Major league deals.

You'd think they were guys in a fantasy sports league, or kids swapping baseball trading cards, as we did on rainy summer afternoons many, many years ago. But these were the multi-millionaires of Knight Ridder, Gannett and Dean Singleton's MediaNews group, and they were playing with lives and livelihoods of human beings.

Like kids in a Monopoly game, Knight Ridder, Gannett and MediaNews made a three-cornered trade. Knight Ridder sold the Detroit Free Press to Gannett, and Gannett turned around and sold the Detroit News to MediaNews, whose prime newspaper property is the Denver Post.

Then Gannett swapped the Idaho Statesman in Boise, the Olympia (Wash.) Olympian and the Bellingham (Wash.) Herald to Knight Ridder for the Tallahassee Democrat and cash. The only thing missing was the "paper to be named later."

While all sides called the swap a benefit for everyone, as baseball teams do, it looks as if Gannett came out the best. It received Detroit, the major city in the deal, giving up the smaller News (218,000 circulation) for the dominant Free Press (347,000).

In addition, Gannett will receive a larger share of the joint operating agreement, about three-fourths instead of the half it got from Knight Ridder. And the News will drop its Sunday paper, leaving the Free Press a monopoly on what probably is the most profitable day in terms of both circulation and advertising.

Polk Laffoon, a Knight Ridder spokesman, told The New York Times that while the Idaho and Washington papers had smaller circulation than the Free Press, "the cash flow is better."

Major shuffling of top editors at all the newspapers is in progress.