c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is the author of”On a Journey,”daily meditations available through Journey Publishing Co. If you have feedback or want to suggest a question for a future column, send e-mail to: journey(AT)interpath.com)

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. _ In the war of political yard signs, green signs saying”Major League Baseball YES,”are defeating red signs emblazoned with the more cryptic slogan,”Food Taxes Bite.” Proof of the pudding will come next Tuesday, when voters in the Piedmont Triad decide whether to finance a baseball stadium with a new tax on entertainment.

As usual in political debate, opposing views talk past each other.

Business leaders cite the public relations boost that will come from being a”major league city”and the new jobs that surely will follow a loftier image. Opponents ask why the public should help a rich man get richer. If nursing home magnate Don Beaver wants to buy the Minnesota Twins and move them to his home state, they say, let him pay for it.

Journalists study other cities recently acquiring baseball renown and conclude, to no one’s surprise, a winning team spreads economic victory broadly and a losing team is, well, a losing team. If the Twins are for sale, why would we want them?

Many say, If we don’t build it, they won’t come _ they’ll go to the hated Charlotte just down Interstate 85, which would mire Greensboro, High Point and Winston-Salem forever in second-tier status. If Atlantic Coast Conference partisans can’t allow Charlotte’s non-ACC branch of the state university system to have a medical school, law school or business school, how could they let the state’s largest city have one more jewel in its much-envied crown?

Personally, I focus on the joy of the Single A baseball we now have. Tickets are virtually free, the ballpark is human scale, I can hear ball smack glove, and when my six-year-old son loses interest in the fifth inning, I haven’t wasted a week’s grocery money.

More to the point _ and this is the point of my political saga _ I find I don’t care. If this were the era of Mantle, Mays and Aaron, or Bench, Rose and Perez, it could be grand to have the big leagues in town. But this is the era of nameless toilers who float from team to team and make headlines only at contract time. Gone are nicknames like”Bambino,””Joltin’ Joe”and”Splendid Splinter.”Gone are teams whose vivid personalities could capture a city’s heart. How many little boys still shag flies on summer days and dream of baseball glory?

Major league sports are fading. Attendance is down, owners are losing money, television ratings are weak, and now Yankee Stadium is collapsing. What a fine end-of-millennium image: the Yanks begging field time from the Mets.

The merchants of sport have overplayed their hands.

Big-time athletes no longer seem like scrappy kids, but pampered sulks who demand extravagant salaries, fuss about parking places for their Porsches and dodge kids seeking autographs.

Owners come across as whiners threatening to leave town if locals won’t build a bigger revenue producer _ I mean, ballpark.

In the broadcasting booth, Red Barber was replaced by Marv Albert. In the stands, programs cost two times the minimum wage.

Greed wins in subtle ways, too. Photos of baseball’s heyday show daytime crowds of men wearing gabardine suits and snap-brim hats, and kids in 25-cent bleachers studying Mick’s every move.

Now we have 10-hour workdays and employees tracked by pagers. Baseball’s target audience is no longer a working-class dad playing hooky with his son, but the corporate entertainment budget. The champion of regional pride tends to be a college team _ or, to be precise, the college coach, since players go pro as soon as they can.

Even if Triad citizens tax themselves to build a stadium, they probably are coming late to the trough. Major League Baseball seems to be going the way of horse racing: a niche pursuit of a few well-heeled people, where the sport itself matters less than sideline goings-on like betting and drinking beer.

Is this the end of civilization as we know it? Probably not. The real end of civilization is happening in Indiana, where the merchants of sport have eviscerated the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race and abandoned high school basketball’s one-class tournament, in which every season a small school like Milan or Vincennes could wage war against Goliath.

DEA END EHRICH