AFTER AN OFF-SEASON OF TUMULT PLAYED OUT IN COURTROOMS AND BEFORE CONGRESS, BASEBALL RETURNS TODAY FOR A. . .Season on the Brink

It is the dawn of a new baseball season, as if fans in Southern California needed to be reminded. Yeah, they see the sun rise in the East, same as the Yankees and the Mets do most years. And, right, they see it set in the West, just like the Dodgers and the Angels, dead-end summer after dead-end summer.

Stow it, sun.

Local fans, already resigned to the fact there will be no Freeway Series in October, for the 42nd consecutive October, do not need any more aggravation. Not when Mo Vaughn, the latest hyped-till-he-dropped bust to sweep through Anaheim, can be heard braying in the Met clubhouse, taunting his former teammates: “Ain’t none of them done a damn thing in this game, bottom line. They ain’t got no flags hanging at friggin’ Edison Field.”

And then there’s Mike Piazza, the Dodger icon who got away, the one-time king of Chavez Ravine and Manhattan Beach, telling anyone who will listen how much more he enjoys playing in the East, how the fans are more passionate in the East, how the atmosphere is more intense in the East.

Piazza would say that. In his five full seasons with the Dodgers, Piazza never won a postseason game. In his third season with the Mets, Piazza played in the World Series. Fans tend to get passionate when their team is in the World Series.

A few miles up the coast, Oakland is going through the same thing. The A’s had their own roughhewn version of Piazza in Jason Giambi--hero, heavy hitter, hell raiser--and now he’s also gone to New York. Giambi had been the raucous soul of the wild and woolly A’s, fighting the good fight of trying to dethrone the Yankees despite their mid-market trappings. But then free agency beckoned, the Yankees were in a mood to retool after losing the World Series in the last inning of the seventh game, and there Giambi went--gone from saving baseball in Oakland to shaving his goatee for George Steinbrenner, just like that.

It is 2002, or so says the calendar. It only feels like 1952, when the baseball teams out West existed primarily to promote their top prospects to the big clubs in the East. Learn your craft here, polish your tools here, but when you want to get serious about your baseball, it’s time to head to New York or Boston or Philadelphia.

After lobbying through the media for a trade back to the East Coast late last year, Vaughn got his wish Dec. 27, when the Angels sent him to the Mets for pitcher Kevin Appier. In a conference call with reporters the same day, Vaughn, a former American League most valuable player with the Boston Red Sox, was exultant.

“The everyday attitude to get up and make it happen is something I thrived on in Boston,” he said. “I missed it in L.A. There’s a certain mentality, attitude that goes along with playing on the East Coast, in New York and Boston. That fits me as a player.”

He was back in the bigs, in other words.

This might come as news in Arizona, where the World Series championship trophy rests, or San Francisco, where the single-season home-run record rests, or Seattle, where the most exciting new player in the sport, Ichiro Suzuki, never rests.

But Vaughn espouses a view held by many in the game, that the East is a different beast--major league baseball in its most concentrated form.

A case can be made.

East Coast: Mickey Mantle. West Coast: Mickey Mouse.

East Coast: The Green Monster in left field. West Coast: The Rally Monkey on the video screen.

East Coast: Fights in the bleachers. West Coast: The flight of the beach ball getting swatted around the bleachers.

“I was brought up in a pressure-packed situation in Boston,” Vaughn said before the Mets played the Dodgers in an exhibition game last week. “Overall, the East Coast is a get-it-done-yesterday type situation. And I seem to thrive on that. Not necessarily for the publicity, but the situation. That’s the way it is.”

Piazza believes there is “more of a football mentality on the East Coast. You lose a game, it’s like the end of the world.

“I remember a few years ago, [the Mets] opened the season with a $70-million payroll, in 1999. The first day, we lost to the Marlins and the back page the next day said, ‘$70-Million Flops.’ You laugh about it. Next day, we won the game and it was, ‘Mets Get Their Money’s Worth.’

“A lot has to do with the blue-collar work ethic of the towns back East. It’s reflected in the media, in the whole roller-coaster ride of the media there. You can be a hero one day, next day you’re a goat. One day you’re the greatest thing since Mickey Mantle, the next day they want to run you out of town.”

Philadelphia Phillie Manager Larry Bowa previously coached in Anaheim and managed in San Diego. He has seen major league life from both sides of the country and maintains that “overall, there’s more of a sense of urgency to excel on the East Coast. They don’t have a lot of other things to do, whereas on the West Coast, the fans have a lot of stuff to do out there. It’s more laid-back. It’s a little more casual. It’s really a form of entertainment for them.

“On the East Coast, it’s, ‘Hey, we want you to win at all costs. It’s our summer, don’t screw it up.’”

On the East Coast, a defeat is treated “like a death in the family,” Bowa said. “Especially if they have high expectations for you and you’re floundering early. I mean, you turn on a radio talk show and you get buried, everybody’s getting buried....

“You can feel that, that urgency as soon as you take the field. Obviously, they’re a lot more vocal. If you don’t do well, they let you know about it. I’m not saying they don’t boo on the West Coast, but it’s very minimal compared to the East Coast.”

Part of it can be attributed to location. So it’s July in Southern California and the Angels are losing? So let’s surf/kayak/jog/roller-blade/golf the blues away.

Yankee pitcher Roger Clemens says he has “seen a few times in Anaheim where a guy is throwing a cool game and people get up in the fifth, sixth or seventh inning and head for the beach.”

Which is not to say those fans are any less knowledgeable about the game. To the contrary. When the other option is three more innings with the Rally Monkey, any savvy baseball observer is going to opt for the pier.

In the East, there are fewer alternatives for stress release. “There’s not that much to do, unless you want to go to the shore,” Bowa said. “In the East, the fans line up [their lives] around sporting events, basically.”

Part of it is a consequence of history. Most of the teams in the East are older, hence they have more of it. More to live with, more to live up to and, in the notable cases of the Red Sox and Phillies, more to live down.

“I think that there is a more entrenched generation-to-generation baseball thing in the East,” baseball broadcaster and commentator Bob Costas said. “All the California cities are either relocation or expansion cities. Now that goes back 30, 40 years in some cases, but the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Phillies have more of a history than these teams do--unless you’re counting the A’s history in Philadelphia and the Dodgers’ history in Brooklyn.

“They have more of a history in their present locations. More history--and in the case of the Phillies and the Red Sox, more pathology. Even though there may be some disappointments, I don’t know if an L.A. Dodger fan carries the same psychic scars as Red Sox fans do, or even as Phillies fans do.

“There’s also the settings. Dodger Stadium is a beautiful, beautiful location and a considerable amount of history has taken place there. But it’s not Yankee Stadium or Fenway Park, you know? Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park have that sense of ghosts being there.

“And, you know, Sandy Koufax is not a ghost. He’s alive. Duke Snider’s alive. [Almost] all the great L.A. Dodgers are alive. In the East, there may be a little bit more of that kind of mythology attached.

“The L.A. Dodgers have an undeniably great history and they have baseball’s greatest voice in Vin Scully, who’s an ongoing link to that history. So I’m not saying that it’s nonexistent. Not by any means. I just think it’s deeper--certainly for the Yankees and the Red Sox and the Phillies.”

Is more intense better?

Vaughn believes so.

“The Angels played very well in Yankee Stadium,” he said, “because the level of play has to come up. For me, to have that on an everyday basis can only bring your game up, because you can’t hide, there’s nowhere to go.

“You’re in the limelight and you’re going to be seen. If you’re not intimidated by it, it can help you as a player.”

For those who are intimidated, Bowa offers some quick career counseling.

“If you’re not a mentally tough person and you’re traded to an East Coast team, it might have an effect on you--fans calling you a bum,” he says. “If that bothers you, you might want to get into another line of work. Or try to get traded back out West.”

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Staff writer Mike DiGiovanna contributed to this report.