NOBODY’S SAYING that the new Red Sox owner has to mirror the model set by the late Tom Yawkey, the North Carolina native who purchased the Red Sox in 1933 and whose imprint is still felt through the trust he set up to govern the team. Yawkey, who genuinely loved the game, spent freely and liked to hang out with his players. The result was the infamous coddled "country club" of the 1950s and ’60s, a team that featured a series of high-priced sluggers, from the sublime (Ted Williams) to the ridiculous (Dick Stuart), but that never won. Then, too, Yawkey — at best a casual racist — was notoriously slow to sign African-American players, creating resentment in the black community that lingers to this day, despite Harrington’s genuine efforts to counter that.

But Yawkey did bring a sense of perspective about the game then that is sorely missing now. Globe sports columnist Will McDonough — who’s close to Harrington, though apparently not close enough to learn what he’s thinking — got at this in a December 2 piece in which he lamented, "Wouldn’t you like to hear or read this sentence just once from John Harrington or Justin Morreale, his lead lawyer in the Red Sox sale: ‘We are going to do what is in the best interest of the baseball team and the Red Sox fans.’ " You don’t have to go along with McDonough’s endorsement of the O’Donnell-Karp group to appreciate the sentiment.

Larry Moulter, a former chair of the Boston Garden/FleetCenter, articulated this concern in a Globe op-ed on Tuesday. "We must restore a sense of values to professional teams balancing the almighty financial concerns of these teams with civic and personal responsibility that make them so special," he wrote. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely the next owner of the Sox will embrace those values. These days, it’s all about out-of-town conglomerates, cross-platform media packages, and national advertising. AOL Time Warner owns the Atlanta Braves. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation owns the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Tribune Company owns the Chicago Cubs. It’s not likely that things are going to be any different with the Red Sox.

For City Councilor Maura Hennigan, who has criticized Menino’s plan to finance a new Red Sox stadium, the notion of an out-of-towner’s owning the team is daunting. "I think it’d be nice if we had somebody local, somebody who has a sense of Boston and the provisions," says Hennigan, who adds with resignation, "Harrington supposedly has to go to the highest bidder."

For Red Sox fans and the local public, none of the apparent finalists satisfies what most would want in a new owner for the team — a good corporate citizen with deep pockets. O’Donnell and Karp would likely be looking for public money to make their development dreams come true. Dolan’s a media magnate who could prove to have as much interest in winning as, say, Boston Bruins tightwad Jeremy Jacobs. The recent addition of the well-regarded John Henry to the Werner-Otten group is cause for some optimism, but those bidders are still more likely to be at least as devoted to Bud Selig’s agenda as they are to building a winner in Boston.

As much as Sox fans rail about Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, what many might want is a Steinbrenner of our own to come into town and propel the team to victory. "I just want to see that the new owner of the Boston Red Sox is concerned with bringing a world championship to Boston," says former Boston mayor Ray Flynn. "The focus really should be on winning, and not making millions from a losing team."

In the end, what this is really about is the Red Sox’ joining the global economy, something Boston itself has been in the process of doing for a generation. "I’ve been concerned for years about the trend wherein Boston has increasingly become a city of branch managers for huge corporations that are owned outside and are not keyed in to our particular charm and tradition," says communications consultant Marjorie Arons-Barron, former editorial director for WCVB-TV (Channel 5) — itself a once-local organization, now part of the Hearst-Argyle broadcast juggernaut. "When it comes to baseball, particularly, there’s only so much you can learn about Boston. You have to have it in your veins. You have to have it in your DNA."

Unfortunately, the business of baseball these days isn’t baseball, it’s business. So go ahead: root for your favorite plutocrats. Just remember that at the same time they’re laying out hundreds of millions of dollars for the Red Sox, you’re going to pay, too — in higher ticket prices, jacked-up concession prices, rising cable bills, and taxes. And in the immeasurable but real psychic cost of watching the national pastime turn into just another part of life that used to be fun, back before it became all about money.

Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com . Seth Gitell can be reached at sgitell[a]phx.com