SPORTS WATCH : Play Ball, Please!

Our local major league teams, the Dodgers and the Angels, are scheduled to take the field tonight in the first game of the traditional Freeway Series, the final exhibition games before the start of baseball season. But who are these guys? With the baseball strike still unsettled, it looks as if a bunch of unknowns, has-beens and wanna-bes wearing major league uniforms will stand in for real players on opening day.

The owners and the players’ union should have put a stop to this folly a long time ago, but they spent the fall and winter playing legal and political hardball rather than negotiating. Now they have one last weekend to try to get things settled.

The players are willing to to back on the field. Their union’s executive board has voted to end the strike, now more than seven months long, if a federal judge hands down an injunction sought by the National Labor Relations Board. The judge may rule today after a hearing. An injunction would reinstate key provisions of the labor agreement that expired last year, which at this point would at least represent progress.

The problem is that the owners could still lock out the regular players. But that would be risky, because it would also lock out the fans, those loyal souls who buy tickets and tune in to games on radio and TV.

Baseball is the national pastime, but will it remain so if the 1995 season opens with replacements playing a mediocre version of the real thing? Not likely.

Here’s hoping the strike is settled and opening day is delayed a couple of weeks to allow the real players time to get in shape. And play ball.