HOBOKEN, N.J. — Everything you could never learn about baseball and America inside an air-conditioned airport hotel could be discovered here on a field of dirt and weeds, where six boys and a girl sweat under a thick haze while swinging for the river and the downtown canyon that once delivered twin stairways to the clouds.

        The World Trade Center would've served as the backdrop for this urbanized Rockwellian scene Monday in a neighborhood dedicating its streets and parks to favorite son Frank Sinatra. The schoolkids used mitts and discarded tape as bases. They ran those bases below an empty Little League diamond complete with rotating sprinklers and the centerfield sign, “Never Forget. 9-11-2001. God Bless America.”

        They played in the shadows of an abandoned Maxwell House coffee factory on the disputed site of the country's first organized game, Elysian Fields, where a nearby plaque wedged between a liquor store and a bar marks the June 19, 1846, “match” between the Knickerbockers and the New York Nine and declares, “It is generally conceded that until this time the game was not seriously regarded.”

        The schoolkids playing ball hours before their big-league heroes postponed the setting of a strike date don't believe the game is being seriously regarded now. “The players are all for the money,” said 13-year-old Anthony Aleman. “They're so selfish. They should be playing for the reasons we're playing right now, for the fun of the game.”

        Only there's no fun to be had anymore, from the Little League World Series on up to another October Classic that might never come off. Eight years after its last strike, the game looks as bloodied as the fan who ended up with Barry Bonds' 600th home run ball.

        Baseball can't be regarded as the national pastime when “pastime” is defined as “something that serves to make time pass agreeably.” There's nothing agreeable about this sport, even in its pre-teen stages. If Little League used to be about winners getting pizza and losers getting ice cream, it's now about overzealous coaches getting suspended, overheated parents getting ejected and overaged kids getting manipulated.

        Part of the core problem, of course, is the TV takeover of the Little League tourney, turning regional finals into a March Madness on training wheels. Sixth-graders don't belong under the ESPN lights any more than millionaire ballplayers belong on a picket line.

        But those images best illustrate the disconnect between the game and its myths. As part of its “Baseball as America” exhibit, the Hall of Fame quotes scholar Gerald Early as saying our civilization will be remembered for the Constitution, jazz and baseball as “the three most beautifully designed things this culture has ever produced.” The Hall quotes Jacques Barzun, French-born historian, “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.”

        It's no longer true. Greed is ripping at the game's seams, steroid suspicions are fracturing the fans' faith, and baseball's leading authority figure, Bud Selig, stands accused of engaging in more conspiracies than Oliver Stone could count. One of those charges, fittingly enough, has been made by Mets co-owner Nelson Doubleday, great-nephew of the game's disputed founder.

        Here in Hoboken they won't hear any such Abner-in-Cooperstown talk. They also won't hear any claim that big leaguers have their priorities straight. “The game is supposed to be played for fun, not money,” said 11-year-old Meagan Fitzpatrick, the girl echoing Aleman and the other boys playing in mid-90s heat.

        Fitzpatrick said the local kids play baseball around dumpsters, trees, buildings and parked cars. Sometimes they hit tennis balls with such force they crack windshields. Sometimes they play hardball on the Hudson and aim for where the towers used to be.

        “If I was playing in my prime I'd want $2 million, that's it,” said Aleman. “A-Rod makes more in one year than people make in a lifetime. These players forget where they came from.”

        It's a shame those players couldn't have stepped out of their air-conditioned hotel in Chicago on Monday and found this scene: Seven kids kicking up rocks as they rounded the gloves and trash serving as bases, reminding a fan of what “pastime” truly means.

Reds' real test begins tonight at Cinergy Reds-Diamondbacks series preview In a surprise, players' union fails to set strike date Leaving the hammer on the table Players seem to realize that strike is scary option Pleasure fading from pastime Autopsy finds cocaine in Porter's system at time of death Hall of Famer Enos Slaughter dies Sosa homers for third straight day Astros 9, Cubs 6 Cardinals 10, Pirates 6 Notes from Monday's games Louisville 2, Columbus 1

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