Scott Pose, Jeff Conine, David Nied and Orestes Destrade. Danny Sheaffer, Vinny Castilla and Jim Tatum. Steve Decker, Alex Arias and Rich Renteria.

What do these men have in common? Two things. Neither you nor I would be able to pick them out of a crowd, and they're all on the rosters of the major league's two newest teams--the Florida Marlins and the Colorado Rockies.

It's okay that you don't recognize these names. You may have a life. But the fact that I'd never heard of these people until this year's spring training began is instructive. When Helen Slater asked Billy Crystal in "City Slickers" who was the third baseman for the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates. I shouted out "Don Hoke!" before Crystal could read his line.

But there they are, the no-names. And with the possible exception of Destrade, who has been a successful player in Japan, none of them stands a chance of being a star.

There are two reasons why the Rockies and the Marlins don't have very good players, or even players whose names appear on anything but their birth certificates. Number one, the expansion draft allowed them to pick the cast-offs and longtime minor leaguers of other major league teams. And number two, baseball just doesn't have that many good players anymore, largely because the sport has been so badly mismanaged that children grow up playing other games instead.

But that hasn't deterred major league baseball, or these new franchises. This week, in one of the most ballyhooed debuts since the Ford Edsel, the Marlins and Rockies took the field. So far, their collections of rookies and cast-offs have a record of 1-4. That's a .200 winning percentage. It won't get much better.

But don't try telling that to Rocky and Marlin executives. Both franchises are mortal locks to draw more than three million fans this year--even if they both lose 100 games. This you can count on. For now, the teams are novelties. Novelties wear off.

Expansions are always tricky endeavors. Oftentimes, they look like good ideas, but there can be a nasty backlash. Take Saddam Hussein. One day, the U.S. government is secretly sending him money. So he decides to have the Iraqi army start a farm club in Kuwait, and the next thing you know American bombs are falling on Baghdad.

With baseball, expansion is pretty much the same thing, without the Patriot missiles. A well-planned expansion, like the 1969 addition of the Kansas City Royals, can go well. But if you don't pick the right market and form a team that wins games within five or six years, you have the Seattle Pilots. A washout in the Pacific Northwest, the team changed ownership and moved to Milwaukee to become the Brewers in 1970.

Expansion has given us some teams that added to to the rich history of baseball because they were so unbelievably bad. In 1962, an expansion franchise called the New York Mets joined the National League and lost 120 games--the baseball equivalent of getting a "C" in a Core course.

But new teams are far more likely to wreak havoc on the national pastime. And the evil they create can last far longer than the time it takes for them to reach the top of the standings.

When the Houston Astros began playing in the Astrodome in 1962, the new stadium had a glass roof. But the glare from the transparent panes blinded players. So some panels were covered over with white paint.

That, however, killed the real grass growing inside. But one stadium groundskeeper, who is certainly rotting in hell by now, came up with an idea that has strained knee ligaments and haunted the grand old game ever since Astroturf.

Plus, expansion hasn't been the cure-all that civic officials have hoped for. Toronto and Montreal both got teams through expansion, and Canada stands divided between its English and French speaking parks (though this can't be blamed entirely on any Blue Jay Expo rivalry, because they play in different leagues).

And consider the following list of ballclubs with expansion origins that have done little for civic pride: Seattle Mariners. Houston Astros, San Diego Padres, Texas Rangers, California Angels. Only one of these teams--San Diego--has been to a World Series, and it got clobbered. Plus, the Denver-based Rockies and Miami-based Marlins would do well to take note of the last two teams decision to use the names of their states rather than their home cities, Arlington, Tex. and Anaheim, Calif., respectively.