I am not a huge baseball fan.

I never really have been. I never watch a whole baseball game during the regular season.

I might watch part of a game during the league championship series and a whole game or two of the World Series - depending on the teams involved.

Baseball isn't a really big part of my life. But to a lot of fans, it is.

I know guys like that. They can recite team rosters back into the 1960s. They have encyclopedic knowledge of individual player statistics - batting averages, number of runs and hits, earned run averages and the like.

Fans like that watch lots of games. They travel to attend games. They love the game. The game is a big part of their lives.

So I know that if a guy like me - who has at most a passing interest in Major League Baseball - is ticked off by the notion of another baseball strike, the real fans must be livid.

Superstar Barry Bonds was quoted in the Washington Post as saying baseball will survive another strike, "It's entertainment," said Bonds. "It will come back. A lot of companies go on strike, not just baseball. And people still ride the bus."

I think he's wrong.

I think the primadonnas of modern big league ball have all but killed the game.

Why do I think that?

Because they've alienated the kids. OK, maybe that's overstated. Maybe they haven't alienated the kids, but they certainly haven't done anything to attract them.

Seems to me the younger generation has lost interest in baseball.

My son used to play little league. Now he plays golf and tennis. He doesn't watch any more games than I do.

Kids used to love the game. Kids used to aspire to be a big leaguer because of the game. Nowadays, most kids aspire to be a big leaguer because they know it's a ride on the gravy train.

It's all about money.

That's my impression of baseball these days. A bunch of elitists playing a game where the teams are all owned by a bunch of elitists.

When I was a kid, I watched the Cardinals. Guys like Stan Musial Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, Ozzie Smith. Those guys were Cardinals.

Everybody knew they were Cardinals. They had long careers with the Cardinals because they loved playing in St. Louis.

Every team had its marquee players. All the fans knew them and associated them with their team.

Sure, there were trades. Brock came to the Cardinals from the Cubs. Smith came from the Padres.

These days, trades are an annual thing. If somebody signs a three-year deal, it's a big deal.

Players don't seem to be loyal to any team. They just follow the cash, the best deal.

So how can baseball players expect fans to be loyal to teams when baseball players themselves aren't even loyal to teams?

They can't. And the fans won't.

Major League Baseball these days is in trouble. It's in decline. Attendance is down. Interest is waning. Big, new stadiums are mostly empty.

They're talking about contraction for the league - eliminating teams to make the league more solvent.

Amid all this, a commission decides that maybe a tax on some of the rich teams' stratospheric salaries and a little more revenue sharing might help.

The players union will have none of it and apparently is willing to kill the game to stop it.

Big money is involved. Players have agreed to raise the amount of money to be transferred from high-revenue teams to low-revenue teams from $169 million to $235 million annually, using 2001 figures. Before their latest offer Tuesday, owners had proposed $282 million be transferred.

Not that I have a great deal of sympathy for owners. As much as they whine about how they're losing money, they seem all but enthusiastic to pay their employees - the players - a gajillion dollars.

And when they sell a franchise, it's always at a huge profit over when they bought it. I guess my question is why would anyone want to pay $300 million for a business that is a money loser?

Unless, of course, it's a great tax writeoff, in which case the cost of the whole deal is shouldered firmly by all us middle class taxpayers.

But that's nothing new. The costs are always borne by the little guy.

Really, who do you suppose pays those baseball player salaries? Where does the money come from? Ticket sales probably don't cover the chalk on the foul lines.

You and I - regardless of whether we watch or attend games - pay. When NBC has to shell out billions for the privilege of televising games, do they have to recoup that from their advertisers?

Nope, they pass it on to their customers. That's us.

I am quite confident that if there were no baseball, a can of Budweiser would cost less.

So it's tough to feel sorry for the owners.

And with the average salary in baseball at $2.4 million this year, it's tough to feel sorry for the players, too.

Baseball has been on strike eight times before, most notably in 1994 when there was no World Series.

If they do it again - kill the season, cancel the playoffs and the World Series, ruin all the fantasy leagues - I think fans will be unforgiving.

The Post asked Bonds if he thought fans could appreciate the players' position. He said, "It's not my fault you don't play baseball."

How true, how true.

Here's another truth. It won't be the fans' fault if Bonds ends up unemployed. [[In-content Ad]]