Lasorda Wants to See What He Has to Manage : Dodgers: Players enthusiastic, but shortened spring training will be crucial for many of the recovering ones.

Jim Gott answered the phone at his Salt Lake City home late Sunday with two questions.

“Who is this? What happened?” he asked.

The Dodger relief pitcher was informed that baseball’s 32-day lockout had ended.

“Yeaaaaaaaaaa,” he screamed.

As the baseball season returned to the Dodgers Sunday, so did enthusiasm. Gott began throwing pre-sorted piles of clothes into a suitcase, Jeff Hamilton felt his hands for protective callouses, and Manager Tom Lasorda sighed.

“Finally,” Lasorda said early Monday morning at the Dodgers’ Vero Beach, Fla., training site. “Finally.”

The end was not so much a surprise as a relief. The Dodger trainers are already in Vero Beach. The Dodger equipment, which usually travels by truck, is already packed and will be shipped on the first available freight plane today. Rooms for players who canceled reservations at condominiums are being cleared at Dodgertown. Even the club’s six players from the Dominican Republic have visas in hand, and can catch the first available flight.

“We’re all ready for them,” Lasorda said. “Now we just have to see what we get.”

That is the hard part. Because of last season’s injuries and this winter’s roster meddling and the basic laws of aging, the Dodgers will be one of the teams most affected by a lockout. The reasons:

--Kirk Gibson has already said he will not be ready for opening day. Gibson, recovering from August knee surgery, has not touched a bat or ball since then. It will be at least a month before he is full strength.

Kal Daniels, another Dodger outfielder recovering from knee surgery, has said he is ready to play, but has not yet tested himself against competition.

“For all clubs, it will be questionable now if injured guys are ready,” pitcher Mike Morgan said. “That will be a fact of life.”

--Many Dodgers have not worked out during the lockout. Jay Howell said he has rarely pitched. Tim Belcher said he has pitched, “once or twice.” Utility man Mickey Hatcher said he has only run.

“It’s been really hard to keep in shape, and I know there won’t be a lot of guys ready to go,” Hamilton said. “I’ve been to a batting cage a couple of times, so I’m just glad I’ve got some callouses.”

Said Gott, who said he has pitched every day and feels recovered from last summer’s elbow surgery: “This will give us a chance to see who the real professionals are. On a veteran team, a lot of guys use spring training to get ready. I just hope that this year, those guys realized they couldn’t take it easy.”

--With several off-season acquisitions, the Dodgers were going to use the spring to help with possible position changes, with right fielder Hubie Brooks possibly moving to third, and with new center fielder Juan Samuel getting extra work at that position, which he has only played for one year.

“We can’t do any of that stuff now,” Lasorda said. “We aren’t going to play a lot of games before the start of the season, it will be hard to get a look at people.”

Lasorda said that essentially, spring training will simply become a matter of finding the players who are in the best shape, and playing them.

“The main thing is, we don’t know what condition guys are in, that’s what we’ll spend a lot of our time doing,” Lasorda said. “Maybe some guys who aren’t in shape can get in shape real fast, who knows?”

Lasorda said that this could be a good opportunity for some top minor leaguers, most of whom have been in camp since Feb. 15. Among those players are pitcher Mike Munoz and outfielders Billy Bean and Mike Huff.

“It will be a case of, if we got a guy who isn’t ready, and some young guy who is ready, we might go with the young guy,” Lasorda said. “It just all depends on what it looks like when the guys get here.”