Hey, Commissioner, Do Something About Salaries

On the occasion of Mike Hampton realizing how much he loved pitching in mile-high blizzards . . . now that setup men earn more than Super Bowl quarterbacks . . . six weeks after the cursed Yankees won their 118th straight world championship (I’ve lost count) . . . with Alex Rodriguez ascending to Mel Gibson/Julia Roberts riches, we soon will hear lamentations that major league baseball is . . . DOOMED!

As to how a business can have so much money to spend and yet be DOOMED, the answer from Commissioner Bud Selig would go like this: “We are DOOMED because some teams have lots of money and others have none. We are DOOMED when the Yankees sign Mike Mussina, the Pirates sign Terry Mulholland and the Expos sign IOUs. Woe is us.”

So, Commissioner, here’s a thought:

DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

Sorry to shout. But, really. IF THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG, FIX IT!

Sorry. But, Commissioner, how can you keep shouting “WE’RE DOOMED” while your employers throw money at little left-handers?

Thinking here of Mike Hampton. Chilled by New York, remembering Houston’s humidity fondly, Hampton expressed one free-agent guideline. He wanted to pitch in a warm-weather city. Hello? Denver? As it happens, the Rockies’ $121 million offer warmed Hampton’s heart. Asked his first thought on hearing that number, he said, “Can I say this on television? ‘Holy succotash!’ ” Or thereabouts.

Selig told an U.S. Senate subcommittee last month that baseball drew 73 million fans in 2000--more than the NFL, NBA and NHL combined. He said the two New York teams drew a million more fans than three New York teams did 51 years ago. Never, he testified, has the game been more popular.

But from the other side of the commissioner’s mouth came whinings about revenue disparity and competitive imbalance. He cited lack of hope in villages across America where fans have lost faith that their heroes have a chance against the big-city bullies. His best argument: 186-3. In the last six seasons’ 189 playoff games, teams in the top half of that year’s payroll rankings won 186 times. The World Series winner those years was a club with a top-five payroll; even the losers (excepting the ’98 Padres) came from that monied group.

All true. But wasn’t it always so? The best teams always made the most money and spent the most. So what’s the big deal about it being true today? Answering that question, television sportscaster Bob Costas, an advocate of economic change, told the Senate subcommittee, “Historical precedent for an objectionable condition is no justification. . . . “

Here, alas, an ink-stained wretch fell behind in his polysyllabic note-taking. But Costas’ point is clear. A bad thing then is a bad thing now. And the sad truth is, even for those of us who didn’t believe success was a bad thing then and don’t believe it now, the Costas soliloquy brought into focus an up-to-the-minute reality: The expectations of today’s media-saturated fans with their fruit-fly attention span are such that anything less than a championship run every season is reason to think God has it in for them and somebody must pay: PETER ANGELOS, UP AGAINST THE WALL!

Here’s what’s maddening about baseball’s mournful lamentations: They’re just not true. Doom’s coming only if club owners want doom.

They could make the game robust from New York to Minneapolis by agreeing to share revenue, not just pittances but most of it, as NFL teams do. Such sharing requires approval by the players’ union, which has been opposed to revenue-sharing plans because the owners have proposed them only in tandem with a salary-cap structure.

In fact, the owners’ perpetual insistence on a salary-cap provision when they know such a provision is fatal to any revenue-sharing plan is all the proof we need that the owners’ first ambition is to break the players’ union, not save the game.

Look, if owners truly wanted to help small-market teams, they could do it without the players’ approval. That $2.5 billion coming from the Fox television network -- instead of divvying it up equally, they could give 10 shares to financially challenged clubs and one share to the likes of the cursed Yankees.

But no, that won’t be done. Instead, the rich guys will give the money to A-Rod, not the Pirates.

There is another way to fix all this. It would involve neither the owners nor the players. It would put baseball on the same legal footing as businesses dealing in football, basketball and hockey, along with every other kind of business in America, be it computer software or newspapers.

Congress could pass a law saying baseball is subject to all antitrust laws. Right now, alone of billion-dollar industries, baseball is exempt from those laws. It makes no sense and hasn’t since the Supreme Court ruled so in 1922, a ruling that has been allowed to stand simply because it was made, not because logic informed it.

So the answer, baseball fans, is this: Quit listening to Bud Selig. Write to Congress. If you want baseball fixed, write to your U.S. representative and your senators. Tell them to pass a law ending baseball’s antitrust exemption. Tell them that if Bill Gates has to break up Microsoft, George Steinbrenner ought to break up the Yankees.