SPORT: Bummer of '94

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If life were fair, if this were a just world, if the prayers of small boys (and large men) were answered, baseball fans would have turned on the late sports news last Friday night to hear something like this:

"Hey, guys and gals, this is Biff Bixley with the scores. Another great night for baseball. Dingers were flying everywhere. Thirty-two home runs, including a clout by Matt Williams of the Giants that looks like it went into orbit. Roll that tape! Is this ball juiced or what? With 44 taters, the Mattmeister has now moved ahead of Roger Maris' record pace. But the big news was in Cleveland, where Albert Belle crushed two homers, including this titanic upper-deck shot, to lead the Tribe to a 9-3 victory over the Brewers. For the first time since 1954, it's the -- yes! -- first-place Indians. Talk about a real-life Field of Dreams. It don't get any better than this."

But such August fantasies were not to be, not in Cleveland, Ohio, nor anywhere else in the green cathedrals of what Annie Savoy in Bull Durham called "the Church of Baseball." The 1994 major league season may have ended for good late Thursday night in Oakland, California, with the sadly appropriate third strike as A's pinch hitter Ernie Young whiffed on a fast ball from strikeout king Randy Johnson of the Seattle Mariners. With that final, futile swing, the national pastime went down for the count as the more than 750 members of the Major League Players Association began their long- dreaded strike, baseball's eighth work stoppage since 1972. Never before have the games been halted this late in the season. Never before have the October play-offs and the World Series been in such dire jeopardy. Never before has the naked power struggle between players and owners seemed so heedless and self-destructive.

And there is an unquantifiable loss. The pastoral joys of baseball, joys that no other sport can match, have dissipated. That final prestrike game at Oakland Coliseum last Thursday night can serve as a parable. A balmy summer night, small children with oversize mitts dreaming of foul balls, peanuts, Cracker Jack and the familiar Take Me Out to the Ball Game played during the seventh-inning stretch. But then it came time for the refrain "It's one! two! three strikes, you're out!" A chorus of boos rose from the stands.

Baseball teaches its disciples patience and resilience -- how else to survive a six-month season in which even great teams lose 60 games? But there were danger signs amid the 26,808 fans in Oakland that this time around both the players and the owners might be caught stealing the hearts of the faithful. Placards told part of the story: OWNERS AND PLAYERS: WHEN IS ENOUGH ENOUGH? And WILL PLAY FOR FOOD. But so did the number of black-and-silver N.F.L. Raider caps in the crowd. "Do the players play because of a love of the game or because of money?" asked 32-year-old Arthur Dover. "I think this strike shows the answer." Then, by way of warning to the players, he pointed to his Raider headgear and added, "We do have football coming up."