Darryl Strawberry doesn't want to play with Kal Daniels. Fine, Daniels says, I don't want to play with Strawberry. It's not exactly off-season harmony for a couple of Los Angeles Dodgers.
"I don't want to deal with what we dealt with last year, a guy like Kal, a player who doesn't want to play," Strawberry said in yesterday's editions of the Los Angeles Times. "Trade Kal. If he doesn't want to play, get him out of here. And you can quote me on that."
"I love the guy like a brother, but if he is going to back-stab me like that, evidently he has a mental problem," Daniels said. "Darryl signed the big contract, and he thinks he's All-World.
Daniels played in 137 games in 1991, hitting .249, 49 points below his career average, with 17 homes and 73 RBIs, 10 less homers and 21 less RBIs than the previous year. Strawberry, after a slow start, wound up with a team-high 28 homers and 99 RBIs, both close to his career average.
* BRAVES: Atlanta has offered suspended free-agent outfielder Otis Nixon a raise in salary, but no long-term commitment. The offer would put Nixon's base salary at approximately $750,000, a $165,000 raise.
Nixon was suspended Sept. 16 by commissioner Fay Vincent and missed the NL playoffs and World Series with the Braves. A .228 hitter before last season, he stole 72 bases while batting .297 and scoring 81 runs in 124 games with Atlanta.
* ASTROS: Mike Scott, who led Houston to the NL West title in 1986, told the Astros he is retiring. Scott, 36, had surgery last winter on his right shoulder to repair a labrum tear. He made two starts, going 0-2 with a 12.86 ERA in seven innings, and then went on the disabled list with a sore shoulder.
Scott, the only Cy Young winner in Houston's history, made $2,337,500 last season.
* TIGERS: Mike Rathbun, 36, a backup announcer on Home Team Sports Baltimore Orioles telecasts, has been hired as one of Detroit's radio announcers. Rathbun was named along with Rick Rizzs, 36, the Seattle Mariners announcer since 1983, to replace the longtime announcing team of Ernie Harwell and Paul Carey.
Rathbun also is sports director of WTKR-TV in Norfolk, Va., and is the voice of the New York Mets' Class AAA Tidewater affiliate.