Baseball Blues

* With no games scheduled, everyone loses.

When Boston sports fans look back on the final cancellation of the remainder of the 1994 baseball season, they very well may remember only that it came four days before the Patriots' first win. Baseball is loosening its own stranglehold on the American mind. Why is it the quintessential American game? It is pastoral. It is timeless.

But in an effort to keep with the times, it recently choked itself on short-term profit motivation.

For the men who were working on felling some of the biggest trees in the record books, like Matt Williams, Frank Thomas and Tony Gwynn, the cancellation must have come as a cruel irony. Their chance at putting their names u on the mantle above most of their colleagues was destroyed by their willingness to get right in line behind negotiator Donald Fehr. These are the men that the owners are trying to fit for a salary cap, but they are the players who keep the game alive.

For the fans of basement-dwellers like the Padres and the Mets, Acting Commissioner Bud Selig's announcement Wednesday was a mercy killing, letting them concentrate on their local college concentrate on their local college and professional football teams and forget about the local nine's foibles.

The strike can't go on forever, and at least some owners will want to crack first. Small-market teams like Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and Montreal will need to drink from their primary pool of income, gate receipts, very soon. The irony is that Montreal was at the top of the NL East, yet they couldn't fill Olympic Stadium. The answer is simple; move the team south where people care. A serious profit-sharing initiative, such as those in place in both the NFL and NBA, will have to be implemented to save small market clubs.

But Ken Griffey Jr of the Seattle Mariners is a perfect example of what is currently right in baseball. Playing in a small market with a team that knows little about winning, his highlight films rarely made the 11:00 news on the East Coast. Yet fans nationwide were acutely aware of his quest to break Roger Maris' home run record; he arrived in Pittsburgh this year for the All-Star game with 1.8 million votes more than any other player in history. He recently played himself, in the movie Angels in the Outfield. People are actually seen outside of King County wearing Mariners caps. All of this is good for the business of baseball.

While technically a team game, baseball, especially for the majority of consumers whose teams are hopeless in August, creates excitement by showcasing the accomplishments of individuals. Networks were salivating at the possibility of a New York-Los Angeles Series, but you can bet that the games in which Williams hit homers 58, 59, and would sell advertising as well.

What the owners ultimately failed to realize is that this year, more so than others, was a perfect opportunity to regain some of the territory that baseball has lost in both the American psyche and wallet in the past decade. The owners have taken away the opportunity for the fans to participate in a record-setting year through their Nielsen boxes and their local sports merchandise shop. The cap worn by the man who might have broken Maris' record would have been worn later by legions of the young.

The owners should have conceded what was necessary to let them keep playing, at least for the rest of the season. A lockout at the beginning of a season hurts the game far less than truncation of season is one of the best ever. Baseball didn't die. It was just drugged into a back into its come by the owners.

Edward F. Mulkerin III's column appears on alternate Mondays.