CHICAGO -- A 10-year-old baseball fan, hearing about the multimillion-dollar salaries paid to Bobby Bonilla and Danny Tartabull, paused for a minute over his slice of pizza and said, "When I'm big, they won't even use people for players."
Asked what he meant, the boy went on: "The owners will be so tired of paying them all that money that they will use robots instead, and then when a pitcher's arm falls off or something like that, all the owner will have to do is replace it with another one that has the latest computer in it."
It is an intriguing idea as the world of sports whirls toward the year 2000.
The boy's notion was cultivated, no doubt, by super video games as well as by headline-grabbing contracts; but, more importantly, it points out that another generation besides those who grew up with Mantle and Mays and $1.25 grandstand seats senses possible upheaval in the years ahead for professional, college and even high school sports.
As club owners, marketing analysts, players, their agents -- and, yes, even little boys -- try to peer into the future of the sports world, they are fixed on the obvious fact that salaries have skyrocketed and sports has become this decade's Gold Rush.
The average salary in the National Basketball Association is currently just above $1 million and is expected to reach $1.5 million by 1994.
Baseball's payroll in 1991 was $630 million, up from $422 million the year before -- a 50 percent increase. Another big bounce is in the offing this year as witnessed by the $29 million given by the New York Mets to Bonilla and the $25 million contract given by the Yankees to Tartabull.
At the same time, the fountainhead of club revenues -- network television deals -- shows signs of evaporating, and there is talk the next baseball contract with television will be as much as 30 percent below the current $1.45 billion pact.
One of the fears is that in the search for continuing revenues to fuel the frenzy, the average fan will be made to pay even more than he does today.
"Increasingly, sports are going to be for the rich," says Murray Sperber, a professor of English at Indiana University, author of "College Sports Inc.," and a former sports writer. "My father used to take me to ballgames all the time, but I can't afford to take my kids.
"I grew up in San Francisco in the 1960s and used to buy an end zone seat on the day of the game for $1.50 to watch the 49ers. Can you imagine seeing the NFL today for $1.50?
"The day will come when Joe Six-Pack is priced out of seeing his favorite team. You're going to have super-rich gladiators playing sports for super-rich fans. I'm not sure what the rest of us will do, but it will be an amazing world."
In Chicago, it already is becoming exorbitant to watch a pro sports event live, and virtually impossible to buy a ticket on game day, unless it's from a scalper.
Consider the Bulls.
Tickets range from $15 in the second balcony to $35 in the mezzanine, $50 for a box seat and $250 at courtside.
About 13,000 seats are sold on season-ticket plans, many of them to corporate buyers. Tickets for the remaining 4,500 seats per game went on sale last October and were sold out the first day, according to Joe O'Neil, the Bulls director of ticket and stadium operations. The Bulls' victory Tuesday night over Philadelphia was witnessed by the 209th consecutive sellout.
Baseball is a far better bargain, with the average major-league ticket priced at $8.64 compared to $23.87 for the National Basketball Association, but it still is difficult to get a choice ticket in Chicago. Increasingly, marketing is geared toward the corporate buyer.
Admission prices for the White Sox this year range from $8 for a bleacher or upper-deck reserved seat to $15 for a box seat. But except for the bleachers, all seats on the lower level, including the outfield grandstand, are expected to go to 81-game season ticket-holders, said Rob Gallas, senior vice president of marketing and broadcasting. Most of these will go to corporate buyers.
A season-ticket buyer can join the Stadium Club for $600 (food and drink extra) and dine in plush surroundings at the ballpark. A full season-ticket plan for two, parking and membership in the Stadium Club adds up to $4,602 -- plus the cost of food, drink, souvenirs and other amenities.
"To be a successful franchise, all you used to have to do was sell a million tickets," said Gallas. "Now, two million is the benchmark, a lot of franchises are flirting with three million and the Dodgers and Blue Jays drew four million.
"The stakes have gone up and you just can't sell to the hard-core baseball fan anymore. You have to sell to the businessman and to the entertainment customer, to the people who spend their dollars on books, movies, plays, restaurants and other leisure-time activities.
"You have to include the casual customer and market the ballpark as fun. It's a place to enjoy the food, the Hall of Fame, the speed-pitch machine, the baseball card booth. You must present a total entertainment package."
Gallas said pro club marketing specialists are still aware of the average fan's wherewithal and noted the White Sox still have half-price family days on Mondays and give away about 100,000 free tickets to straight A students.
Martin Greenberg, an attorney who heads up the National Sports Institute at Marquette University, says that even if it means turning stadiums into shopping malls, professional sports teams have to look at alternative means of producing big dollars to survive at the escalating salary levels of today. The alternative is to price the fans right out of the game.
As Greenberg and others look to the year 2000 and how teams cope with rising costs and the decreasing revenues from traditional TV sources, they see expansion, including increased global marketing of trademarked goods and possible overseas franchises; a big move into pay-per-view television, including overseas TV such as a multi-nation satellite operation like Notre Dame has; and aggressive marketing, as described by Gallas, that already has turned some stadiums into entertainment centers with shopping, dining and even hotel facilities.
Greenberg also believes there will have to be an end to the negotiating wars between players and owners with each striking a chord for peace, perhaps following the lead of the NBA in imposing a revenue sharing plan between the two sides and a salary cap.
Interest in sports will continue to grow in the 1990s, and some see the possibility of legalized betting on pro games as a means for states to balance their tottering budgets.
The primary opposition by the various leagues to legalized betting has been the fear that players will fix games, said Sperber. Sperber reasons athletes would not risk being banned and losing their monumental salaries, so the main argument against it will be removed.
"It would be a bonanza and too good a source of revenue to pass up and that would make sports even more central to the country," he said.
Shrinking revenues from traditional sources and swollen costs will not only affect the professional game.
Despite the mania surrounding and publicity given to big-time football and basketball programs, college budgets are going broke and universities are canceling non-revenue sports programs. In the teeth of declining revenues, some public high school districts are considering following the lead of schools in Portland, Mich., which charge pupils $250 for each sport they want to play.
The NCAA's authority over member schools is under court attack and, if the NCAA loses, it drastically would affect the face of college sports, possibly opening the way for athletes being paid on the college level. This could result in a super league of football and basketball powers with other non-participating schools returning closer to the ideal of the scholar-athlete.
If the NCAA retains its authority and the university presidents continue to try to increase their muscle over their athletic departments, Sperber believes there will be a decline in the college-enrolled black athlete. This would force professional basketball and football to institute some kind of minor-league system to develop the non-college talent.
"If the NCAA has its way, college sports will look slower and whiter," said Sperber, referring to action by the NCAA to tighten academic requirements last week. "Both the NBA and the NFL will have to work out some way to cultivate the blue chip athlete who can't go to college."
Whether the NCAA retains its authority or not, a college playoff championship is almost a certainty as pay-per-view proponents push for a mega-event. Pay-per-view distributors see such a matchup grossing as much as $75 million.
With the proliferation of cable and pay TV, even nationally televised high school playoffs in football and basketball are not out of the question.
Despite sports' increasing cost to spectators, Sperber sees the fervent interest in sports growing unabated. As an educator, he sees that costing the United States in other ways.
"Sports has become the last bastion of Horatio Algerism," he said. "American kids can no longer dream of inventing the next great technological breakthrough like Thomas Edison or Henry Ford because America has lost its lead. So, increasingly, kids -- not only black kids, but white kids -- dream of being the next Michael Jordan, ignoring the reality that their chances of becoming doctors or lawyers -- or even sports writers -- are tremendously greater than becoming a professional athlete."
He cited a recent survey that said 73 percent of high school students thought their best chance of getting a college scholarship was through athletics, when, in fact, athletic scholarships constitute only about 9 percent of the scholarships available to high school seniors.
"Sports will become even more dominant in the future; but I don't think for the betterment of society," Sperber said.