Restarting Season Would Not Be a Hit

“It’s late in the game,” Donald Fehr said Thursday, and don’t you just love these baseball analogies spouted by grim, pasty-faced labor negotiators who have conspired to keep the real thing off the field for the last month?

Yes, it’s late in the game, but not just any game, if I can be permitted to take Fehr’s analogy and stretch it into a double.

This game is the Cubs against the Padres on the second Friday of September, a combined 47 games out of first place, 8,500 tickets sold, 11-1 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning . . . and it’s been raining for two hours.

The grounds crew is scrambling to spread sand over the muddy infield and the umpires are testing the traction around home plate, but there’s no one left in the stands and the scoreboard operator fell asleep 40 minutes ago.

Why bother?

That should be the mantra as Fehr and Dick Ravitch and their respective Greek choruses wail deep into the night, trying to beat Bud Selig’s imperially imposed deadline for a resolution to a 28-day work stoppage that has led directly to (permanent?) spectator interest stoppage.

Why bother?

Let it go.

Wait ‘til next year.

Call it on account of weather--thick layers of fog impairing the vision of the 28 caretakers of what used to be the national pastime.

Life without major league baseball has gone on, and life is good. Look around.

The Rams are tied for first place.

USC and UCLA are undefeated.

Paul Kariya is a Mighty Duck.

Dan Marino is on his way to a 7,500-yard, 80-touchdown season.

The U.S. Open has been wonderfully fraught with peril, tripping up top-seeded players almost on the hour.

Tiger Woods got four pages in Sports Illustrated.

Soccer is back on American television--USA-England on ESPN Wednesday, Coventry City-Aston Villa on Prime Ticket Thursday.

It doesn’t get any better than this.

In Southern California, the last four weeks have been blissful euthanasia. Angel and Padre fans--put out of their misery. Dodger fans--spared the heartache and unhealthful stress of watching their team fade out in the second lamest race in the West.

And for those who simply couldn’t press on without their regular baseball fix--Stop chewing on that rolled-up Baseball America, will you?--there were the Northridge Little Leaguers, who reminded us that the game is still best when it is played by 12-year olds and not run by them, and the minor leagues, which proved, at last, that the Angels are doing something right.

Three Angel minor-league clubs qualified for the playoffs--and a fourth, Lake Elsinore, just missed. Vancouver won both the first- and second-half titles in the Pacific Coast League, closing out the regular season at Salt Lake before a Monday night crowd of 14,118.

By way of comparison, the big-league Angels averaged 13,083 for a three-game series at home against Seattle the first week in August, including a turnstile count of 11,478 for the opener.

Playoff excitement.

Big crowds.

Why come back and spoil the mood now?

The purists argue that the season must be resuscitated, if only to save the playoffs and the World Series and determine a 1994 champion. So do the owners, who stand to lose $140 million in television revenue if the postseason is canceled.

And think of the Cleveland Indians, who, last time we checked, were one game out in the American League Central and leading the race for the AL wild card. Are we just supposed to blow out the season and make them wait another 40 years?

No, that wouldn’t be fair, but how sporting is it to call back the Angels and the other bottom feeders after their month in rehab and force them to dredge up the horrid old memories of April, May, June and July?

Their seasons are done, kaput, buried, good riddance. How is Marcel Lachemann supposed to inspire the troops on the first day of September training?

“Men, we might have had a gnat’s chance of climbing back in this thing a month ago, but let’s face it, we’re playing out the string, there are 19 meaningless games left and then we split again for another five months. The fans couldn’t care less before the strike and now they’re telling me we won’t outdraw a Ducks’ open practice. I think they got 9,000 for the first one. OK, now, the five-mile run followed by 30-yard wind sprints will commence shortly.”

But the playoffs must go on, I keep reading, so by all means, let them. Eight teams show up for work Monday, or as soon as all 28 owners understand Fehr’s “taxation” proposal, and everybody else stays away. Oakland, Seattle and Houston might gripe about just missing the cut, but really, one playoff team from the AL West is grossly generous and the Astros . . . Who plays for the Astros again?

Set the pairings now. New York-Cleveland and Chicago-Texas in the American League, Montreal-Atlanta and Cincinnati-L.A. in the National League. Give them a week for training, another week for practice games and get the postseason rolling.

That way, the owners get their money, the statisticians get a resolution to the regular season and television gets a World Series to broadcast in prime time.

With any amount of luck, somebody will watch it.