COMMENTARY : BASEBALL HAS LOST SOME PEOPLE FOR GOOD.

Byline: Jim Litke Associated Press 

Some people just are not coming back to baseball.

Oh, some people are coming back - in some places. Colorado. Cleveland. Baltimore. Places like that.

Places with new ballparks. Places that might get new ballparks. Quirky places. Places no longer ruled by dictators named Marge. Places with ivy on the walls. And the old standby: Places with the feel of a real Series contender.

But that's about it.

A look at attendance figures through last weekend shows baseball drawing an average crowd of 26,074. That's 5 percent more people this year than last. But it's 15 percent fewer than two years ago, when the players and owners stopped the actual games, took the bats and balls, and liberally applied them to each other's heads.

The world is full of all kinds of people. Some will see this particular glass as one-third full; others as two-thirds empty. The guys in charge would see the 5 percent surge and they'd be right. The cynics would see the 15 percent who haven't come back and they'd be right, too. And as soon as either one started talking about it, the rest of us would go see if anything else was on TV. That's another strike baseball has against it: It requires an attention span.

It used to be most summers that if you took the game's pulse on the Fourth of July, you got a strong beat. Summer is sizzling by then, everywhere. Kids are out of school, everywhere - even in New York. Evenings are a great time to be outdoors. And this summer, baseball has a little more going for it than most of the recent ones.

Nobody is talking labor. The owners and players put some distance between them. Or at least quit fighting in public. TV ratings are holding their own, even compared to prestrike levels two years ago. ESPN has a funny string of commercials going. The Fox network bought in. Just last week, Sports Illustrated finally ran out of Michael Jordan pictures to run on the cover and put a baseball player, Alex Rodriguez, on it instead. With this headline: ``Baseball Heats Up.''

Still, it better heat up fast. In two weeks, the Olympics begin in Atlanta, and baseball's grip on the remote, already flimsy, will be almost nonexistent during prime time. And that's not the only thing up against it. There are reruns of ``The Simpsons.'' And ``Baywatch.'' CNN. PBS. Computers. Nintendo (the company that brings you the Seattle Mariners). Super Nintendo. Sega. The many tentacles of Disney (the same company that will soon bring you the Anaheim Angels). Soccer. And so on.

Though cheaper than some of its competitors, baseball is no longer cheap. That accounts for some of the empty seats. Baseball no longer seems so easy to pass on. That accounts for some more of the empty seats. It was in a down cycle, even before the strike. But it didn't help. Not staging the World Series broke the force of habit, reminded us that the America that existed when baseball was king doesn't exist any more.

The nation doesn't have a single pastime any more, either. Or even the luxury of separate seasons. They blend together, calling attention to themselves in no fixed order. Michael Irvin catching a touchdown pass in the Super Bowl is a story in January. Getting caught in a motel room with drugs and exotic dancers in March is a bigger story. When a cop is arrested in June for trying to get Irvin killed, it's an even bigger story. The guys who own the teams hold on until the stories get so big - but no bigger.

Right now, football and basketball have an edge on the field. Hockey is closing the gap. They're faster than baseball, faster-paced, faster to provide gratification, louder, more confrontational. Those aren't universally better things. Far from it. But they more closely resemble the rest of American life now.

What should baseball do?

Hang on. This latest round of attendance figures suggests it has a few things - other than wayward stars - to sell.

Having a new ballpark helps. It makes the game seem more intimate, easier to explain. Even the robber barons understand that much. That's why they want to build only small ballparks with your tax dollars now. Nice weather, fireworks, cap night, a decent team filled with accommodating players, a pennant race - having any or all of them helps, too.

Still, some people just are not coming back to baseball. The truth is they're probably gone for good.