Dogders Let One Get Away in 12

SAN DIEGO —  You figure, now is the time to criticize Bobby Bonilla.

He and his .173 Dodger batting average are hardening like concrete over the shoes of the Dodger season. He has three RBIs in three weeks, one homer in a month.

You figure, Mike Piazza for Gary Sheffield and Charles Johnson is still cool, but Todd Zeile for this guy is looking like the wrong end of three-card monte.

You figure, now is the time to criticize Bobby Bonilla.

But first you have to catch him.

Show up at the ballpark early, 4 1/2 hours before the game, when even the most diligent players are just shedding their street clothes?

No good. Bonilla is standing in the middle of an eerily empty stadium swinging at dozens of fastballs under a hot sun.

Show up closer to regular batting practice, when all of the players are lounging in their uniforms watching another game on the clubhouse TV?

No good. Bonilla is tucked inside some claustrophobic batting cage in some beer-stained hallway, taking more hacks that nobody will count.

Fine, then talk to him after the game, when everybody is showering and dressing and heading for the bus, right?

Well, not always. Already this season, Bonilla has been spotting taking postgame batting practice, hustling more swings as the sun dropped.

While he’s in this slump, you’re just going to have to grab him.

So you do, before the Dodgers’ 3-2 loss to the San Diego Padres here Wednesday, as he is walking quickly through the clubhouse, blue shirt dark with sweat, bat stuck to his hand.

He pauses.

“I’ve been terrible,” he says. “When you’re terrible, you’re terrible, and I’ve been terrible.”

Aw, c’mon, you suddenly want to say. It’s not that bad.

Bonilla has had a way of turning the story around.

Everyone thought he and Barry Bonds would cause trouble in Pittsburgh, yet before he left, the Pirates had won two division championships.

He was hassled for being selfish in New York, but before he left, he had averaged 24 homers and 75 RBIs a season for the Mets.

There was more controversy surrounding him in Baltimore, but also a team that advanced to the American League championship series.

And you know what happened before he left Florida. Something that hasn’t happened to the Dodgers in a decade.

Now, one month after moving to yet another new home, he is again looking out the window at confused stares.

He’s one of three players who have unwittingly become symbolic of the “new” Dodgers, three whose every move will be scrutinized as long as Fox is still here and Piazza isn’t.

Yet while the other two guys are so doing the job, he isn’t.

Sheffield is the most exciting hitter on the team, and Johnson is its most exciting defender, and Bonilla . . . well, he was benched Wednesday after hitting .147 in the previous 19 games.

“If I wasn’t playing good defense, I would be on a very valid suicide watch,” Bonilla said.

He has forced the Dodgers into a different sort of watch.

They love the way he is working so hard to correct his problems. It is difficult to remember any Dodger taking postgame batting practice.

But they wonder, with age and wear, how much of these problems will be ultimately correctable.

He is still not fully recovered from off-season surgery on his left wrist and left Achilles’ tendon. This can been seen at the plate in a weaker swing and funky footwork.

Because of the surgeries, he could have legitimately not shown up until the middle of the season. But, instead, he chose to skip only spring training.

And that has pretty much backfired because, even now, sometimes it looks like he’s still in spring training.

“But I’m like that 35-year-old fighter,” he said. “He fights because that’s what he does. I play baseball because that’s what I do.”

That brings up the next question: How much of his ability will return because he is 35?

That’s what some are wondering, those who think that Fox could have been smarter by insisting that neither Zeile nor Bonilla were part of the Piazza deal.

But then, last season Bonilla started slowly, then had 10 homers and 47 RBIs after the All-Star break.

“Oh, I’m old, real old, just a fossil,” he said, laughing, but not really.

So how will this story end? Will he find himself and help the Dodgers find themselves? Or will he require all of two more years and $11 million to figure it all out?

Watching him work, you would bet on the first option. But nobody knows with Bobby Bo. Nobody has ever really known.

Bonilla was eating lunch here Wednesday when an elderly man approached him and offered to return a bat that Bonilla had given him several years ago.

“He said it had been cured for a long time, that there was a lot of hits in it,” Bonilla said. “I said, ‘Nah, you just keep it.’ ”

He may smile and laugh and make you spin, but it seems the best thing about Bobby Bonilla is that down deep, he knows there is no real magic.

He will work, and we will watch, and everyone will see what they will see.