This will be my last column on baseball.

I haven’t followed baseball since I was nine because I’m a fan of topics such as collective bargaining agreements or anti-trust exemptions. I am certain that a vast majority of fellow baseball fans agree with me. So why write about it?

When, not if, there is a work stoppage, which would likely take place either in August or September, the likelihood that the World Series would be cancelled again as it was in 1994 seems imminent. Does it matter if the Red Sox acquire first baseman Jim Thome from Cleveland or sweep the Yankees in a three game series if the season is a wash? No, so why write about it?

For those of you who avoid reading the daily squabbling between the Players Association and Major League Baseball, here’s a condensed synopsis of the situation. Currently, there is no contract between the players and the owners at the moment. Bud Selig, the bespeckled commissioner, holds fast to the belief that the current economic structure of baseball is in the most dire of straits. Changes need to be implemented, he cries from his office on the thirtieth floor in a Milwaukee high rise. The owners are losing money and we (MLB) will no longer bail them out of troubled fiscal waters. He calls for revenue sharing and competitive balance, i.e. “parity”, similar to that of the National Football League.

As for the Players Association, they proclaim that the owners are skewing the numbers, “cooking the books” as they say. The players also claim that the proposed salary cap put forth by the commissioner will limit their potential earnings. There’s more, but I won’t bore you with it.

What the situation comes down to is billionaire owners fighting with millionaire players. Major League baseball is 3.5 billion dollar industry and they can’t find a way to share all that money. All in all, it’s despicable.

What is a fan to think; who is s/he to believe? As in most cases, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. The average salary of a baseball player is 2.4 million dollars. It’s hard to take the side of employees who earn that much. Many players come off as ungrateful, detached, and egocentric, both in word and action.

Talk of love of baseball aside, the owners are hardcore businessmen and Major League Baseball is a business. With a new corporate scandal surfacing almost weekly, the American public distrusts big business more than ever. Baseball fans are smart enough to realize that unethical business practices can seep into the game they love.

Take the Arizona Diamondbacks, the reigning World Series champions. Reportedly the team incurred losses of 44 million dollars in operating costs in 2001. Tell me, what self-respecting business allows itself to loose that much money? The answer is none. It has also been reported that Arizona received 160 million dollars in equity for this season to solve financial problems. Smell something fishy? I do. The whole situation stinks and it makes the greatest sport in the world lousy.

Major League Baseball reported that 30 teams lost a total of 500 million dollars last year. Oh really? And the industry brings in 3.5 billion dollars? Where does all that money go? One can only wonder.

The most disturbing element of the situation is that passion for baseball has waned considerably. There is a new generation of Little Leaguers that have no emotional ties to the sport, with baseball as an afterthought to video games and other sports like basketball and football. The topic of steroids and its potential prominence in the game today has generated apathy and resentment among many fans.

What both parties must realize is that although baseball is the national pastime, it is not the most popular, and the number of fans seem decrease every year. Another work stoppage could deliver an irreparable blow to the core of baseball fans in this country, driving them far away, once and for all. No World Series for the second time in nine years could be the death of baseball.

So I take my first sentence back. The next time that I write about baseball, it will be an article in the obituaries.