STRONG D BUCKING TRADITION.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

While this year's Dodgers are trying their plucky best to add to the franchise's dusty list of championships, they've given up on meeting its old high standard in one vital area.

These Dodgers just can't do prop comedy with baseball gloves the way their forebears did it, to the wincing amusement of decades of Brooklyn and Los Angeles fans.

Don't they realize they're in the entertainment business?

There are, for instance, no Babe Hermans on this team that leads the major leagues in fielding percentage and should earn the Dodgers' first National League title in that category since the Eisenhower Administration.

One day in the 1920s, a flyball worked its way around Herman's glove and appeared to bounce off his head.

``No sir!'' Herman protested. ``That ball never hit me on the head. What kind of outfielder do you think I am?''

Well, a reporter asked, where did the ball hit you?

``On the neck,'' Herman said.

And there are no Ken Landreauxs on this team that is going to break the club record for fewest errors in a season, having booted only 70, while the mark is 90.

One night in the mid-1980s, Landreaux lost sight of a drive by Mike Schmidt and clamped his arms over his head for protection as the ball thudded off the center-field wall for a game-deciding triple.

Landreaux's description of the play was to prove as sharp as his defense.

``It hit two-fourths of the way up the wall,'' he said.

Manager Tom Lasorda avoided comment by claiming he had been getting a drink of water and missed the entire unfortunate episode.

And there are no Pedro Guerreros or Steve Saxes on this team that thinks Cesar Izturis and Alex Cora have a chance to win the club's first infield Gold Glove Award in the quarter-century since Davey Lopes.

Back in the early '80s, when Guerrero was a less-than-willing third baseman and Sax a scatter-armed young second baseman, somebody asked Guerrero what he thought about as a pitch hissed toward home plate.

``My first thought was, 'Don't hit it to me,' '' Guerrero said. ``My second thought was, 'Don't hit it to Sax.' ''

There always used to be something charming about those teams that proved you can spell ``Dodgers'' without ``D.''

Their misadventures in the field didn't stop the Dodgers from winning with their pitching and hitting - they went to the playoffs three times in the '80s while ranking near the bottom of the 12-team National League in fielding percentage, including the '88 World Series champions (10th).

But they gave you a little comic relief from all that pennant-race drama, of which a city could grow tired.

``Catch 22,'' Johnny Carson, as Carnac the Magnificent, began one of his answer-and-question riddles.

``What would the Dodgers do if you hit them 100 flyballs?''

It's different now, and as a Dodgers coach said Monday, you no longer hold your breath when the ball goes up in the air, where Jayson Werth, Steve Finley and Milton Bradley - from left to right - chase it in the outfield. Manager Jim Tracy likes to boast about his outfield, reconfigured by the trade-deadline deals, features ``three center fielders.''

It's different, too, when the ball goes down on the ground, with Izturis and Cora up the middle and Adrian Beltre and Shawn Green at the corners.

The Dodgers' biggest statistical jump from last season to this one is in home runs, from 15th to fourth in the league. Just as important is their jump in fielding percentage, from 10th (.981) to first (.988).

It isn't entirely a case of dull dependability. Izturis, the 24-year-old shortstop, and Cora, the 28-year-old second baseman, perform the smoothest double-play sleight-of-hand the L.A. Dodgers have ever had. Beltre charges as well as any other third baseman. Green, switched from right to first after the season's-eve trade for Bradley, has exceeded Tracy's hope for ``solid'' work.

``You win with defense,'' Cora said after his diving stop in the ninth inning Sunday in San Francisco helped the Dodgers hold off the Giants. ``The Marlins won the World Series last year because they played great defense. The Pistons show it in basketball. The Patriots show it in football. ...''

The Dodgers' infield of Steve Garvey, Lopes, Bill Russell and Ron Cey played eight full seasons. Garvey (1974-77) and Lopes ('78) won Gold Gloves. But defense wasn't the group's claim to fame.

Could this infield be better than that one?

``The ends justify the means,'' Garvey said Monday before a guest-analyst stint on the Dodgers radio broadcast of the game against Colorado. ``If they get to the World Series four times in seven years (Garvey's infield did it four times in eight years), then they're better than us.''

Garvey was smiling as he said it. Even so, we're getting way too serious now.

No question the Dodgers are in first place in part because they're so sure-handed. But are they as entertaining?

You'd hate to see the franchise abandon that two-fourths of its tradition.