FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 2002 — In less than a week, there is a distinct possibility that members of the Major League Baseball players’ union will decide not to show up to their teams’ games that night. The Red Sox, scheduled to open a three-game series in Cleveland on D(eparture)-Day, August 30, will presumably go along with their union brethren and celebrate what would have been Ted Williams’s 84th birthday holed up at the Sheraton on St. Clair Avenue. How long would they remain in Cleveland? Well, they’d have to find their own way home if they decided not to stay, because the charter jet they’ll take is for working employees only. While some might argue that the underachieving Sox began their work stoppage a few weeks early, the one that is slated to begin baseball-wide next Friday could toll the death knell for America’s pastime as we know it.

I have stated before, and I’ll state it again, that I don’t believe a walkout will actually occur, and that some kind of agreement will be reached that will at least delay for a while the players’ mass exodus. I have previously taken the side of the owners but have come to join the masses who prefer to lay the blame at both sides’ feet in their failure to come up with a resolution. I’m not going to go into the nuts and bolts of the disagreement here, other than to outline the obvious: the players do not want any kind of salary cap that would ultimately limit their ability to accrue huge sums of money; they would accept an updated revenue-sharing plan, as long as the money shared goes toward player salaries and not into the pockets of small-town owners eager to balance their books; and while they have indeed made numerous concessions already, they are not ready to give in to the possibility that in future years they could, or should, make less money.

What I am going to say is that the players need to come to the realization that their fairy-tale lives are not going to continue in this fashion forever, and that the existence they lead cannot possibly be compared to the " real world. " Perhaps you recently lost a job that you really liked; perhaps you recently lost a friend or loved one, maybe even in the September events of a year ago; perhaps you are in a financial situation that has forced you to give up some of the luxuries you once took for granted. In any of these cases, you accept the fact that your life has changed, that you need to address those changes and move forward, and you eventually adapt to the new voids in your life. You do not walk out on your life and your responsibility, nor do you pout and demand that things return to the way that they were, realistic circumstances be damned.

But that is what the baseball players are doing. They refuse to face the prospect of having to modify the lifestyles to which they have become accustomed, even though the bounties bestowed on them for playing a kids’ game have become so plentiful.

Here is the life of a typical major-league baseball player: for the most part, you are on vacation from early October until late February. That is four and a half months of uninterrupted time spent with the wife and kids. From April until the end of September, you are working, but that " work " consists of being at the ballpark for approximately five hours a day, hangin’ with your best buds and, if you’re not playing in the game itself, you’re sitting on a bench getting paid to watch a professional game. Nice work if you can get it. Out of 365 days, you work 162 (most of us work around 250). Every two weeks during the season you receive a paycheck, and if you are make an average MLB salary, say the $2.7 million (that’s average, folks!) that Trot Nixon makes for the Sox, your biweekly check is $225,000 before taxes. If you’re above average, like the Yankees’ Jason Giambi, the check you receive every other week is approximately $858,333. Can you get by on that for the next fortnight?

Now I’ll admit, you do have to travel a bit, but you fly on chartered luxury aircraft and stay in four-star hotels, and you never have to share a room. In addition, you get $72.50 per diem for food, even though your breakfast at the hotel is probably included in the room rate, and there is a pre-game and post-game spread set up in the team clubhouse at the stadium. Your life-insurance and health-care premiums are paid for, and your pension is the best among all pro athletes. During the off-season, you most likely will receive a check for upwards of $100,000 for your share of MLB’s licensing revenues.

I know, I know. Not all ballplayers benefit in these ways for years at a time, and some may even scrape to get by. Not everyone gets the big contracts, or even reaches the majors, and minor-league money is drastically less. In addition, the owners are much richer than the players may ever be, and those fat cats are not doing anything resembling off-season weight training and conditioning. Why aren’t they the ones making more concessions?

My point is, the players have to realize that they are not living in the same world that most working stiffs do; the real world requires making sacrifices at times. Sacrifice is often justified because it benefits a greater number of people, and that’s what’s at stake here. Anyone who feels it’s fair that some teams get $100 million in TV/radio revenue and others get less than $10 million, or it’s just fine that some teams have a team payroll of $140 million while others get by on $40 million is blind to the problems of the small-market teams that are pretty much out of the pennant race by Opening Day. There are true success stories, like the Minnesota Twins or the Oakland A’s, but when is the last time a low-payroll team won the World Series? You’d have to go back to the Twins’ thrilling victory in 1991, and that was before the era of $10 million closers. (In fact, 1991’s highest-paid player was the Sox’ Roger Clemens, who was earning $5.38 million.) Just two years before that Minnesota victory, the Twins’ Kirby Puckett was the first player to break the $3 million salary barrier.

Just asking, but has your salary increased by a rate of 700 percent over the last dozen years?

Of course not. That’s not the real world. Losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in your 401K portfolio through corporate bookkeeping shenanigans or stock-market free-falls, that’s the real world. Losing someone to a terrorist attack or never feeling safe again, that’s the real world.

It’s time for the players to make meaningful concessions. They are not going to be heading for the welfare rolls anytime soon; they will still be making millions and millions of dollars annually; they will still get their perks and their first-class travel accommodations; they will still be idolized and play on a grand stage. But what they will ultimately hold as the most valuable asset in all these negotiations will be the ability to continue making these exorbitant sums of cash. If they walk next week, they will have a tougher time doing it, because I guarantee you that if there is a lengthy work stoppage this season, not as many people will be coming out to the ballparks in future years. Fewer people coming through the turnstiles means fewer dollars coming into the owners’ coffers. Fewer dollars in the drawer means fewer ridiculous salaries can be paid out. And fewer big salaries probably means less-competitive teams, or even money-losing teams that may be forced to go out of business. This situation is not good for anyone — not for the owners, not for the players, not for the sausage guys outside Fenway, and certainly not for the fans who love(d) the game of baseball.

Watching the Little League World Series, one can already see the influence that major leaguers have on these 11- and 12-year-olds. These kids are spittin’, they’re stylin’, they’re going through some of the same rituals that Nomar Garciaparra goes through before each at-bat. While I’m not sure these youngsters are mature enough to be thrust into the national spotlight and having their tournament broadcast on ESPN and ESPN2, the fact is that these kids are emulating their big-league heroes, for better or worse, and following in their footsteps. And by watching the guys in The Show demonstrate that it’s okay to retaliate at an inside pitch by throwing at a guy’s head, or start a full-scale brawl on the field to settle a macho disagreement, or ignore or be rude to the media, or walk out on millions of fans throughout the world in the name of maintaining their storybook lives of leisure and riches, Little Leaguers around the country will arrive at the fact that this is the way life is — and that is the way they should act. Garciaparra says that the players are prepared to walk en masse for the benefit of these Little Leaguers and their futures. Please. The big-leaguers can lead by example: they can keep the game they profess to love as popular and strife-free as possible. Leaving exciting pennant races hanging and possibly unresolved is hardly the way to do it.

Sportsmanship has already suffered enough in recent years with the exploits of Mike Tyson, the Olympic skating duos, and 14-year-old " Little Leaguer " Danny Almonte, along with end-zone celebrations and sack dances. Major League Baseball players must make additional compromises. They must come to the realization that this magical existence they lead cannot last forever, and that multi-million-dollar salaries are not the norm in this world. They must provide role-model leadership that says, " We are willing to give something up so that the game we love becomes more competitive and continues to provide satisfying entertainment to the fans that pay our salaries. " They cannot assume business-as-usual if they darken the stadiums next Friday and set in motion a staring contest between millionaires and billionaires. We common folk cannot identify with their issues or their sheltered worlds, and we are not going to have our passions trifled with again.

I speak for many when I say that Major League Baseball will not be seeing any more of my hard-earned cash if a lengthy work stoppage happens. And if it does happen, well, I think it’s safe to say that we’re all good and ready for some football.