DATE: Tuesday, August 26, 1997              TAG: 9708270824
SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: TOM ROBINSON

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   70 lines

NEW YORK'S SUCCESS BEGETS TIDES' MESS

If not dazed, the Tides are at least confused. And not simply on the field, where Monday's 4-1 loss to Richmond made it seven in a row, further throwing the wheels off of their once-steady playoff cruise.

On Friday, ex-Yankee Bobby Richardson will have a plaque added to the Tidewater Baseball Shrine that lines Harbor Park's concourse. So everybody will assume Richardson has an actual link to the area, which will just add to the confusion in the place.

Richardson spent two weeks here, 44 years ago, as a 17-year-old with the Norfolk Tars. That's it.

Whatever. The truth has been obfuscated so much at the ballyard lately that a little more bewilderment fits right in.

You'd think nobody here can play this game, so agonizing is the Tides' August performance. They really aren't this bad, yet they have won just nine of 26 games this month. As a team in that time, they have hit .216 and barely averaged three runs per game.

``Every night we think this is the night we're going to break out,'' said catcher Charlie Greene after the Tides managed just one run for the fifth time during the losing streak. ``If we don't, then it's the next night. We're so overdue.''

Reach back to the early July all-star break, a couple of days after the Tides actually held a six-game lead atop the International League's West Division, and the numbers are shocking:

The Tides were 54-37 at the break and are 17-27 since. They hit .277 before, .243 since. They averaged 5.3 runs before, 3.48 since, which has rendered their improved pitching - a 4.06 earned-run average before, 3.43 since - meaningless.

What happened? Nothing that doesn't happen to most every Triple-A team that's doing its job every year - promotions to the big leagues. Injuries have slowed the Tides some, but call-ups have hit them where they live, in the clubhouse and between the lines.

If the Tides have Matt Franco, Luis Lopez, Todd Pratt, Brian Bohanon and Cory Lidle today, they're still running away with the West. Instead, that quintet that began the season in Norfolk is contributing to the Mets' unlikely wildcard chase.

Tides manager Rick Dempsey, sitting at his desk, ticks off their names, doodles them on a piece of paper. He knows the Tides have won plenty of games without them, and in spite of the busy shuttle that has carried nine others to and from New York.

Against crazy odds the Tides won early by doing everything just right, Dempsey said. Still, Dempsey admits he suspected his club might eventually stumble, and a month ago he began to see foreboding signs of sloppiness.

The timing of the crash - down the stretch - is the killer.

Triple-A managers know that winning invariably takes a back seat to preparing players for the majors. Dempsey is clear on that, that a jumbled roster is de rigueur. That's why it is so gratifying, Dempsey said, to win at the same time.

``That makes it harder to accept what's happening,'' he said. ``We had it in the palm of our hands.''

Losing Pratt on July 3 was hardest, Dempsey said. The veteran catcher who practically begged Dempsey for a backup role in spring training had emerged as their guts, their catalyst and leader, not to mention a huge bat in the heart of their order.

Clubhouse presence cannot be underestimated over the tedious course of a baseball season. Pratt had it. And the Tides, Dempsey laments, have lacked a clubhouse leader since Pratt left.

With one, Dempsey might not be seeing what he candidly calls fear in his players during this skid.

``You get guys afraid to make pitches, afraid to have the ball hit to them,'' Dempsey said. ``It's an amazing thing. If I knew how to get rid of it, I could make a million dollars.''

He'd settle for a couple of wins. No charge.

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