A Fan Forever, but Not for Granted : Baseball: The bush-league performance of this spring should not be quickly forgotten. The greedy owners and players need to get a message.

Andy Pafko was my boyhood hero. Handy Andy played third and center for the Cubs. He was an All-Star who, in 1950, hit 36 homers, batted .304, drove in 92 runs and gave me his autograph . . . for free.

My folks grew up in Chicago as Cub fans. In 1930 they went often to Wrigley Field to watch Kiki Cuyler bat .355 and score 155 runs. That same year, Riggs Stephenson was batting .367 and Hack Wilson was hitting a cool .356 along with 56 homers (a National League record) and driving in an astounding 190 runs.

After moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s, we went to Candlestick to watch the Giants and Willie Mays. Twice we saw him go from first to third on a ground ball to short.

When my wife was growing up in Los Angeles, she loved the Dodgers. In this media age, when we can see all the teams, my four kids like the Red Sox, Cards, Pirates and Giants. I still have a soft spot for the Cubs and like the Giants. We hate the boringly efficient A’s.

Like millions of others, our family loves baseball. But enough is enough. The bush league performance of major league baseball this spring should not be forgotten by forgiving fans so quickly.

The spectacle of billionaires squabbling with millionaires can be explained only by the fact that both the owners and players take fans for granted. Yet we fans do have some effective remedies at our disposal:

--Each of us should inform our favorite team that we are boycotting four games this year, as a symbolic response to the four games that had to be rescheduled.

--We should contact our representatives in Congress and demand an investigation of the antitrust exemption that baseball enjoys.

Why? Compare baseball’s dismal bargaining history with that of the classy National Basketball Assn., which has successfully negotiated agreements in both lean and fat times without strikes or lockouts.

Two factors come into play here:

--The NBA has never taken fans for granted. Cool heads on both sides have come to the bargaining table intending to make deals without labor strife. They realized that professional basketball was in the process of winning the loyalty of fans and they did not want to jeopardize that loyalty. During the ‘80s, more people have come to love the pro game; the realistic attitude of both labor and management has helped create the good atmosphere in which this enthusiasm has grown.

--The NBA is covered by the antitrust laws. Even if some owners wanted to conspire to artificially depress salaries, they couldn’t.

Baseball, on the other hand, was exempted from antitrust coverage by a Supreme Court decision over a half a century ago. Why should a multibillion-dollar sport be exempt? Did a particularly greedy collusive fungus sprout in this anachronistic crack in the law? A few years ago the owners were found guilty of colluding with one another. They paid damages. Worse, they poisoned the atmosphere and got the players’ backs up.

The players saw themselves as victims of owner greed, deceit and collusion. To some extent they were right. But the inflated rhetoric of the players over-stated the case. During the recent labor fiasco, some talked of the “oppression” of players not yet eligible for arbitration. This is nonsense, of course. Is Matt Williams of the Giants oppressed because he earns only hundreds of thousands for a few years before he becomes eligible to go to arbitration for millions?

This rhetoric flows from the distrust caused by past owner misconduct. Antitrust coverage would help deter future misconduct. It would be healthy for Congress to investigate and compare the bargaining history of baseball and basketball.

Our willingness to demand an investigation and our willingness to skip a few games this season will send the arrogant and greedy representatives of both sides the needed message that our patience is wearing thin. Stay home for a few weekends, watch the NBA playoffs, write to your representative in Congress and don’t let your kids go to baseball fairs to pay these oppressed millionaires for their autographs. Andy Pafko didn’t sell his.