.

The beanball epitomizes baseball's sense of destiny. Whether it's a kind of tragedy, like Conigliaro's, or a measure of heroism, like Biggio's, or a more complicated mark in history, like Dietz's, the pitch finds the man.

To all who are brave enough to stand in there and take one for the team, my kneecap twinges in salute to you.

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Photo:

Former San Francisco Giants' catcher Dick Dietz is one of several memorable beanball victims in major-league history.

Associated Press