GRIFFEY HOLDING MARINERS HOSTAGE.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

Any day now the Seattle Mariners ought to be receiving Ken Griffey's updated Christmas wish list. Unless he decided to bypass Pat Gillick altogether and send the note straight to Kris Kringle, c/o the North Pole.

This Kringle fellow, after all, has made a long and storied career of filling even the most outrageous requests.

We can imagine Griffey sitting down earlier this week, after nixing the Mariners' proposed trade of the All-Star outfielder to the New York Mets, to clarify his desires, much like the child who writes a follow-up letter to Santa to make sure the old guy is clear it's the Pokemon Pinball video game he covets, not Pokemon Snap.

Why, Griffey's letter probably is in some post office somewhere right now, buried in a pile of Christmas cards. It ought to stick out amid all the brightly colored envelopes, on account of all the cut-out letters used to spell out the address.

Isn't that how ransom notes usually come packaged?

Make no mistake about it: Griffey is holding the Mariners hostage.

If it was a World Series ring he was after, or a work address closer to his family's Orlando home, he would have pumped his fists at the chance to play for the Mets, who were on Griffey's original list of 10 teams he'd play for.

The deal that Gillick, the Seattle general manager, was close to consummating was advantageous all around: Griffey would have been freed from the prison Seattle has become to him; the Mariners, having lost the franchise player in whom they've invested 11 years, would have walked away with three nice parting gifts in Armando Benitez, Octavio Dotel and Roger Cedeno; and the Mets, with Griffey, would have wrested Gotham's attention away from the reigning World Series champion Yankees, if only for a New York minute.

Now, of course, Griffey has whittled his choice of teams he'll play for to one - Cincinnati, thereby painting Gillick into an impossibly tight corner. Never mind getting Pokey Reese; let Gillick try to ply Scott Williamson or a No. 1 draft pick out of Reds general manager Jim Bowden now that Bowden knows there's no other market for Griffey.

It's quite a squeeze play Griffey and his agent Brian Goldberg are trying to pull off.

Sadly, they're not alone. Everywhere you look in major-league baseball these days, people are ripping pages from the Gotti Family book of negotiating.

MLB? These days it might as well stand for Major League Blackmailers.

In L.A. we had Kevin Malone bribing the Cubs with Ismael Valdes in order to rid the Dodgers of Eric Young.

And agent Scott Boras continues to hold the Dodgers for a princely ransom because they signed Adrian Beltre out of the Dominican Republic before his 16th birthday. It says here Beltre's birthdate never would have become an issue if he had hit .175 with five home runs and 150 strikeouts this past season, his first full one in the majors.

Funny how Boras develops a conscience at the same time a market is developing for Beltre's bat.

Then there's baseball commissioner Bud Selig, who held the Dodgers hostage throughout the winter meetings by failing to rule on Beltre's request to become a free agent. He effectively tied the Dodgers' hands. How were they supposed to proceed without knowing if they were going to lose their third baseman or be obligated to re-sign him at considerably more than the $220,000 he made last season?

Selig has said he's waiting to make his ruling until after he sees Sandy Alderson's report on Le Affaire Adrian. Given that baseball's executive vice president has had almost two months to collect his information, all we can say is his investigation better be as thorough as the Dowd report.

Anything less will be suspicious.

Indeed, it's a tossup as to which is more troubling; Boras' timing on Birthdategate or Selig playing Solomon in the affairs of one National League team when he has kin operating a rival National League team.

With a commissioner like that, who needs collusion?

The truth is, baseball has more problems than the bats of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa can fix.

Baseball doesn't need a commissioner, it needs an independent counsel. We'll take Ken Starr over Selig any day.

There's something terribly wrong when a superstar like Griffey can hold the Mariners hostage and an agent like Boras can hold the Dodgers for ransom and players and management are so busy bickering back and forth they forget all about the fans caught in the middle.

They'll all be sorry, eventually. Because the fans, they'll find out, are nobody's pawn.

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Photo

Photo: (color) Seattle All-Star Ken Griffey nixed a trade with the New York Mets and is expected to play his final season with the Mariners next year.

Elaine Thompson/Associated Press