NUTS TO YOU . . .

The highlights on television that night, the photographs that ran in newspapers the next morning, showed a man enraged.

Eyes bugged, veins protruding from his neck, mouth twisted in mid-invective.

Larry Bowa hit Los Angeles like a blast of hot wind, exploding into an argument with umpire Ed Montague in his second home game as the Dodgers’ third base coach.

His critics -- and there are a few -- quickly pointed to a history of outbursts, a former shortstop who threw dugout tantrums, a twice-fired manager with a reputation for battling umpires.

The 62-year-old has heard it before. He knows how those pictures look.

“People probably see me and think ‘This guy is nuts,’ ” he said.

But there might be another way of looking at the man. Maybe there is another side to his story.

Start with a boy whose father played minor league ball. Every spring, he was cut from his high school team in Sacramento -- “They said I was too small” -- and went straight home to throw a ball against the garage.

“He just wanted to go out there and play any which way he could,” his sister, Paula Graf, said. “It put a spark there.”

The kid wasn’t going to succeed with size or speed. Passion was all he could offer.

The local city college finally gave him a chance and he played well enough that Philadelphia Phillies scout Eddie Bockman drove 100 miles to watch him play a doubleheader.

But even then, Bowa’s fervor cut both ways. Build up all that emotion, all that desire, there’s no telling which direction it might fly.

As soon as Bockman had taken a seat in the stands, Bowa was ejected for arguing a call. In the next game, he couldn’t help chirping at the umpire and was tossed again. Bockman told him he was hard to scout: “You don’t stay in the game long enough.”

It took a few more trips for the scout to realize what he was looking at. An arm forged strong and accurate. Feet made quick. In the fall of 1965, he offered Bowa a contract for all of $2,000.

“Didn’t even take him a minute to say yes,” Bockman recalled.

That break was all Bowa needed. He treated every spring like high school, scrambling to make the team. One season became two, then three.

“It didn’t come natural,” he said. “To me, attitude played a big part. You’d better have a chip on your shoulder when you take the field.”

His unlikely career spanned 16 seasons, five All-Star teams and two Gold Gloves. His .980 fielding percentage remains a National League record for shortstops.

This was a player so thrilled about winning that he accidentally bruised teammates in celebration. A player who hated to lose.

Dodgers Manager Joe Torre recalls Bowa as “this little guy who choked up on the bat, and you could tell that he got angry when he made an out.”

Through the 1970s, his tirades became a leitmotif, a recurring performance in which he screamed and stomped, stormed back to the clubhouse, occasionally smashed a few light bulbs or battered a toilet before cooling off.

Hardly sounds like a managerial pedigree. So how did he end up with a second career in the dugout?

Never expecting to last as a player, Bowa had prepared himself. From the start, he pestered coaches for information, building a storehouse of baseball knowledge, sharpening his instincts for when to call a bunt or when to gamble with the hit-and-run.

The intense player morphed into an equally intense manager. Teams hired him for his smarts and enthusiasm; they also got a leader who cringed and cussed every time his team made a mistake, who could not abide by mental errors or the worst of all sins -- lack of effort.

Bowa lasted less than two seasons with the Padres in the late 1980s, his style rubbing some players the wrong way. He coached 12 years before getting his next managerial job at Philadelphia in 2001.

The Phillies needed a spark and Bowa led them to a winning record, earning National League manager-of-the-year recognition. But he was still, in the words of third baseman Scott Rolen, a “caged animal.”

In four seasons, Bowa was ejected a reported 22 times. During a 2003 spring training game, he grew so upset after Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Roy Halladay hit one of his batters that he had to be restrained. His outburst caused both benches to clear.

The Phillies tried hiring a consultant to help with his image. It didn’t work. The team fired him in 2004.

“He would have made a good manager if he’d kept his mouth shut,” Bockman said. “I think he realizes that, but it’s ingrained in him.”

So the coach who has landed in Dodger Stadium is older if not necessarily wiser, his face broadened with age, features blunt as if to embody stubbornness. Sitting in the dugout on a warm April morning, hours before the first pitch, he laughs and talks easily, as frank about his own shortcomings as he is about others’.

Yes, he acknowledges mistakes. No, he doesn’t like some of the terms used to describe him -- “fiery” and “out of control,” in particular -- pointing out that he has never spit on an umpire or fought with a player.

“Everyone has their own personality,” he said. “I wouldn’t try to change them and I won’t let them change me.”

The game still means everything. The team’s early-season losses have not been easy to take.

“Food tastes bad, can’t sleep,” he said. “Pretty miserable.”

Yet the challenge energizes a man not given to waxing about home runs or diving catches. He figures anyone can play the game when things are going well.

“I want to see a guy when he’s struggling his butt off,” he said. “When he comes out fighting.”

The point has been made that the Dodgers need his toughness. Last season, the team wrestled with doubts about whether its young talent was trying hard enough. Torre heard those clubhouse rumblings and brought Bowa along from his New York Yankees staff.

“When you mention Larry Bowa’s name, most of the stuff is, ‘Yeah, did you see him get thrown out by that umpire?’ ” Torre said. “But you have to see him every day to make an evaluation of what he’s about and what he brings to a team.”

You have to see him at the ballpark early, focusing his zeal on those young players. He talks to Andy LaRoche and smacks ground balls to Chin-lung Hu before batting practice.

“So much energy,” Hu said. “He just keeps hitting balls. He never stops.”

Bowa can play the bad guy to Torre’s steady hand. He can serve as inspiration or crack the whip.

“I guess there’s a fine line between being too blunt and the honest truth,” James Loney said. “There’s nothing wrong with the honest truth.”

Of course, the season is young, the team still acclimating to a new coaching staff. Bowa has already raised eyebrows with his ejection and a brief rebellion against the new rule that requires base coaches to wear helmets.

His daughter saw the Montague incident on the news -- “I thought to myself, ‘Oh, Dad’ ” -- and she wondered how Dodgers fans might react.

“People either love him or hate him,” 24-year-old Tori Bowa said. “Everybody has an opinion.”

Maybe that’s the best way to view Bowa. As a character who stands apart.

Consider this city’s history of cool if not otherwise refined coaches, a bloodline that runs from Walter Alston and John Wooden through John McKay and Chuck Knox. The current group features Torre, the Zen of Phil Jackson and the boyish charm of Pete Carroll.

“I’m not saying that I’m 100% right,” Bowa said. “I’m just saying there are certain things you’ve done your whole career the same way.”

Unbridled. Unapologetic. Raw.

Maybe the new third base coach isn’t a hot blast. Maybe he is a breath of fresh air.

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