THE WRITING (AND OFF) THE WALL SAME OLD IS NEW AGAIN.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH

It happens every spring.

The shelves of the local bookstores are restocked and reshuffled to push the newest in baseball-related prose, most of it which seems to be as timeless as Vin Scully's description of a 6-4-3 double-play grounder.

But what's new is really about what's old. Which, as frustrating is it might be to some who grow weary of living in the past, continues to be the legacy of the national pastime -- ifthat's what we're still allowed to callit.

Baseball is still about passing the time remembering a time gone past.

"It's still about fathers and sons connecting, the mythology of the game, the past becoming the present again," says filmmaker Barry Levinson, waxing on about how his 1984 baseball classic, "The Natural," still resonates with generations of fans who connect the fictional Roy Hobbs with a Kirk Gibson World Series homerun or a Curt Schilling bloody sock.

Naturally, Levinson, who grew up in the '50s watching the Baltimore Orioles, anticipates Opening Day 2007. One obvious reason: He has just spliced 15minutes of footage he thought was once lost and always lamented about it not being in the original into a two disc "The Natural: Director's Cut," which goes on sale Tuesday for $24.95. (And here's something new you didn't know: Robert Redford has apparently become a right-handed pitcher, because that's how the natural lefty is depicted in the flopped photo that's etched onto the reissued DVD).

Who knew Jackie Robinson would also be worth a back-to-the-future freshening up?

A book search of his name on Amazon.com will turn up more than 4,600 entries, but the ones that will try to resonate more with consumers this month are the researched projects that'll provide some context to the celebration this month of the 60th anniversary of Robinson breaking baseball's color barrier.

In "Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season" (Simon & Schuster, 323 pages, $26), author Jonathan Eig admits there's already information overload about his journey in biopics (in which Robinson played himself), songs, poems, sermons, comic books, children's books, term papers ... and an autobiography.

"It was beginning to sound like folklore to me," Eig says. "It was becoming difficult to tell where the real man left off and the legend began. I wanted to separate fact from fiction. It occurred to me the essence of his story could be captured entirely in the course of his rookie season -- that was a story that had never been told."

Such as the fact that it was really money that attracted Robinson to baseball, maybe the least of his best sports at UCLA in the early '40s. The Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro League offered him $400 a month. Otherwise, the college-educated, Army-trained Robinson would have wound up coaching basketball at an all-black high school or college, Eig says.

Expanding on that, in "After Jackie: Pride, Prejudice and Baseball's Forgotten Heroes" (ESPN Books, 243 pages, $24.95), Cal Fussman interviews more than fivedozen former players, and writes in his introduction: "The more I spoke with the men who came after Jackie, the more certain I became of one thing: The only way to unlearn is to learn. The surest way for us to move forward is to know where the old have been."

That's much of the same finding in "Carrying Jackie's Torch: The Players Who Integrated Baseball -- and America" (Lawrence Hill Books, 288 pages, $24.95), as author Steve Jacobson quotes Hank Aaron as saying some of today's players " don't have a clue" what those African Americans endured in the not-so-distant past.

Not all of these books need to be digested before attending today's 7:30 p.m. performance of "National Pastime" at the Fremont Centre Theatre in South Pasadena, not far from where Robinson grew up. Bryan Harnetiaux's play, that dramatizes the events around Robinson's signing with the Dodgers, is having a special encore after a two-week run at the L.A. City College theatre. For tonight, they'll go back to using original cast members.

Of course. Because what's old is new again. And again. And again.

CAPTION(S):

5 photos, 2 boxes

Photo:

(1) no caption (disc: "The Natural: Director's Cut")

(2) MICHAEL PHELPS

(3) no caption (book: "After Jackie: Pride, Prejudice and Baseball's Forgotten Heroes")

(4) MARK PRIOR

(5) STEVE SWINDAL

Box:

(1) sunday punch

- Tom Hoffarth

(2) The Pop Quiz