COLUMN ONE : The Boys of Spring Strike Out : Far from the hoopla of opening day, replacement players are back home trying to fit into the modest lives they left to chase a dream. They have learned that the game they love does not need them anymore.

Thomas Wolfe was wrong: You can go home again. Glen Braxton had no choice.

So on a dark morning in early April, with tornado warnings on the airwaves and lightning shredding the sky, the erstwhile New York Yankees outfielder was back in Oklahoma, loading his year-old son, Glen Jr., into his rusted ’77 Oldsmobile. He set out through the rain to the baby-sitter’s, then on to work, a half-hour journey filled with unsated longings.

Scarcely two weeks earlier, Braxton, 28, had been living a fantasy, playing for the most hallowed sports franchise in American history, a team boasting 22 World Series titles and a tradition that fairly shimmers with the likes of Ruth, Gehrig and DiMaggio.

Braxton burns inside, burns for that kind of glory. But when he stopped to pull on his Yankees cap, it would not be to play before the roaring crowds; it would only keep off the rain. His navy batting gloves would serve only to protect his hands while he hefted bales of hay--makeshift sandbags--for a developer who pays $7 an hour.

“It’s hard,” the former replacement player said, his bright smile vanishing. “I know in my heart--I just know it--that I can be a big-league hitter. I always have been a hitter. That’s one thing that I can do: I can hit the baseball.”

Spanking the ball in the major leagues is an ambition that inflames the hearts of millions of boys and men. For all but a few, the dream dies early. But for Braxton, it was different. He came oh, so tantalizingly close. He and scores of other unknown athletes were propelled to the brink of major league play by a fluke--the longest labor strike to befall professional sports in America.

Until that strike ended early this month, clearing the way for the return of regular players and a season that begins today, teams prepared for a full schedule of games using fill-ins. The exalted Yankees patched together a squad of minor leaguers and players such as Braxton, who quit baseball years ago. For six extraordinary weeks of training camp, they got one last fling. Men who had moved on to become drivers, teachers and used car salesmen got to take one final, unexpected shot at stardom.

In the end, they learned a bittersweet truth: that baseball is not their place. Condemned as scabs by millionaire athletes and hired at bargain basement wages by autocratic team owners, the replacement players, by and large, never expected to take the place of baseball’s elite, at least not for long. They saw a chance to play the game they love and they took it. And when their awkward purpose was served, the scores of replacements were unceremoniously cut loose. There was nothing left but to return to modest lives where heroics go unsung.

They went back to families that had struggled in their absence. They returned to children who had trouble sleeping, or coping at school. They faced a painful adjustment, still yearning for what might have been while buckling down to deal with problems and responsibilities that only they could address.

Yankees pitcher Mike Pitz rejoined his wife and baby daughter and the high school baseball team he helps to train. He went back to selling wine and liquor to grocery stores, and to his half-remodeled home in the Northern California town of Colfax (pop. 1,469), where its first Taco Bell opened last year and there are still no stoplights.

Catcher John (J. T.) Kroeger returned to the emotionally disturbed children at a school in Hackensack, N.J. Most of them are from broken homes. Some have been beaten or sexually abused. Some have criminal records. Kroeger counsels them, calms them, teaches them to play ball.

And Braxton was back with his wife, Charlene, and baby in the one-room garage they share behind his mother-in-law’s red-brick home in Oklahoma City. He was glad to be there for them last week, when a bomb ripped apart a federal office building, drawing worldwide attention. His wife was grateful to have him back even before then, in part because he handles the baby-care needs after midnight and takes Junior to the sitter in the morning.

“The first couple of weeks Glen was gone, Junior was just awful,” she said. “Lots of crying . . . screaming for his daddy. Glen would call probably a couple times every day, and Junior would just go nuts, trying to grab the phone. It was like, ‘I know this is my dad, but I don’t know where he is.’ ”

Braxton was torn. He said there is an anger inside him, a rage. He is a ballplayer, has been all his life. Spring training made him realize just how much he misses the game.

Yet Junior greets him with extended arms. His squishy toddler’s baseball--a recent gift--invites a father’s attention. There is also yard work to be done. On weekends, Braxton helps at his widowed mother-in-law’s ice cream shop. Tropical flavors are shipped 1,000 pounds at a time, in boxes too bulky for her to handle.

His wife brags about that smiling, helpful side of him--how he can’t wait to do someone a favor. Soon after he got home, she recalled, he was working outside when a transient came by, a man with no socks.

“Glen came running in, (saying,) ‘Charlene, give me a couple pairs of my socks.’ Then he went and gave the man a couple pairs of his socks. That sounds just like Glen.”

Two-Sport Star

He was always a two-sport star, baseball and football, and Braxton drives as if he were rushing for yardage--crowding up to the next car, shifting lanes, accelerating, breaking free. On a bright Oklahoma afternoon, he was crushing the pedal of his wife’s black Eagle, a high-performance machine with a phone and an eye-level crack across the windshield.

A short rescue mission had filled part of the previous afternoon: Popeye, the family’s English bulldog, had escaped. Braxton had gone out, block by block, until he had found the pet.

Now, on a Sunday, there was time just to drive, to think. His mother, Lorine, had raised 12 children in Idabel (pop. 7,500), a depressed rural outpost near the Texas and Arkansas borders. His father had helped a little, Braxton said, but did not live at home. The family survived by keeping hogs and chickens. Lorine, who also worked as a housekeeper, taught her children values, to do unto others. Over the years she has only grown more active in the church.

Her faith set Braxton thinking: “Days are passing fast. Tonight is almost here--and it will be over with. People don’t look at it like that. I do. It’s scary.”

It’s scary being 28 and seeing time and chances slip away. Not so long ago, Braxton’s future glittered before him like a road through El Dorado. He was a can’t-miss prospect, an all-state running back who gained 2,300 yards in his senior season--1,000 more in the playoffs--and was offered a scholarship to play for the powerful University of Oklahoma Sooners. At the plate in baseball, Braxton showed prodigious power. His high school coach, Bruce Hill, recalled one home run that cleared the fence 320 feet away--and the light tower beyond.

“He was probably the best athlete to ever go through here,” Hill said. “And he was just a great, great, great kid.”

The Chicago White Sox were sufficiently impressed to offer Braxton $80,000. He reported to the minor leagues in Sarasota, Fla. It was the first time, really, that he had been outside the state. It was too soon. He grew homesick. He watched on TV while the Sooners-- his Sooners--captured the 1985 national championship.

That next year, Braxton played just four hitless games before quitting baseball and returning home. Eventually, he tried again--three more seasons--but quitting had tainted him, he believes, in the eyes of his managers. He seldom played. He had batted only .222 when his career fizzled to nothing in 1989. He tried football again, hurt his neck, and retired.

Yet the hunger never left. Last year, with Charlene nine months pregnant, Braxton itched to attend baseball camps in Florida, to start over, even if only in the minors. He waited until Junior was born, then left, placing a terrible burden on Charlene--raising an infant without him. She gave up their two-bedroom apartment to save money. It rankled Braxton greatly that he did not succeed.

But this spring, when major league teams began looking for replacements, he tried out again. Many promising minor leaguers were unwilling to cross the picket lines, for fear of later recriminations. That opened a door for athletes like Braxton who had severed their ties to the sport.

The Sunday drive led him to Oklahoma University in Norman. In a hall beneath the football stadium, Braxton gazed at a picture of that ’85 Sooners team. He pointed out quarterback Troy Aikman, who later transferred to UCLA, then led the Dallas Cowboys to triumph in the Super Bowl. Braxton said he once homered off Aikman, a pitcher in high school. Then, bounding upstairs, Braxton looked out at the lush green field, a flawless stage now empty below high, waiting grandstands.

“This is big-time,” he said. “Too bad I missed it. I think if I would have came here I would have had a different life.” Braxton did not sound sorrowful; that crossroads was fully a decade behind him. “Now I think I’m at a point,” he added, “where I have to go on with my life. . . .”

And so it was time to get going. Charlene was expecting him at home. His mother-in-law’s yard, neglected all spring, was due for major cleaning: old tires, leaves, a couple of dismembered freezers. Braxton toiled until dark, hauling the debris to the curb for the morning trash.

The Final Inning

Two days before the fill-in Yankees were to open the regular season, 29-year-old Mike Pitz took the mound before the biggest crowd that ever watched him pitch: 46,815 at newly opened Coors Field in Denver. The Yankees led the Rockies, 3-2, in the fourth inning of the final game of spring training. Nervous, Pitz walked a batter and hit another. But he also struck out a man and preserved the lead.

That one inning--the last of his pro career--came just before the bubble burst. The Yankees were scheduled to fly immediately to Texas. Then came an order to stay put. A federal court had issued an injunction, forcing team owners to honor terms of the expired labor agreement. Regular players announced they would return. Officials scrambled to draft new game schedules.

On April 2, a day before the replacements were to reach the big show, they got the word: It was over.

Pitz headed home to Colfax, in the forested foothills north of Sacramento. One significant concern: Would he get his job back? His company, a liquor distributor, had planned to save him a spot, but he had been gone longer than expected.

Money was not a pressing problem, but playing ball had brought financial risk. Pitz’s home was undergoing a major remodeling, and his wife, Lisa, had cut her own job hours in half because of their 7-month-old daughter. The Yankees had paid Pitz $5,000, plus expenses, for the six weeks of training camp. But he missed out on $25,000 more--the share each replacement stood to claim by reaching the regular season. Overall, Pitz figured, a spring of baseball had cost him a couple grand.

Pitz had no regrets, however. Like other replacements, he said he played for the experience, not the cash. He took exception to the label of scab, saying he posed no threat to striking players who were fighting over hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars.

“I did talk to a few (regular players) in Ft. Lauderdale,” he said, “and they didn’t harbor any ill feelings toward us. They said, ‘Somebody’s going to play; it might as well be you.’ I think when they came out and said (critical) things in the media, they did that because they thought they had to.”

Crossing the picket line certainly did not seem a matter of shame at a festive homecoming barbecue for Pitz, a Colfax High standout who endured seven seasons in the minor leagues, counting Taiwan in 1993. Pitz had been written up during the spring by a local newspaper. That story now lay next to another prized memento: a glossy photo of Pitz in Yankee pin-stripes.

Pitz spoke with anguish about falling short of a real major league season by “just 24 hours.” But Lisa was happy to have him back. He was now able to help care for Taylor and to oversee the remodeling.

Life seemed to be falling into place. The company called a day after Pitz’s return. He got his job back--a guaranteed $30,000 a year.

Later that day, Pitz grabbed a glove and headed to Colfax High. Two days after pitching before nearly 50,000 fans, he threw batting practice to the varsity Falcons with not a soul in the bleachers.

Nearly an hour into the session, a parent stopped by. Dave Geddes had come to see his son, Justin, the shortstop.

“We’ve got a big-time pitcher out there today,” Geddes called out. Watching one youngster lace a drive to the outfield, Geddes said he had seen Pitz throw batting practice before. Pitz has helped the coaches groom two all-state pitchers in recent years.

“He is so good that he can throw balls that these guys have to work at, but they can hit,” Geddes said. “That’s how kids grow. But any time he wants to, he can turn out the lights . . . and everybody knows it.”

Working without pay, and without so much as two minutes of rest, Pitz threw for an hour and a half, perhaps the equivalent of a dozen innings. At the end, he allowed that he would probably be sore in the morning, and he wearily packed his glove and drove home.

He Didn’t Say Goodby

J.T. Kroeger stepped back into the classroom during lunch, while a teen-age girl was applying dressing to her salad. From the commotion, she knew Kroeger had appeared behind her, but her face was dour. She refused to look up even when telling him, “I’m mad at you.”

Kroeger’s tone was incredulous. “You’re mad at me already?”

“You know I’m mad at you.”

“Because I didn’t say goodby?”

“You didn’t say goodby to me.” The hurt in her voice seemed exaggerated--but hers has been a life filled with hurt. “You just forgot all about me.”

A teacher reminded the girl that she had been absent on the day in February that Kroeger left for training camp. Forgiveness came gradually, because the youngsters at George Washington School Annex are wary of forming bonds. There are 33 emotionally disturbed teen-agers here in a narrow, two-story storefront, a few miles across the bridge from Yankee Stadium. Kroeger has worked with them since last fall. He also works nights at the Holley Center, a boarding home for younger disturbed children.

The two jobs make for 16-hour days, but the money is good and, besides, he feels a kinship with these youngsters. Kroeger, 29, has experienced his own difficulties in school. He was hyperactive; he once bolted from kindergarten at the scream of a fire engine. He took medication and was put in special-education classes. He suffered a reading comprehension problem. One high school counselor predicted he would never graduate from college.

“He had to work harder than most kids would,” said his father, John, who preached lessons in perseverance. J. T. excelled at baseball and basketball in high school and played catcher for nearby Fairleigh Dickinson University. He did get that college degree--in marketing and communications--and talks as proudly about that as he does about being drafted as a ballplayer.

Injuries marred a minor-league career of just 31 games, but he is not bitter. Nor is Kroeger bitter--as some replacement players were--that the Yankees sent him home. There were many thrills in the spring, including a 2-1 win over the Mets, a game that school Principal Robert Mayer videotaped and showed to the students. Many cheered wildly when Kroeger drove in the first run with a single.

Kroeger’s rapport with the students has been remarkable, said his supervisor, Owen Broomes.

“You have other counselors that are struggling to get from point A to point B,” Broomes said. “John doesn’t have that problem. He’s like, ‘Listen up, guys, this is what we are going to do.’ It takes a big burden off of me.”

As Kroeger moved from class to class, getting reacquainted, a number of teen-agers mentioned seeing him on TV. They called his name. After school, staff members convened under a banner--”Welcome back, Mr. Kroeger!!!!!”--for punch and a cake made to look like a baseball, with red-stitched icing. There were gifts: a Yankees license-plate frame, a tin of that old dugout staple, chewing tobacco, and pin-striped boxer shorts sporting the famed “NY” insignia.

Embarrassed, Kroeger was obliged to hold up the boxers. “This is insulting,” he muttered, while teachers laughed.

Then it was on to his other job, half a block away, looking after 10- and 12-year-olds. In a crowded day room, a fight broke out. Kroeger shoved a trash can aside to reach the combatants and help pull them apart. He talked with a boy whose cousin had been shot to death while Kroeger was away.

The afternoon grew late. Kroeger began to look sleepy. He tried to decide what his boys would do with the remaining daylight--go to the park, or play basketball out back. For a few moments, he took a break and descended to the street. The kids, their futures, are big deals to him, he said out of earshot. He loves the work. He would probably keep giving of his time, at least a little, even if he could somehow get back to baseball.

Someday, he would like to coach full-time, or become a scout. Or, better yet, quicken his swing, or turn back the clock, or whatever it might take to pull on those pin-stripes and play. The Yankees open their season Wednesday in the House That Ruth Built. Kroeger would join them in a second. Yet, he knows that by staying with the students in Hackensack, he will accomplish far more.

“Oh, yeah,” Kroeger said, as if that fact were obvious. But: “I’m still a kid too. And I’ll always be a kid.”

Pondering One More Shot

Braxton rides a tractor, cutting grass, then he cleans up the trash around a commercial mall. But all the while he thinks--mainly about his life. He and Charlene would like to have a real apartment again. He figures it will take a year, at least, to climb out of debt.

He vacillates between hard practical matters--finding a second job, going back to school--and loftier aims. He would like to open an indoor training facility for baseball, so local teams could practice when it rains. He has an idea for an invention--a weightlifting device--that could make his fortune.

But mostly, Braxton ponders taking one more shot at the majors. If there is any way on earth that he and Charlene can afford it, he just might point that ’77 Oldsmobile toward Florida next spring. By now, he surely knows the way.

“I just really, really feel that I’m supposed to be out there,” he said. “I just feel like that. And it don’t go away.”