ARE THE GLORY DAYS OF BASEBALL HISTORY?

Byline: Bob Ryan Boston Globe

There are zero tickets available to the general public in Cleveland for the entire baseball season. They sell out every day and every night in Denver. They sell more than 95 percent of the available tickets in Baltimore.

Baseball must be healthy.

Year after year, they beg people to come out in Pittsburgh. Cincinnati has had a catastrophic falloff in attendance since the glory days of the mid-'70s, and we can't blame it all on Marge. They once drew 3 million in Dodger Stadium simply by printing the schedule. No longer. Milwaukee? Scary.

Baseball must be mortally ill.

Every survey seeking to identify the best-known or most recognizable athletes in America reveals the same thing: namely, that contemporary baseball stars are simply not ``in'' with the general public. If I'm not mistaken, Nolan Ryan remains the most respected and liked baseball figure, according to the people who make their living analyzing our collective tastes.

The face of baseball should be a smiling Ken Griffey, bounding up after his Paul Revere ride around the bases to win the 1995 playoff series against the Yankees. It's not. The public face of baseball was perfectly captured by New York Daily News photographer Howard Simmons Tuesday. If you have access to the Wednesday Daily News, grab it. Then turn to Page 60.

There, in all his malevolent infamy, is the saddest human being in baseball. It is Albert Belle, the misanthrope of the would-be national pastime. He is standing next to the batting cage. His right hand is resting on the side of the cage. His left hand is gripping a bat. He is staring over his left shoulder, and, friends, he ain't smiling. He is glaring at Mr. Simmons - and all of Us - with a vicious, menacing, terrifying look. It captures his world view far more than any of our words ever could.

Yet I'm not sure what it means in the Big Scheme. I'm not sure how important it is that baseball's stars make kissy-face with the public. It can't hurt. That's pretty obvious. But even if every baseball player had the effervescent joie de vivre of a Kirby Puckett and the Abe Lincoln-like dignity of a Cal Ripken, would that change things?

Look at the converse. Albert Belle is Albert Belle, but the fans in Cleveland are clearly looking past his sad persona. They choose to focus on his homers and runs batted in, and they now give him a standing ovation just for emerging from the dugout. Meanwhile, is anyone in Denver coming out to Coors Field because he or she thinks, oh, let's say Andres Galarraga, is a nice guy?

The truth is that I'm very confused. I honestly don't know what the true state of baseball is. If baseball is as passe as the doomsayers claim, how do we account for the crowds in Cleveland, Denver and Boston?

From 1900 to 1960, there is no question that baseball was America's favorite sport. Baseball was a frame of reference for a phenomenal percentage of our citizens. Simply consider how much the sport has contributed to the language.

``I'll take a rain check on that.''

``He can't get to first base.''

``I had two strikes on me before I even started.''

But actual game attendances were shockingly low compared to our contemporary totals. Even making allowances for day baseball gates, not as many people went to games as you might think. In the four first-place seasons of 1955-58, for example, the top Yankee attendance was 1,497,134 in 1957.

Now anyone doing a million-four gets out the crying towel.

There are many cosmetic things baseball should do in hopes of improving its image and, presumably, its clout with the public. Management and Labor should enact a Basic Agreement. The Players Association should stop being an enabler for the Albert Belles of the world and should start demanding that its members treat both media folk and the fans like fellow human beings.

And game times are a serious, serious problem.

There are too many useless, look-how-cerebral-I-am pitching changes made by me-too managers. There are too many pitchers waiting to pitch while batters fiddle and diddle outside the box. There is the well-documented rape of the strike zone. Baseball Inc. doesn't understand that the average person would rather get home at 10 or 10:30 p.m. than at midnight or 1 a.m., and that this general dawdling affects their outlook on the game.

I think you can eventually win back some of the fans lost through the strike and the overall drift of the game by addressing the above items, but I still don't know if that would be enough to ensure the healthy future of the game. Something is stirring out there that places baseball in jeopardy.

Today's kids are markedly different from any other generation born in this century. Theirs is a world of bam-bam, sensual assault. They inhabit a universe of video games and action we elders simply cannot grasp. Baseball is a slow game, a thinking game, a compare-what's-happening-today-with-went-on-50-years-ago game. Baseball is a game of anticipation and discussion.

To be a serious baseball fan is to care about the Babe Ruth/Roger Maris 154/162-game controversy. It's to know that Kiki Cuyler's real name was Hazen. It's to know that you never, ever threw a change-up to Mickey Rivers. It's to wake up on a June morning in 1996, look at the gargantuan partial season numbers of a Jeff Bagwell or, yes, an Albert Belle, and realize that in this one sense, it is indeed 1936 all over again, only with air conditioning and microwaves.

I truly worry about this game. Oh, we'll be fine in 1996 and 2006. What I can foresee is the day when Shaughnessy, Gammons and I are sitting in a special wing of the Cooperstown Rest Home entitled Baseball Forever. It will be just the three of us, just sitting around waiting for Bob Costas to finish up his final NBC assignment at X Games XXXIV before he joins us.

OK, kids, tell me I'm wrong. Is there room in your lives for a game that asks you to slow down and think?