UCLA REPORT

New baseball vocabulary in the new world of contraction.

Bondn’t: The inability to break home run records against diluted pitching.

Vladn’t: Moving some of baseball’s best young players to cities where people will watch.

Guzman’ve: Moving some of baseball best young players to cities where owners can win.

Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve: Three words that cannot be said next year by the Angels or Dodgers.

If Tuesday’s big baseball move becomes official, the Angels could lose Disney and gain three great young Florida Marlin pitchers. The Dodgers, meanwhile, could get rid of the defending-champion Arizona Diamondbacks, who will move to the American League West.

I haven’t been this excited about contractions since our third child was born.

What’s not to like?

The game gets healthier. The games get better. The local nines get happier.

Did I say no more Disney?

NO MORE DISNEY!

The announcement Tuesday that baseball would drop two teams before next season--probably Montreal and Minnesota--was lacking in only one aspect.

They should have dumped two more.

How on earth can baseball chase out its lousy franchises and still leave Tampa Bay and Florida in the dugout? Owners never realized that the spring training fans of Florida were not going to spend $40 on a ticket that three days earlier cost them $5.

But that’s OK. If baseball were any smarter, it would scare us.

In choosing contraction, it is finally closing a self-inflicted wound that every other major sports league must soon treat.

Too many teams, too little substance.

Sports used to be a deliciously involved hardback novel that could be found only in the best stores.

The expansion boom of the 1990s has transformed it into a trashy paperback that one can buy anywhere.

The NFL went into towns that have since fallen off the sports map.

Basketball went to a town that has since become another town.

An entire league was started--the WNBA--that probably will soon be folded.

The more hockey grows, the less people pay attention.

While it sadly required an economic crisis to wake it up--you would have thought those 43-year-old pitchers would have been enough--baseball finally realized it blew it.

So now baseball owners are amazingly trying to fix it.

The only thing more amazing being, some people are complaining.

I can hear the so-called purists now.

“Less than 48 hours after one of the greatest World Series ever, how dare they subtract teams?”

Fact: They are not contracting anything. They are simply eliminating two teams that aren’t even there.

I have attended dozens of baseball games in Montreal, and each time it was like attending a cricket match at the Rose Bowl.

It’s not an important sport there. The town is not interested. The setting is dreadful. The constant video images of empty seats at Olympic Stadium--the Clippers averaged more fans at the Sports Arena--are an unfair reflection of the wonders of both Montreal and baseball. It’s a good move for both.

As for Minnesota, well, yes, the Twins are the last small-market team to win a championship. But that was 10 years ago, and owner Carl Pohlad has long since given up trying to field a competitive payroll.

It’s embarrassing for everyone when an entire home team makes less money than the visiting shortstop. The Twins were once a nice story. They have since become an old story.

If the market there is so good--as many frost-headed sentimentalists will cry--then why won’t someone buy the team from Pohlad before he sells it to baseball?

And if the Twins are such a civic treasure, then why doesn’t the city bail the guy out and build him a new stadium?

Because the taxpayers there understand that, in the end, it’s just sports. It’s just a business.

Like the longtime corner grocery. We love it, and it’s become part of the community, and it gives us a nice sense of self ... but if the produce manager wants us to start paying his rent, forget it.

It’s something we’ve understood in Los Angeles since 1995. Our pro football teams left and you know something? We survived. So will Minnesotans.

As for the rest of the baseball fans, the sport will only get better. Even if the union wins a fight for an extra player or two on each roster, the numbers still work.

There will be two fewer 10-man rotations that need staffing. That means 20 fewer lousy pitchers. That means fewer game-winning grand slams that give a team a 19-18 victory.

No more 73-homer seasons. No more journeymen outfielders with 120 RBIs.

The game becomes more real. The game also becomes more competitive, as the limited revenue-sharing money will go to more worthy small-market teams like the Pittsburgh Pirates and Milwaukee Brewers.

Oops. The Brewers are Commissioner Bud Selig’s team, right?

Doesn’t matter. Nothing can dim the enthusiasm for anything that takes the Angels away from Disney.

At one point a couple of years ago, upon the signing of Mo Vaughn, it was thought that Disney had finally shown a commitment to winning.

But it’s about more than money. It’s about making the deadline deals, finding the right free agents, doing the little things that Disney never seemed interested in promoting.

Once it became obvious Disney wanted to sell the team, the Angels became mighty lame ducks, both in the league and the community.

So Marlin owner John Henry selling his team to Expo owner Jeffrey Loria and coming here is the best part of contraction. Getting an owner with local ties like Henry, not to mention maybe three of his best major league players--some combination of Ryan Dempster, A.J. Burnett, Josh Beckett or Cliff Floyd?--changes the face of the franchise.

The only problem with all of this is that whiny union. It’s the strongest in sports. Knowing leader Donald Fehr would fight a $5,000 pay cut for a .180-hitting shortstop, one shudders to think what will happen now.

Here’s hoping that, for once, baseball owners are stronger. Here’s hoping, like all of us who dare engage in a crash diet, they complete their mission, tighten their belt, stare in the mirror, and repeat after me:

“Looking good.”

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.