SPORTS WATCH : Artful Dodgers

Say what you will about the Dodgers--and we know there are baseball fans out there who think the Angels are Los Angeles’ only real home team, and transplanted New Yorkers who never forgave “Dem Bums” for leaving Brooklyn--but the Dodgers are admirably consistent in their policy on hiring and firing managers.

Did we say firing? What firing? The Dodgers never fire their managers. In the 35 years the team has been playing in Los Angeles it has had exactly two managers.

The first was the quiet Walter Alston, who oversaw the team’s performance on the field for 23 years before gracefully retiring at the end of the 1976 season. Then came the voluble Tommy Lasorda, who has seen the Dodgers through the ups and downs of a modern baseball era--free agency, players’ strikes and the like--but still managed to win six pennants and two World Series and retain his infectious love of the game.

Wednesday, despite last season’s last-place finish, the Dodgers’ management squelched rumors that this might be Lasorda’s last year with the team, extending his contract through 1994. Count us among those happy to see it, and not just because we refuse to concede the 1993 pennant to the Giants just yet. Somehow Dodger Stadium just wouldn’t seem the same without the expansive Lasorda exhorting everyone within earshot.

There is a lesson in the Dodgers’ patience with managers for other big league teams that change field generals as often as they change batting gloves and still don’t have the Dodgers’ winning record to show for it.