THIS '81 MODEL STILL IS A BEAUTY.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

The Dodgers paused in this schizophrenic season, when young and old have blended so unexpectedly, to pay tribute Saturday night to the heroes of a strike-divided season 25 years ago, when a kid pitcher helped a veteran infield to an overdue World Series championship.

Maybe the 2006 team can ride those slim parallels with the 1981 team and go as far, but that's setting a ridiculously high standard.

``I hope a little rubs off on this year's ballclub,'' Dodgers owner Frank McCourt said in the afternoon in the stadium's Dugout Club, in a ``welcome home'' to about two dozen players and coaches arrayed behind him, wearing replicas of their '81 jerseys over dress shirts and ties. ``I think it will.''

With a few notable exceptions -- Steve Howe died in an automobile crash this year, and Davey Lopes, Dusty Baker and Mike Scioscia were among those with games to coach and manage elsewhere -- they came back to Dodger Stadium for a reunion and ceremonies before the Padres-Dodgers game. Fernando Valenzuela, Rick Monday and Jerry Reuss, who are around a lot anyway as Dodgers broadcasters.

Steve Garvey, Bill Russell and Ron Cey, Lopes' infield mates. Steve Yeager and Pedro Guerrero, who shared the World Series MVP Award with Cey. Jay Johnstone, Reuss's fellow cut-up. Bob Welch and Dave Stewart and Alejandro Pena, young pitchers on their way to long careers. Steve Sax and Tom Niedenfuer, who were just starting out that summer (Sax wore his rookie No. 52 on Saturday).

If you're keeping score, Fernando edged Garvey for the biggest ovation when the squad was introduced on the third-base line, Fernandomania still going a quarter-century later.

The players who seemed so old then look merely middle-aged now. To watch them hang out together was to be reminded what a collection of personalities, the homegrown vets and the imports and the kids, came together in '81.

Johnstone and Sax sneaked up behind a speechifying Tom Lasorda to give the manager a start, Guerrero nudged Sax playfully as Lasorda launched into a familiar story about the pair, and you got the idea the jokes would fly all night.

As somebody looking on noted, you can't fake chemistry.

``It may not have been a great team, that's for the historians to decide,'' Vin Scully said. ``But I guarantee you, it was a team that rollicked its way to the championship.''

Then Scully joined in the verbal roughhousing: ``I can't say what's more puzzling, the Dodgers winning that World Series, or Steve Sax (now) being a financial advisor.''

Garvey reflected on the scene a few minutes later.

``I think I've learned over the years (since) what a baseball brotherhood is all about,'' the first baseman said.

They tried hard, the old-timers, to feed McCourt's hope that the spirit of '81 might rub off on '06.

``I think the more you can put Dodger history in front of your players, just through absorption, they're going to have a sense of what's at stake,'' Garvey said. ``There are only a couple of franchises in baseball with that kind of history.''

``(Enthusiasm) is something that's pretty easy to sniff out,'' Sax said. ``I see that with this (year's) team.''

``To see it start to happen for this year's team,'' Monday said of Friday's clutch win over San Diego, which put the Dodgers closer to the playoffs, ``was truly special.''

Sure, give them 25,000 years, and they might replicate 25 years ago, when the Dodgers merely won the most important of their five titles in Los Angeles, the one that avenged the 1977-78 World Series losses to the Yankees, the one that certified the eight-year infield would not leave empty-handed, the one without which maybe Lasorda isn't around for 1988.

There wasn't much unique about '81. Unless you count the beginning (Valenzuela opening 8-0 after his emergency start on Opening Day), the middle (the players strike that broke up the season for nearly two months) and the end (the Dodgers coming from 2-0 down to Houston in the best-of-five division series, 2-1 down to Montreal in the best-of-five National League Championship Series and 2-0 down in the World Series).

``We were down, we were eliminated,'' said Monday, whose home run beat the Expos. ``It read more like the obit page than the sports page.''

They got used to starting over. Having led the National League West when the strike hit June 11, the Dodgers were declared champions of the ``first half,'' minor-league style, and played out the remaining 53 games with a playoff spot clinched.

``There comes a point when you have to renew your commitment to the season,'' Garvey said. ``For us, it was when the season started again after the strike.''

With Garvey, Russell, Baker and Yeager (each 32 then), Cey (33), Lopes (36) and pitcher Burt Hooton (31) all survivors of the '70s losses in the Bronx, this was a club with its back to the calendar. If there was unusual commitment in that clubhouse, it came from knowing time was nearly up (and the pruning would begin with Lopes that winter).

``Having been frustrated in '74 (against Oakland), `77 and `78, winning in `81 as the fulfillment,'' Garvey said. ``A lot of great baseball players have retired without winning a World Series. But if you don't win, in a team sport, there's an emptiness.''

Something from '81 could rub off, as McCourt wishes. But is there anything from '06 for it to stick to?

It's not a knock, just a fact. Though this year's Dodgers were built around their veterans, none is as vested as the Garvey generation's, and though this year's Dodgers have survived with rookies, none tingles the spine like Fernando.

If this year's Dodgers can think of the general pessimism about their playoff chances as some kind of hole to be climbed out of, then maybe they can summon some of those Dodgers' resiliency. Failing that, 1981 must go down in history as a championship season whose qualities were too rare and special to be instructive or inspirational to today's mortals.

heymodesti(AT_SIGN)aol.com

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CAPTION(S):

2 photos, 7 boxes

Photo:

(1) From left, Pedro Guerrero, Steve Yeager and Ron Cey -- the three MVPs of the 1981 World Series -- prepare to throw out the ceremonial first pitch before the game at Dodger Stadium on Saturday night.

Associated Press

(2) no caption (Chuck James)

Box:

(1) THEY SAID IT

(2) WHO'S HOT

(3) WHO'S COLD

(4) ROOKIE WATCH

(5) NOTES

(6) DAILY NEWS/CBS 2/KCAL 9 SPORTS CENTRAL POWER RANKINGS

- Matt McHale

(7) SERIES OF THE WEEK