The Artful Dodger by Tommy Lasorda and David Fisher (Arbor House: $15.95; 259 pp., illustrated)

Never mind the best-seller lists. The acid test is this: Can a lifelong Giant fan find happiness in the autobiography of Tommy Lasorda?

Lasorda, a man of Gargantuan excesses, loves everybody and everyone, with the pungent exception of the Giants. A unique opportunity, then, to skewer the man with his own words: Lasorda is loud, vulgar, fat, brash, pugnacious--and absolutely irresistible.

In seemingly perpetual employ of his revered Dodgers--pitcher, scout, coach, manager--he continues to live his dream like a man with a guaranteed no-cut appetite given the run of a linguine factory.

An American original larger than life (at least around the waistline), Lasorda writes as one might expect: in non-stop superlatives. “I believe I am the happiest man on earth,� he says more than once. “I married the most wonderful woman in the world.� “We are living in the greatest country in the world.�

Even the rare potholes on the highway to Blue heaven merit a measure of Lasorda hyperbole. After a fishing expedition in Vero Beach, “There has never been a worse case of sunburn in history.� When a pigeon plops on his head in Buffalo, “It was the lowest of all moments.� As for Adolfo Luque, his manager in Havana: “He was the worst human being I have ever known.�

From almost anyone else, such crapulence could be dismissed as the ranting of a manic buffoon. Curiously--and oddly refreshingly--one can almost believe it, coming from Lasorda. Or at least believe that he believes it--for the moment. The same gammon from, say, a Durocher would carry much less weight--as did Leo. (Of a Mays homer, the Lip once observed: “I never saw a bleeping ball get out of a bleeping park so bleeping fast in my bleeping life.�) Compared to Durocher though--a misanthrope (except, of course, when he was managing the Giants)--Lasorda is a bleeping Santa Claus.

Among his gifts, perhaps the most endearing, is a rare, ripe ability to set himself up as the target of the brush-back pitch before plunking others. “Statistics can be misleading,� Lasorda writes of his 0-4 major-league pitching record. “When Drysdale or Gibson pitched, for example, the other team never scored any runs . . . “ Or, “My control has always been better when I was throwing at a big target, like a batter, than something small, like home plate.�

An uninterrupted lode of anecdotes, the book traces Lasorda’s career from a poor but proud upbringing in Norristown, Pa.,(where his sainted dad “believed that the quickest way to a boy’s mind was through his backside�) through the minors and the Caribbean leagues to the mother club, scrapping, exhorting, conniving and bellowing all the way. (Walt Alston actually kept Lasorda on the roster--albeit on the bench--just because “he likes the way you yell at everybody.�)

It is an exuberant book, marred only by a late chapter that chronicles, unnecessarily, all the famous friends Lasorda has had, the TV shows he’s been on, the products he endorses . . .

There are no revelations--about the only thing this consummate company man wouldn’t bite is the hand that feeds him--but there is joy, camaraderie, unashamed love in Lasorda’s incontinent Odyssey.

In the end, even a Dodger-hater, in spite of himself, feels compelled to wish well to this profane and irrepressible pumpkin. Except, of course, when those bums play the Giants.