BASEBALL / ROSS NEWHAN : NAMES AND NUMBERS

* UNITED THEY STAND: The alleged unanimity of the owners--supported by the need for three-fourths approval of a labor agreement--remains suspect. Consider, for example, Colorado Rockies owner Jerry McMorris, who voted for the salary-cap proposal that will be presented to the players’ union Tuesday. McMorris, with the Rockies having drawn 1.7 million for 31 dates and headed for a second season of 4-million attendance, has no real heart for a prolonged stoppage, and approved revenue sharing begrudgingly. “For 30 years, they told us (in the Rocky Mountains) that we couldn’t support a team, and now they want us to support 27 others,” he said.

McMorris added that baseball could solve many of its economic problems by being more receptive to moving teams. “You look at Montreal, Pittsburgh, some of these other teams that just don’t draw . . . why not move them?” he said. “You’ve got Phoenix, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Buffalo, Washington, Charlotte, Jacksonville, Orlando. You could put teams in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey. You can’t argue that any of those aren’t better choices than Montreal.”

* MANAGER OF YEAR? Rene Lachemann of the Florida Marlins would have to be a leading candidate. Lachemann has kept his second-year team in the .500 hunt despite putting nine players on the disabled list, including Gary Sheffield and Bryan Harvey twice each. Sheffield has been testing his ailing shoulder with double-A Portland, Me., and might rejoin the Marlins in Pittsburgh today. Harvey is rehabilitating his elbow with Class A Brevard County, Fla., and is scheduled for four appearances in a six-day span through Tuesday. “We need to see him pitch back to back,” Lachemann said. “Until then, we’ll do the best with what we got.” Which doesn’t include Harvey backups Jeremy Hernandez and Luis Aquino, also on the disabled list.

* PICKET LINE: The players consider a salary cap restrictive and unnecessary in an industry producing revenues of $1.7 billion a year. Charlie Hough said: “The owners throughout history haven’t been very straightforward with the players about profit margin and that’s led to bad blood. They claim baseball is in trouble, but very wealthy people, smart businessmen, keep lining up to buy teams. Somewhere along the line they have to be making a profit from it. I know the players are.”

* YOU GOTTA HAVE . . . : Yes, heart, and no one knows it better than Dave Leiper of the Oakland Athletics, who made his first major league appearance Sunday since August 1989, working in relief against the Cleveland Indians. Leiper had open-heart surgery in 1990 and two elbow operations that put him out from mid-1991 to mid-1993. He had a 2.05 earned-run average in 17 games at triple-A Tacoma before throwing 2 2/3 scoreless innings in his first two appearances with the A’s. Icing on the cake, he said. “I’ve been battling this since ’89. In the game, out of the game, in the game again. When I was out, I never thought I’d pitch again. Just getting back is an accomplishment.”

* BIG FOUR: The Cleveland Indians’ combo of Mark Clark (at 7-1, is anyone ripping the Mark