Caught Stealing : THE DIAMOND REVOLUTION, <i> By Neil J. Sullivan (St. Martin’s Press: $18.95; 232 pp.)</i> : BASEBALL AND BILLIONS: A Probing Look Inside the Big Business of Our National Pastime, <i> By Andrew Zimbalist (Basic Books: $20; 276 pp.)</i>

Thomas Malthus called economics the “dismal science,” but Malthus never made a million dollars being a utility infielder. A million dollars is, as we go to press, the average salary for a major- league ballplayer, a fact that seems to intrigue (and sometimes anger) fans and sportswriters as much as batting and earned-run averages do.

“Baseball and Billions” by Smith College economics professor Andrew Zimbalist and “The Diamond Revolution” by Neil J. Sullivan, an associate professor at Baruch College, are primers for the storm that looks as if it will break sometime after this month if the owners chose to reopen the basic agreement contract with the players.

Both books are must reading for all sports fans, not just those who follow baseball. What becomes increasingly clear is that baseball economic wars garner so much ink not because big league baseball is in any kind of money crisis, as its owners claim, but because in baseball, management must contend with sport’s (and maybe the country’s) strongest labor union. As the National Football League’s recent court setback indicates, other sports are sooner or later going to learn from the example of baseball’s Players Association; one might argue that the current aura of prosperity surrounding the National Basketball Association is largely an illusion caused by the selling out of its own players’ union a few years ago.

What’s not an illusion, according to Zimbalist, is the current prosperity of Major League Baseball which, after salaries were paid out in 1990, had a profit of at least $140 million dollars (no one really knows how much because the owners don’t open the books to the players or press). And that doesn’t even take into account the profits of side shows such as the beer sold at St. Louis Cardinals games by Anheuser-Busch--the Busch family owns both--or by Ted Turner’s TV networks and the revenues from his Atlanta Braves’ telecasts.

In other words, the players aren’t putting guns to the owners’ heads to get those salaries: The owners offer the money because better players make for bigger profits. Zimbalist’s book is the clearest explanation yet that baseball’s problem is not the amount of revenue brought in, but its distribution: Baseball’s “haves,” such as the Yankees, may make as much as 10 times more from TV revenues than “have nots” such as the Seattle Mariners.

But Zimbalist’s real contribution is in the way he decodes the books of the have nots. For instance, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the winningest team in the big leagues, are nailed for amortizing player contracts in 1988 (which turned an operation profit into a book loss), and, in 1989, claiming a loss of $2.716 million in collusion penalties, even though the payments didn’t begin till 1991. All in all, it seems that baseball employs bookkeepers so creative as to make a Hollywood studio envious. (In fact, several former baseball officials are now in the employ of movie studios--most prominent, baseball commissioner and ex-Columbia Pictures president Faye Vincent). Despite reported industry profits of $142.9 million in 1990, Zimbalist says, “Commissioner Vincent claims that 10 teams lost money . . . Indeed, it seems to be be an annual ritual that no matter how bountiful the year, MLB proclaims that eight to 12 teams suffered losses.”

Financial gimmickry is just one of the crimes named in Neil J. Sullivan’s 232 page indictment, “The Diamond Revolution.” Sullivan doesn’t trash the owners as greedy capitalists; in fact he doesn’t grant them the status of capitalists. Noting the absurd amounts of public funds that have financed the stadiums, Sullivan notes that “in traditional Ameican capitalism, business owners have certain obligations that they must meet to be entitled to future profits. Primary among these is that owners should risk their own profits.” And: “The economics model that has guided most modern stadium building is socialism. Marxism has collapsed all over the world, but it still has an appeal to Major League Baseball owners.” (When former steelworker economist Marvin Miler formed the Players Association in 1966, “Owners were worried about Karl Marx, (but) Miller was promoting Adam Smith. (Commissioner Bowie) Kuhn thought Miller abhorred American capitalism, but, in a Progressive tradition, Miller simply opposed these capitalists who resisted taking the risks of a market.”)

What’s truly unique about Sullivan’s book is it’s the first to place the shady financial dealings in the sordid history of racism, cronyism, and double-dealing with cities that has characterized baseball since the time it supposedly wasn’t a business. And, by the way, as Sullivan reminds us, “Baseball was always a business, and in many ways it is a healthier one now. If we have to compare the present wit the past, we should compare the game with the game and the business with the business.”

Both Zimbalist and Sullivan are better at summarizing the problem than in suggesting solutions. Zimbalist’s suggestion that Congress get involved is chilling, considering its traditional blatant anti-players bias. Congress has always maintained baseball’s exemption from antitrust laws; the players won free agency through years of hardball collective bargaining.

And Sullivan’s call for a commissioner who truly represents both sides seems naive: The players union has always been willing to abide by solutions arrived at through arbitration and collective bargaining. It’s the owners who have always looked for loopholes--or tried to create them.

As current Players Association director Don Fehr puts it, “You go through the Sporting News of the last 100 years, and you will find two things are always true. You never have enough pitchers, and nobody ever made money.”