RUSSELL'S SECRET? PERSEVERANCE : STRUGGLES AS PLAYER SHAPED HIS FUTURE.

Byline: Kevin Modesti

Bill Russell: popular manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Tell me you expected it all along. That you saw it coming 20 years ago, when you sat in Dodger Stadium and booed the shy young shortstop fighting a bruising battle with the National League's rockiest infield.

Tell me what you're predicting next. Delino DeShields, batting coach? Jose Offerman, fielding instructor? Mike Marshall, physical therapist?

Maybe there's a lesson here. Be careful whom you make fun of on his way up, because he may turn out to be the boss someday.

Tell me you knew that the abuse Bill Russell suffered in silence as a player would make him a better man, a better manager.

Ask Russell, now 47, how his early struggles informed his new career, and he evades the question like a sliding baserunner.

But those were difficult times, right after the Dodgers converted him from outfield to infield, placing him, in 1972, next in a line of shortstops that ran from Leo Durocher to Pee Wee Reese to Maury Wills.

Like the time when Cincinnati Reds players, in the first-base dugout, mocked him by ducking whenever Russell got ready to throw.

The time, early in the '73 season, when a few Dodger Stadium fans actually threw trash at him.

The time, in '79, when the boos unnerved him so that he lost his cool and gestured angrily toward the stands.

All the times the fans overlooked his clutch hitting, his league-leading range in '72, his league-leading 560 assists in '73, his and Davey Lopes' league-leading 102 double plays in '77 - and focused on the error totals that consistently were among the top four. (``At least I'm consistent,'' Russell joked once.)

``Cruel,'' Sparky Anderson, managing the rival Reds then, called the Dodgers fans.

Russell recalls how the fans' doubts, how a Dodgers executive's suggestion he give up shortstop, drove him to succeed.

``I was asked to go back to the outfield,'' he says from behind the desk in the clubhouse office that has been his since health problems kicked Tom Lasorda upstairs on July 29. ``I said no. That was an added incentive to prove I could play that position.''

Fred Claire, then the Dodgers' publicity director, remembers the scene at the batting cage one day when the fans were at their worst. Jim Brewer, the veteran relief pitcher, offered Russell some not-too-gentle consolation.

``Billy,'' Brewer told him, ``you can't let that bother you. If you do, you might as well go in now, take your uniform off and go home.''

Russell kept his uniform on long enough to be the only L.A. Dodger to play in 2,000 games, including 11 Opening Days at shortstop, and a three-time all-star.

``Of course, I had a Walter Alston to keep me in the lineup,'' Russell says.

Now Russell plays Alston to a new generation of young Dodgers.

Claire, the Dodgers' executive vice president, sees the new manager as a product of his youth.

``He experienced a lot of the frustrations of being a young player and having the fans come down on him,'' Claire says in the clubhouse hallway. ``Having had that is a tremendous advantage. He knows what young players go through.''

Russell learned more about that second-hand in '92 and '93, when he got his first taste of managing.

``I think what helped me was managing (Triple-A) Albuquerque,'' Russell says. ``Managing kids (taught him) the patience you've got to have, even on this level.''

Todd Hollandsworth, the Dodgers' rookie-of-the-year candidate, testifies to that. He got to know Russell in the minor leagues.

``Tommy would tell you to get out of (a slump),'' Hollandsworth says. ``Billy just quietly shows confidence in you.''

Russell now seems quiet only in contrast with Lasorda, nothing like he used to be.

What fans didn't know was that the quiet Midwesterner - everyone saw him as the wallflower at an eight-year dance marathon with Lopes, Steve Garvey and Ron Cey - was a leader behind closed doors.

``What he brings to the team as a manager is a lot of what he brought as a player,'' Claire says. ``That's someone with very good people skills. Basically, as a player, he got along well with everybody and he wasn't afraid to speak his mind at critical times.''

In 1983, he was hailed as one of the strongest voices in a players' meeting that touched off a Dodgers surge to the National League West title.

If he filed away that speech, now is the time to pull it out. The Dodgers are heading into a first-round playoff series against the World Series-champion Atlanta Braves in a four-game losing streak that dropped them into the NL wild-card slot.

Russell, who would have matched wits with the St. Louis Cardinals' Tony La Russa if the Dodgers had won their division, instead faces Bobby Cox. Some choice. Cox is 29-25 in postseason games. Russell will manage his first.

``It doesn't bother me one bit,'' Russell says. ``I feel I've been preparing for this for a long time, without even having the job (of manager). I don't think those guys do anything different in the playoffs than they do normally.''

But Russell might. Expect an aggressive approach.

``Go for it. What have you got to lose?'' he says. ``You might even bunt in the first inning. Do it - get the first run . . . ''

More aggressive than Lasorda? Some Dodgers loyalists resist the suggestion that Russell is that different from his predecessor, or that the change produced the Dodgers' 31-16 stretch run.

``A lot of people want to look at the differences in personality,'' Claire says. ``The fact is there's not that much difference in the key ingredients. What usually happens when you change managers? You change the coaching staff. That didn't happen here.

``Bill is an aggressive manager. But anybody who says Tommy wasn't an aggressive manager, I don't know what they were watching all those years.''

But if they've been watching Russell all these years, they know all about him. When times are hard - and they could get that way starting at 1:07 p.m. Wednesday - he's going to keep the uniform on.

MEMO: Kevin Modesti's column appears in the Daily News four days a week.

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2 Photos

Photo: (1--color) Having experienced his share of frustr ations as a player allows manager Bill Russell to better relate to the Dodgers' young players.

Hans Gutknecht / Daily News

(2) Bill Russell