Orange County Voices : COMMENTARY ON BASEBALL : After a Season of Discontent, Fan Still Isn’t Back in the Swing : A lifelong lover of the game will be in Big A on opening day, but she’s reserving the right to sulk a while longer.

In case no one has noticed, major-league baseball has returned from the abyss of a season of asterisked stats and replacement players. In all of its high-thinking flummery, baseball, revered by our finest writers as “the perfect game” played in the lofty confines of our “green cathedrals,” is back. It is, we fans have always been told, “our game.”

In light of the 7 1/2-month players’ strike, forgive this fan for thinking that the game belongs to its fragile-limbed but oh-so-solvent ballplayers, union guys to the end--well, except (Garden Grove’s) Lenny Dykstra. Or to its gang of owners, able to accumulate oceans of wealth yet powerless (make that unwilling) to articulate a reasonable one-sentence argument for their position: It’s the money and power, stupid.

During the strike, fans ceased debating what it would take to end the Angels’ pennant drought or whether Bo Jackson had another year in his hip. We argued about whether the players union would hang together and how Jerry Reinsdorf came to choose a twerp like Bud Selig as his shill. Then the government intervened--talk about feeling disenfranchised. We endured a fallow September of no pennant races, an uncertain winter and an unnatural spring. Sitting out the exhibition season in Arizona’s Cactus League for the first time in years, I complained that the strike toyed with my very biorhythms.

Now, on Wednesday, the Angels will open the season against the Detroit Tigers. Why, you rightly ask, would we want to pay even one dollar--the price of an opening-day ticket at Anaheim Stadium--into the coffers of such an institution? What a joke that it is “our game.”

Yet barring a fans’ strike--and the essence of fandom defies such organization--I suspect that most of us will return. For one, the cares of the outside world fall away at the ballpark, where we can still pretend that the most important issue in the world is Cal Ripken Jr.’s streak. Besides, if you think baseball’s a mess, take a look at the rest of our institutions. You want to go sit in court and contemplate our legal system? In Anaheim Stadium, we have our haven back.

Furthermore, although fans know it is not really “our game,” baseball endures as the national pastime. In its present lawyer-ridden, bottom-line incarnation (major league baseball’s vaunted green-ness has more to do with the color of money than of grass), the game simply mirrors our sorry state in the waning years of the 20th Century.

Thoughtful adult fans recognize the opportunity this season affords for a dialogue with the next generation about how far image can take you before you’re shown up, how money talks (arrogantly), and how to maintain your soul during down times. Kids will actually listen to such talk at a ballpark.

Which brings us to the final reason why the fans will return to Anaheim Stadium. Here, we revisit childhood; it’s OK to act like a 10-year-old. Where else can you go in Orange County to drip mustard down your shirt, dump beer on your neighbor, yell ungrammatical imprecations--and still be considered semi-cool?

And remember those great sulks of childhood--those times when the world was so against you that your lower lip almost hid your chin? You couldn’t get away with it at home, but no parent ever criticized a major pout at the ballpark when your team lost or your hero struck out.

When the strike began, we fans resurrected the art of a serious baseball pout. Now, the Angels are trying to coax us out of it. An opening-day parade with mariachis is planned. The Angels call it a “thank you to the fans for their loyalty, patience and faith.” In May, there’ll be a tribute to the late Jimmie Reese--now there’s a good idea; on the Fourth of July, fireworks; and in August, a celebration of the 1961 inaugural season.

As opening day approaches, however, we fans find ourselves far from baseball Eden, that nostalgic and fictional spot in memory when the game was good and our heroes perfect.

But there have been periodic losses of faith before, and the game has somehow survived well into its second century, despite the owners’ greed and the players’ vagaries. It survives because of the fans, who know that we may not “own” baseball but understand that the ballpark remains an engaging place in which to consider where we have come from and who we are.

So I’ll be in the stands on Wednesday, although I don’t have to smile about it. A fan’s biorhythms need time to adjust. I’m also reserving the right to sulk a while longer. After that, we’ll see.