Watching Denny Neagle's Yankee debut Tuesday night at his Manhattan apartment, Reik found himself fighting seller's remorse. Neagle was making short work of the Philadelphia Phillies and Reik was tormented that the Reds might have traded him too soon.

        “By the eighth inning,” Reik said, “I had to have another martini.”

        Stiff drinks have been the order of the day in Redsland recently. The Neagle deal, the Barry Larkin impasse and the suspected shopping of Pete Harnisch and Scott Williamson have made every morning feel like the morning after. Reds players keep creeping back into contention, only to be reminded daily of management's resignation, its fiscal constraints and its 2003 target.

        As major-league owners prepare their propaganda to win public support for their next collective bargaining clash with the players association, the Reds' 2000 experience poses a powerful argument.

        Here's this small-market ballclub — the cradle of professional baseball — compelled to capitulate in the middle of a pennant race because the cost of doing business has risen to ridiculous extremes.

Priced out of competition
        Neagle, the pitching ace approaching free agency, was traded for three unproven prospects and the University of Michigan's quarterback. Larkin — the homegrown, hometown team captain and All-Star shortstop — now commands so much in salary that his team drops out of the bidding $10 million short of his bottom line.

        Individually, both moves are easily defended, given the economic issues and the risks inherent in losing established players for future draft choices. Yet taken together, and presented to a disappointed public, the Reds' retrenchment suggests — take your pick — bait-and-switch, miscalculation or surrender.

        Baseball's Blue Ribbon Panel — so named, presumably, for its prize-winning insight into the obvious — released an 87-page report last week decrying the game's disparities and bemoaning its economic plight. Only three of the 30 teams — the Yankees, Cleveland Indians and Colorado Rockies — reported an operating profit in the five-year period that ended last season. The panel has suggested another increase in revenue sharing among rich and poor, and the owners (ominously) wonder if fewer teams might make things more workable, as the players steel themselves for another attempt at a salary cap and another strike.

        Because baseball's books are so often cooked, and its franchise sales continue to fetch ever-higher prices, it is possible to regard some of this saber-rattling as the empty threats of a sport that never ceases crying wolf.

Creedence to the fears
        Larkin adds legitimacy to the long faces and dire forecasts. Already, commentators are reading his possible departure as a symbol of what ails this industry. If an elite player who has played his whole career with his hometown team prices himself out of that market, what chance has that team of competing for talent with no local roots? What point is there to the regular season if it serves mainly as a shakedown cruise for those clubs with the biggest bankrolls?

        The larger questions raised by the Larkin impasse are the same ones baseball has been asking for a quarter-century. The answers remain elusive.

        Tim Sullivan welcomes your e-mail at tsullivan@enquirer.com.

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