MoxVib

Some people say football's the best game in America. Others say basketball.

Nobody says baseball. Not anymore, that's for sure.

Not even me.

Eight years ago in this magazine, I wrote a story titled "99 Reasons Why Baseball Is Better Than Football." I believed every word. Today, I want to take them all back.

"All XX Super Bowls," I wrote, "haven't produced as much drama as the last World Series." This year we can be fairly certain the Super Bowl will be more dramatic than the '94 World Series -- which, if I remember correctly, did not include any 15-14 games or come-from-behind, Series-winning homers in the bottom of the ninth inning. It doesn't matter how badly the AFC loses the Super Bowl this afternoon, or whether the margin be 60 points, rather than the traditional 30 or 40. At least they play the damn game every year.

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Even if the baseball strike is settled before you read these words (it stood at 155 days, with no hint of progress, as we went to press), the damage is done. The former national pastime has fallen back into the pack among American sports. The question now is simply how far back.

If Opening Day of 1995 dies, baseball may drop behind auto racing. Golf has a great future too unless it acquires owners and unions. As baseball once knew, spring's a boffo marketing gimmick.

Major league baseball is still a great sport. Compared with hockey. But not compared with much else. The strike, and every aspect of the negotiations surrounding it, have branded in our minds characters so vivid, and repulsive, we'll need years to separate their acts from the game itself.

Baseball's had its century. So here are the first 99 reasons why baseball is no longer better than football. Or basketball. Or, pretty soon, bowling. (More after lunch. If I can keep down solid food.)

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1. Bud Selig. 2. Two-faced Bud saying, "I love baseball." 3. Two-faced Bud saying, "What conflict of interest?" 4. Commissioner Bud Lite saying, "I love baseball" while stabbing the game with one hand and stuffing money in his pocket with the other. 5. Don Fehr. 6. Don Fehr pretending he's ever watched a ballgame just for fun. 7. Don Fehr acting as if only a moron or a scoundrel could disagree with him. 8. Smarty-pants Don refusing to face reality. (A strike isn't a debate. It's a war. And his union has lost almost every battle so far. It's time for serious compromise. Yet he still yields ground in inches, not yards.) 9. Don the intellectual -- who cares a hundred times more what some liberal sociology professor will write about him in 20 years than he cares about baseball -- insisting that the strike is basically about principle, not money. (Yo, professor: Baseball is a battleground between selfish owners who usually fight dirty and selfish players who usually fight fair. There's not much high ground.) 10. Dick Ravitch. You've forgotten him already? At least that's something. 11. Explanations of the salary cap. All together now: "We don't care." 12. Explanations of why a luxury tax is a "hidden" salary cap. All together: "We don't give a damn about that either." The truth is, nobody cares about any explanation baseball may have to offer except, perhaps, why $1 billion a year -- net after expenses -- isn't enough to satisfy 700 players and 28 owners. 13. The month of August, in which the strike ruined the chances of Ken Griffey Jr., Matt Williams, Frank Thomas and Tony Gwynn to set new hitting records. 14. The month of September, in which the strike robbed fans of a coherent season. Some smart fan somewhere is going to file (and win) a class action suit against baseball that will obtain full -- not partial -- refunds for every 1994 season-ticket holder. How can you sell a "season" ticket, then not have a full season, yet keep the money? 15. The month of October, in which the strike not only killed the World Series for the first time in 90 years but, almost certainly, prevented Don Mattingly of the Yankees and all of the Montreal Expos from playing in their first postseasons. Technically, the Toronto Blue Jays are still world champions. Is that a threepeat? 16. The month of November, in which baseball proved that it still wasn't truly sorry for what it had done. Teams, such as the shameless Orioles, raised ticket prices through the roof -- passing on the entire cost of the labor dispute to fans before the strike was even settled. 17. The month of December, in which baseball's owners proved they had no known moral nadir. They announced their willingness to play the 1995 season with scab players (which would break Cal Ripken's consecutive-game streak at 2,009 in the process). Some teams even demanded that season-ticket holders renew plans -- or lose seats they'd held for years -- before they even knew if they would be paying for major league baseball or bush-league replacement ball. 18. The infamous date of December 23, when the owners invoked their salary cap -- the negotiating equivalent of a nuke attack -- two days before Christmas. Who's in charge of baseball's Department of Image Spin Control? Tonya Harding? 19. The month of January, during which the new Congress threatened to stagger into the mess, looking for stray votes. Just what baseball needs: politicians. We'll end up with a subcommittee to study the balk rule. 20. The months of February, March, April . . . Well, that's the point. No matter when the strike is actually settled, every baseball fan has now had to rearrange his or her personal private world around the probability that the game will be gone indefinitely. Being an ardent fan of anything is, in part, self-hypnosis. Once you snap your fingers, once you're awake, things are never quite the same. 21. David Stern. The NBA commissioner is way too smart to snap his fingers in front of the faces of his entranced NBA addicts. When his sport faced a labor crisis last fall, the details were kept vague, nobody called names in public and not one game was lost. Stern's NBA is a shrewdly run business. Selig's baseball is a playground at recess with the bullies in charge. 22. An NBA game takes two hours. Even triple overtime doesn't last three hours. 23. An NFL game, cut by 13 minutes in recent years thanks to rule changes, takes three hours on one afternoon per weekend. 24. A major league game, thanks to no rule changes, now takes three hours for nine innings on a weeknight when you have school or work the next morning. 25. An extra-inning game takes four hours and ends so late that you can't even find out who won in the next morning's paper. 26. My wife will attend games with me only on condition that I leave the park in time for us to be home by midnight -- regardless of score, inning or game situation. (Soon, her rule may apply to afternoon games too.) 27. Baseball has become so slow that it has gone from being a great radio game to a horrible radio game. You feel like you're listening to a rain-delay broadcast even when the sun is out. 28. Buck Showalter using five relief pitchers in one half-inning. 29. Johnny Oates using four relievers in one half-inning, but wishing he could have used a fifth so people would think he was as smart as Showalter. 30. Batters who won't get in the box and hit. 31. Pitchers who won't stand on the rubber and throw. 32. Pickoff throws to first base. 33. More pickoffs. 34. Pickoff throws to hold Harold Baines just a little closer. 35. Bozo umps. 36. Tonnage-impaired bozo umps. 37. Tonnage-impaired biased bozo umps. 38. Tonnage-impaired biased bozo umps with chips on their shoulders. 39. Joe West. 40. The umpires' union seeking major pay raises at a time when their collective competence has never been held in lower regard. 41. The owners, of course, retaliating by threatening to lock out the umpires. What next? A hunger strike by the ball boys and ball girls? 42. George Steinbrenner is still around. How long, O Lord? 43. Marge Schott is still around too. Why not have term limits for owners? 44. The Society for American Baseball Research. Is that research as in "cancer research"? Or research as in, "I have too much idle time on my hands"? 45. Sabrmetrics. Without which the world would never have known that, over the past five years, Edwin Nunez has held hitters to a .257 batting average on his 16th to 30th pitch. (Ground-ball-to-fly-ball ratio upon request.) 46. Total Average, perpetrated by someone named Boswell, which contributed its two cents' worth toward encouraging sabrmetrics, Bill James, Stats Inc. and the general soulless, humorless nerdification of all baseball analysis. 47. Rotisserie leagues. 48. Rotisserie leagues with lawyers with daily Prodigy stat printouts. 49. Magazines (for $6.95) on "How to Pick Your Rotisserie Team." 50. Computer programs (for $39.95) that pick your Rotisserie team for you. 51. Nolan Ryan's retirement. 52. Shaq's arrival. 53. The entire NBA rookie class of 1992, including potential Hall of Famers like Jim Jackson, Alonzo Mourning and Latrell Sprewell. 54. The NBA rookie class of 1993 -- the season after Shaq. Anfernee Hardaway, Chris Webber, Jamal Mashburn, Isaiah Rider, Popeye Jones, Toni Kukoc, Nick Van Exel, Dino Radja and Vin Baker. Magic, Michael and Larry have retired, but, in a blink, the NBA has unearthed new players with true star potential. 55. Grant Hill, Jason Kidd and Glenn "Big Dog" Robinson. Even this season's NBA kids are enough to make you forget for weeks at a time that baseball may not return in the spring. Memo to Bud and Don: See how easy it is for us to change our allegiances. Fickleness is hard-wired into human nature as a basic survival instinct. 56. The NFL and NBA pay elite rookies millions of dollars more than they're worth. continued on page 22

B ASEBALL continued from page 16 Baseball pays old utility infielders millions more than they're worth. Which is more galling, a ticket increase to see Penny Hardaway get a triple double or a price hike to watch Mark McLemore kick a grounder? 57. Baseball has probably juiced up its ball, while claiming it hasn't. The result: offensive statistics that are on the verge of becoming a 1930-style joke to knowledgeable baseball fans. 58. The NFL and NBA both altered their rules this season to encourage offense, but they did it openly. The NBA's new three-point line is too close, but at least everybody can have an honest debate about where it should be. The NFL's pass-defense changes have succeeded in giving us more of what we love. Steve Young to Jerry Rice. Troy Aikman to Michael Irvin. Brett Favre to Sterling Sharpe. And Dan Marino, Joe Montana or Drew Bledsoe to anybody. 59. The mere idea that the sport that gave us Jackie Robinson would sink to fielding entire teams of union-busting minor league players. The late Bart Giamatti, during a previous labor dispute, once told me, "Scab teams? No. Even baseball owners would never stoop that low." 60. Bobby Bonilla making threats against potential replacement players. 61. Deion Sanders. If a game makes Neon Deion mediocre and boring, is it a good sport? 62. Michael Jordan. If a game makes Air bad and boring, is it a good sport? 63. Gary Bettman. Who ever thought that the worst commissioner in NHL history could be better than his baseball counterpart? 64. Every baseball card that doesn't say Topps on it and costs more than 5 cents. 65. In answer to the question "Are money, greed and commercialism ruining baseball, or is it just my imagination?" here is the definitive statistical answer. As recently as 1980, no player had more than one baseball card; average cost -- pennies. Last year, Ken Griffey Jr. had 132 different cards (as part of 23 different complete "sets"). Total cost to a theoretical "child": more than $3,800. Yes, just to collect Ken Griffey's cards for one year. 66. Card shows. Autograph signings where a kid must spend $20 for his hero's signature. The whole sick home shopping channel memorabilia craze. Every sport suffers from these diseases. But baseball spawned them all. 67. Camden Yards. The most beautiful park built in modern times has given birth to baseball's most deadhead crowd. (Welcome to Chavez Ravine East.) By turning baseball into an expensive, tony entertainment "experience" -- rather than a ballgame -- the Orioles have driven away lifelong fans while attracting trend-hopping, fair-weather yuppies who only cheer homers. Sometimes. 68. Camden Yards clones. Every team in baseball wants to build its own Camden Yards, jack up ticket prices (as the Orioles have), drive away its knowledgeable, loyal middle-class fans and make a short-term fast buck off the old-new ballpark fad. 69. The Camden Yards legacy. When the fad wears off what have you got? High ticket prices. Alienated traditional fans. Trendoid fans who'll disappear. 70. Albert Belle. If Ripken's streak is broken by scab games, Belle will have the game's most remarkable skein: disciplinary suspensions five years in a row. 71. Vince Coleman. Who would hire an outfielder who can't throw to the plate on fewer than six hops but can hit a kid with a cherry bomb? 72. Squandered star power. What kind of sport spits in the public's face when it has Griffey, Thomas, Ripken, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, Mike Piazza and a dozen more absolutely top-drawer superstars to sell? 73. The NBA markets its players and its game. The NFL markets its coaches, its players and its game. Baseball markets its salaries. 74. Just days before implementing their salary cap, baseball's supposedly destitute owners got into bidding wars that resulted in Gregg Jefferies getting a $20 million, four-year contract and the thoroughly forgettable Jay Buhner grabbing a ludicrous $15.5 million, three-year deal. 75. Football is dominated by owners with experience in the game. Baseball is infested with novice owners, attracted by succulent tax breaks, who stay in the game a few years, milk it, then bolt. Inexperienced know-nothing owners in towns like Houston, Miami and Denver are respected at owner's meetings instead of being told to sit in the corner for five years and listen. 76. The only owner who combines brains, common decency and the guts to stand alone -- the Orioles' Peter Angelos -- will probably face years of post-strike retribution from his fellow owners. He showed them up with his candor. 77. Hockey ruined one season. Baseball has taken the unprecedented and almost inconceivably stupid risk of ruining two. 78. Football has a long halftime. Baseball now has 250 intermissions -- one after each pitch. 79. Baseball doesn't have anybody with green-blue-white-red-and-fuchsia hair, 13 body tattoos and Madonna's home phone number. 80. Everybody in baseball combined doesn't have green-blue-white-red-and-fuchsia hair, 13 body tattoos and Madonna's home phone number. Although Jose Canseco does have one out of three. 81. The Seattle Kingdome, where you could become aisle pizza at any moment. 82. In baseball, rebuilding takes forever. To go from tail-ender to playoff team usually takes several years of smart trades, free-agent signings and minor league drafts. In the NFL, rebuilding requires only a soft parity schedule of weak sisters, a hot draft day by your GM and a few lucky breaks in the fourth quarter. In the NBA, of course, it sometimes takes just one lucky lottery ball to be reborn. 83. The United Baseball League. Yes, this is just what baseball, watered down by its 1993 expansion, really needs -- a 10-team rival league in 1996. No doubt this is how "professional" baseball will finally return to Washington. 84. Baseball's incredibly stupid voting rules -- a tyranny of the minority -- which allow eight owners out of 28 to block any labor settlement. 85. The Redskins stink. The Bullets have been lousy for eons. The Orioles could easily win the 1995 World Series, if there is one. Every day, people bring up the prospects of the Redskins and Bullets in casual conversation with me. Yet, since August 12, not one person has so much as mentioned the Orioles' chances in 1995 in my presence. You can't drive a stake much deeper into a game's heart than that. 86. While hockey's strike was viewed as stupid or comic, baseball's strike is almost always seen as some basic form of evil defeating common sense, common decency and the common welfare of the community. 87. In a desperate attempt to avoid this negative perception, both owners and players try to persuade the public to finger the other side. But the huge majority of fans point at both sides. Any society cherishes institutions that are deemed valuable from generation to generation. When a small number of people -- in this case, exactly 10 rich baseball owners -- place their own economic good in direct opposition to the desires of millions of people, it carries an incredibly ugly and powerful symbolism. For 125 years, America has believed that something undefinable about baseball was basically good. What if, now, America begins to believe that something undefinable about baseball is basically bad? 88. We have to explain the strike to our children. 89. We have to explain the strike to people who never liked baseball anyway. 90. We can't even explain the strike to ourselves. 91. Jerry Rice, Steve Young, Deion Sanders, Ricky Watters, Stan Humphries, Junior Seau, Leslie O'Neal and Natrone Means. 92. Darryl Strawberry. Whether he goes to jail for tax evasion or not. 93. The possibility, no matter how remote, that troglodytic White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf will somehow persuade Michael Jordan to become a scab player. 94. The death of the Hot Stove League. For the first time since Reconstruction, nobody talks baseball during the winter. Even Canseco to Fenway Park, or a dozen-player trade, barely gets a yawn. 95. Ushers, vendors, parking lot attendants and anybody who lives in a spring training town. To a degree that surpasses any other sport in any labor fight, baseball has told the common man to drop dead. Players and owners don't care that countless little people -- to whom a couple of hundred dollars is big money -- got the shaft. How does a hot dog vendor tell his kids that Santa didn't come this year because of Barry Bonds's inalienable right to find out whether his true market value is $40 million or $45 million? 96. Every rich ballplayer who asked to have his alimony or child support payments cut because of the strike. 97. Wild cards. The strike may actually be divine punishment for Bud's expanded playoffs. 98. In what many believe was the most depressing year in modern American sport -- the year of O.J. and Tonya -- the cancellation of the World Series was named in press polls as the biggest, and worst, sports story of 1994. 99. And finally: because, for the first time in my life, hearing the word "baseball" makes me angry, not happy. The better the fans, the less they will forgive what has been inflicted on a prized possession, a sport that by rights belonged to them. Baseball's owners and players do not yet grasp what they have done, nor the lasting disgust that many of us will feel. They have broken into our lives and stolen from us. Though their game may, eventually, be forgiven and restored to a place of honor, they will never be.

Thomas Boswell is a sports columnist for The Post.

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