The Baseball Barons' Bread and Circuses

IS BASEBALL STILL THE NATIONAL PASTIME? SURE, IF the sport is meant to reflect the greed, rancor, farce and tragedy that can be found -- along with the athletic grace and thrill of competition -- in real life.

The grace and thrills come on the field between April and October. All the other stuff was on display at the owners' winter meetings in Louisville, Kentucky, where baseball's barons went on a daft pre-Christmas shopping spree for talent -- including $43 million for six years of outfielder Barry Bonds' services -- while moaning they were near bankruptcy.

Suicidal profligacy was the least of the owners' sins. The Cincinnati Reds' Marge Schott scrambled to apologize for slurs against "Jew bastards" and "million-dollar niggers." (Jesse Jackson called the phrases "shots heard around the world" and promised further protests.) The moguls also voted to try renegotiating the players' union contract, though a spring lockout would cripple already ailing attendance. In a horrifying climax, Florida Marlins president Carl Barger suffered an aneurysm during the owners' final meeting and died a few hours later.

Another fatality may be baseball's unique antitrust exemption, which a U.S. Senate panel, in separate hearings, was threatening to revoke. But would a lifting of baseball's monopoly be enough to stir sufficient rowdy capitalist competition to save the sport? The owners have made the game such a tragicomic disaster area that one hardly knows whether to call in the Marines or send in the clowns.