"Pain" is not the right word to describe my reaction to the news that baseball is dead for the year; 34 days of empty negotiations had already provided a powerful anesthetic. But I did feel a sense of loss and disgust, directed mainly at the millionaire players and owners who could not come up with a single creative way to divide an immense amount of money.
The World Series had been played for 89 straight years despite the Kaiser, the Great Depression, Hitler and the California earthquake -- only to be vaporized now by greed. But the tidy universe of baseball, the symmetry and style about which former Baseball Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti rhapsodized, will survive.
What all this self-destructive bickering may do, though, is damage the public trust essential to the future of any sport. I keep imagining a kid in Cleveland, which had its first realistic shot at a pennant since 1954. Will he, next year, commit his fragile expectations to forces over which he has no control?
Naturally, I will show up when the Cardinals come to play the Mets. But in my case, cynicism is no match for 50-plus years of blind loyalty. The kids may not be nearly as tolerant.
