UPHEAVAL ON HORIZON.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

Winners in their last regular-season home game but trailers in the race for the playoff wild card, the Dodgers left the field in the slanted light of late Sunday afternoon to a perfunctory round of cheers from the Fan Appreciation Day sellout.

Nobody was booing, but nobody was pleading for a curtain call either.

The less-than-wildly enthusiastic sendoff was fitting for a team that knows not where it's going. The Dodgers could get hot in the next few days in San Diego and San Francisco and be back at Dodger Stadium as miracle-workers next week.

More likely, the Dodgers will run out of time in the next few days and half of them won't be back at all for opening day next April.

Nearing the wire in the race between triumph and upheaval, it's a 2 1/2-game lead for upheaval.

At least the Dodgers are doing their best to stave off what could be a busy - that's a euphemism for unpleasant - winter.

``I think right now, we're just focused on winning baseball games,'' said center fielder Dave Roberts, whose seventh-inning triple to the right-center-field gap drove in Alex Cora with the go-ahead run in the Dodgers' 7-5 victory before a crowd of 54,584 on Sunday. ``Obviously things are going to be different (next year). But nobody's thinking about those things. Right now we've just got to find a way to win the rest of our games.''

Give them credit: Down 5-2 after three-plus awful innings by Kazuhisa Ishii, the Dodgers got a big four-man relief effort capped by Eric Gagne, hit back-to-back-to-back home runs for the first time all season and looked not at all like a club conceding anything.

Then again, the Giants had fielded a lineup with one regular, the second time they've done that in four days, which might be overdoing the post- division-clinching siesta.

Smart young men, the Dodgers should be able to hold two thoughts in the days ahead, keeping their focus on their long-shot playoff possibility while recognizing how much could change if they come up short.

There could be a new owner, win or lose, and Fox's ``For Sale'' sign still looming over the ballpark.

The manager, Jim Tracy, and the general manager, Dan Evans, will come under scrutiny if this turns out to be, respectively, their third season and second full season without making the playoffs.

As much as half of the everyday lineup could turn over, with injured left fielder Brian Jordan (and mid-season addition Jeromy Burnitz) free agents, first baseman Fred McGriff's one-year contract over, third baseman Adrian Beltre's time just about up, and Tracy favorites shortstop Cesar Izturis and leadoff hitter Dave Roberts leaving some room for improvement.

The club's beefs with Odalis Perez will come to a head and last year's 15-game winner seems likely to leave in a trade. Reliever Guillermo Mota's super season as a set-up man could earn him a trade to a team that needs a closer, and Andy Ashby's Dodgers days are over as he faces elbow surgery.

Even with Gagne in line to get the millions he deserves in salary arbitration, the departures of Jordan, McGriff and Ashby will leave the Dodgers with money to spend for the first time since Evans replaced Kevin Malone.

I used the word ``upheaval'' in front of Tracy on Sunday and he said, ``I hope not,'' in part because he could be one of the ones upheaved.

``It takes time to build continuity, and it takes time once you've built it to allow it to bring itself to complete fruition,'' Tracy said. ``Anytime you have (upheaval), there's a measure of uncertainty that goes along with it, there's a period of figuring out what you didn't know.''

On the other hand, the Dodgers might want to take a chance on the unknown. Four seasons in a row, they've had winning records and no playoffs to show for it, the longest such streak of good-but-not-good-enough by any major-league team (not counting strike seasons) in the past 15 years.

We're getting ahead of ourselves. The Dodgers are fourth in the wild-card race, 2 1/2 games behind Florida, with eight to play. They haven't moved on to winter vacation just yet. Many of them should try to put it off for as long as they can.