THE BOYS of Mammon -- millionaire baseball owners and players -- have packed their wallets and alibis and skipped town like con artists on the lam.
Not too late for a bon-voyage message tied to a brickbat:
GET LOST. GOOD RIDDANCE. WHO NEEDS YOU?
For a week the sulky millionaires did nothing to end their six-month baseball strike but glower silently. Their idea of "negotiating" is to pout like 11-year-old brats in a classroom feud.
When Bill Usery, best labor mediator in the country, tried to solve their money quarrel, they called him "senile."
When the president of the United States looked them in the eyes and said, "Settle this thing," they treated him as condescendingly as they would a street wino begging a handout.
"Just a handful of millionaires trying to carve up $2 billion. What's so hard about that?" Bill Clinton had asked.
Until he felt it viscerally, Bill Clinton underestimated the pure hatred between players' union boss Donald Fehr and acting commissioner Bud Selig.
"I've never been in a labor dispute where both sides hated each other like this," said a federal negotiator. "Never."
You guys hate each other? Here's news: Hatred for the whole baseball kaboodle -- every self-pitying .260 hitter with a multi-year $20 million contract, every bleating, lying owner -- is universal.
Baseball is the Saddam Hussein of 1995.
You hear this everywhere, even in Washington where addicts go 30 miles for a ball yard fix. People are mad, out of patience. A plague on both your houses, to borrow from Shakespeare.
Shucks, Mr. Clinton has a better approval rating than baseball. So would Jack the Ripper, Son of Sam and O.J.
Why, a Washington Post-ABC poll showed fans by 2-to-1 blame players more than owners.
When did this country side with bosses? In truth, most folks now despise baseball, this cozened 19th-century capitalism disguised as a game.
Don't expect Congress to save it. True, when demigods Dave Winfield, Cal Ripken, Cecil Fielder and Eddie Murray held a party at ornate Union Station, congressfolk lined up for autographs like gushing rubes.
But Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich harrumphed they had more serious things to do when Mr. Clinton asked for an arbitration panel. Translation: They don't want to serve Mr. Clinton a ninth-inning homer.
In the Great Baseball Greedfest, everybody's ego is at stake.
OK, if politicians balk and millionaires won't talk, here's the Grady Solution: Forget the 1995 season.
Can it. Lock the stadiums. You tycoons take a year to bicker. Spare the rest of us your adolescent, who-shot-John wrangling. Give us a break.
Skip the green-cathedral bull that losing a whole season will damage the American psyche. Purists moaned that the canceled '94 World Series was a "tragedy."
Hey, Bosnia, Rwanda, Chechnya were tragedies. Losing baseball is an inconvenience.
I speak as someone who quit cold (almost) turkey. Thirteen years I spent covering baseball: Spring meant Florida games, fall meant going to a World Series. Now I'm content to check box scores like a horoscope; if the Phils and Orioles win, it's going to be a decent day.
But I suspect even hard-core addicts are furious enough to let the baseball lords and rich vassals stew in their egotistical juices a year.
Let's call the whole thing off.
Never mind Fantasy Ball with replacement players. Anybody who thinks scab ball would flourish should see the movie "Cobb" or read Al Stump's terrific book on Ty Cobb.
In 1912, when players rebelled because Cobb was suspended for punching out a fan, the Detroit Tigers fielded a scab team of "park sparrows" in Philadelphia's Shibe Park. The strikebreaker-nine included a local high school student as pitcher, a 48-year-old catcher and prizefighter Billy Maharg at second base.
"Defending world champion Philadelphia won by 24-2," writes Mr. Stump. "Jeering the travesty, fans left early, demanding ticket refunds. Seats were torn up, rocks thrown at ticket windows. Arriving cops were stoned."
Perhaps 1995 fans would be more polite. Sure, scab ball would be a novelty. Fuzzy stories about has-beens and wannabes in the Big Show. In a month the joy of paying $15 to see Class-A ball would bring empty seats and resentment. Count on it.
We're tired of lawyers, amateur tycoons, Rolls-Royce athletes belly-aching.
They're scorpions in a jar. Players (average salary, $1.1 million) won't surrender to any disguised salary cap. Owners, who deserve this jam for firing commissioner Fay Vincent, are hell-bent on busting the union.
I wouldn't trust either side if it passed a lie-detector test.
Make a clean break: To heck with baseball in '95. We'll survive, even if it means jogging or soccer with the kids.
Tell the over-hyped, over-paid Boys of Mammon to take a hike.
I= Maybe in a year we'll let you back into our lives. Maybe.
Sandy Grady is Washington columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News.
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