SANDY'S STAND SHOULD STAND.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

Because they admire Sandy Koufax, people say they hope Dodgers management can coax him back into its spring-training camp, after he snubbed the team in anger at a Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper.

But is that what fans, writers and Dodgers players really want? They want the club to sweet-talk Koufax out of an ethical stance? They want the club to persuade him to compromise his principles?

Because I admire Sandy Koufax, I hope Dodgers management is wise enough not to try.

Sure, the reverence Koufax inspires in old fans and young players makes him a valuable asset to the Dodgers in his role as an unofficial instructor during the spring and summer.

But that reverence is based less on his three Cy Young Awards, his four no-hitters and his five consecutive ERA titles than on his deeply chiseled principles and priorities. He refused to pitch that World Series game on Judaism's holiest day. He retired at age 30 because continuing to pitch would have risked permanent injury that might have affected his post- baseball life. He declines to cash in on his fame as grandly as many Hall of Famers do, because he would have to give up his coveted privacy.

And now this.

The New York Post prints a gossip item claiming Koufax helped Jane Leavy with her 2002 biography, ``Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy,'' only because the author promised not to reveal he is secretly gay. Because the New York Post is owned by Murdoch's News Corp., and News Corp. also owns the Dodgers, Koufax tells Dodgers executives he won't appear at spring training and doesn't want his likeness on club products. After Leavy says the New York Post got the story wrong in every aspect, the newspaper issues a statement conceding its error and apologizing.

Despite the retraction, Koufax sticks to his guns.

This is the Sandy Los Angeles loves.

He treats people well. He expects to be treated well. He doesn't want to be a public person. He expects that wish to be respected. He is the rare modern superstar who has maintained some mystery about himself. He doesn't think that gives gossipmongers the right to make up their own reality about him.

I suspect if the New York Post had reported Koufax is secretly married for a third time and the father of six children, he would have been as angry about that invasion as he is about the gay rumor.

You can say Koufax, 67, is taking his anger out on an innocent party in the Dodgers. You can say that, on a practical level, his action is ill-considered in that it drew national attention to gossip that went virtually unnoticed when it appeared in the New York Post two months earlier. But a different course of action would have required a degree of PR savvy that he has, almost charmingly, failed to cultivate.

You can say a stand over a tabloid newspaper's flimsy gossip carries less moral clout than a refusal to play baseball on a religious holiday, or than a far-sighted decision to walk away from wealth and glory over health concerns. But, of course, that's for Koufax himself to decide.

You can say all of the above and still admire him for taking a stand. Even if - or especially if - it's not in his immediate best interest.

Dodgers Chairman Bob Daly is scheduled to arrive today in Vero Beach, Fla., where the team trains and Koufax lives, and try to meet with Koufax in an attempt to repair the rift.

Why do it?

In the unlikely event Daly succeeds, he'll have persuaded Koufax to compromise, and there goes a piece of the legend of Los Angeles' most respected athlete. Koufax might come back to Dodgertown, but not the Koufax aura. Sandy won't be Sandy anymore.

Do you really hope he can be talked into rejoining the Dodgers?

Do you also wish he had been talked into pitching on Yom Kippur, winning a game but losing a measure of his significance to Jewish people? That he had been talked into pitching until he was 35, lifting his victory total to 200 or 300 but now being unable to lift his arm to sign an autograph? Or that he had taken a publisher's millions to write a tell-all autobiography, illuminating his life but dimming his halo?

According to Dodgers management, Koufax has indicated he won't return to the team until News Corp. sells the franchise, which it is trying to do anyway.

So what we have is Rupert Murdoch at the plate and Sandy Koufax staring down from the pitcher's mound, ready to buzz a fastball under the hitter's chin.

If you're a Dodgers fan, you want the left-hander left out there.