FAN APATHY TOWARD MLB SHOULD BE PITY.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

In the next week, we'll find out a lot about the negotiations between players and owners, aimed at preventing baseball's ninth strike or lockout in 30 years and keeping the sport's work-stoppage-per-season batting average below .300.

Players might run the count to 3-and-2 on Monday when their leaders meet to - perhaps - set a date for a threatened strike. Although club owners' representatives lately have described themselves as ``cautiously optimistic'' about a settlement after a union concession of sorts on steroids testing, we'll see how optimistic everybody feels when - and this had better happen sometime soon - they get down to the brass tacks of money issues.

One thing we'll find out is whether we, the fans, can move beyond the perception that generations of labor strife are the product of players' greed and owners' conniving.

What stands in the way of peace this time, though, is less a matter of the character of the two sides than of their intelligence.

Raise your hand if you're confident these guys, even if they realize the stakes are high, suddenly are sharp enough to solve the many interlocking issues that threaten the season.

It's not that they're dumb, per se. Most of the owners got good grades in business school. The players remember to put on their batting helmets. It's just that a kind of collective stupidity seems to take over when they go face to face over a bargaining table.

My feeling toward baseball's squabbling millionaires is shifting from anger to pity.

How can you get mad at people who aren't smart enough to keep from jabbing themselves with sharp objects, like strikes and lockouts?

These guys appear to be clever enough to know they have to get it right this time. And not quite clever enough to know how. Look at the players' drug-testing proposal. It's designed to sweep the problem under the rug. Naturally, the owners greeted the proposal as ``progress.''

Maybe they all should give up their chairs at the table and let pro football's and basketball's players and owners carry on the talks for them.

How could baseball, with its ears open and brain switched on, fail to notice that all the talk about steroids and strikes is spoiling the season whether or not there turns out to be a strike?

Maybe it noticed that the festivity Friday before and after Barry Bonds' 600th home run felt strained, obligatory. Maybe it grasped why people might not be thrilled and amazed anymore by Bonds' snowballing numbers.

One problem is that this is getting to be old-hat. Bonds hit his 500th just last season. As milestones go, 600 looks like a blur at the side of the road. Wake us when Bonds gets to 660 (matching Willie Mays) or 700 (closing in on Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron).

But there are more serious problems clouding the air through which Bonds propels baseballs, as noted by the San Francisco Chronicle's Bruce Jenkins, who was following the countdown to 600: ``... A general state of apathy over inflated statistics, steroid issues, Bonds' disdain for the public and fears that a labor crisis will send the whole season over Niagara Falls like a misguided squirrel.''

You know fans who feel that way. You probably are fans who feel that way.

Fans like an e-mailer named Sharon, who said her loyalty as a ``true blue Dodgers fan'' had begun to match or surpass her husband's and sons'.

``Now, however, with the impending strike, that loyalty is being tested,'' she wrote. ``It's time for all baseball fans to get together, pick a date and boycott all games that particular day.''

This column is on record as doubting that, even if another strike or lockout occurs, fans would stay away from ballparks for long after they reopen.

The game itself is too compelling. Fans can, and should, celebrate The Game whether or not they have any use for the players' union or the team owners. Do shoppers deny themselves bananas and laundry detergent after a grocers' strike? Why should baseball fans deny themselves entertainment after a baseball strike?

In fact, if the trouble with the players and owners isn't greed and dishonesty but plain old stupidity, then it would be downright mean of fans to try to punish them for failing to negotiate an agreement.

When you think about it, this is no time for fans to boycott baseball. Considering who's in charge, it needs us more than ever.