BASEBALL WATCH : Limousine Strikers

Striking major league baseball players have been told by their union that picket lines will be established outside both spring training and regular-season games but that players probably won’t be asked to man them. Since a picket line doesn’t make much of a statement unless it’s populated by pickets, that undoubtedly means the players will have to hire stand-ins to act in their behalf, the way many well-to-do young men who didn’t feel like responding to Civil War draft calls hired surrogates to go do their fighting for them. Well, turnabout is fair play. Baseball’s owners have hired replacements for the absent major leaguers, and now the major leaguers are hiring replacements to protest for them. Fans who have nothing to look forward to except games featuring wanna-bes, has-beens and never-wases might like to think about hiring surrogate spectators to endure the coming tedium in their stead.

Of course, it’s easy to see why the players can’t be bothered to walk a picket line. The lowest-paid among them makes $109,000 a year, about three times the average household income, while the top stars’ salaries reach into the stratosphere. No way are guys pulling down bucks like that going to willingly expose themselves to the taunts of disappointed fans or the pestering of autograph seekers, especially when they can charge kids $10 a pop for signing their names at baseball shows. So hire someone else to walk the picket lines. Maybe all those vendors and other little guys thrown out of work by the strike would be happy to pick up a few extra bucks.