OWNERS' GREED TAKING ITS TOLL ACROSS BOARD.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

The Florida Marlins and Mighty Ducks are throwing lavish parties today, proving that in the world of professional sports there are no hardship cases, just hardfisted causes.

The Marlins, tied with the Atlanta Braves in their best-of-seven NL Championship Series, will host Game 3 at Pro Player Stadium at 5:07 p.m. A rare full house of 49,000 is expected to witness the first NLCS game in South Florida in the Marlins' five-year history.

For those guests needing directions - there might be more than a few, given the Marlins averaged less than 30,000 at home during the regular season - the stadium is easy to find. It's the concrete structure off the Florida Turnpike with the ``For Sale'' sign posted in the front. Find a parking spot, present your ticket to the attendant at the gate, take your seat and enjoy. Just don't get too comfortable.

Marlins owner H. Wayne Huizenga is like an overbearing neighbor who keeps threatening to sell his property unless everybody chips in to repair his roof and help defray his costs for a gaudy add-on.

He threatened to move his NHL franchise two years ago and ended up with a posh home in the suburbs that surely will be the envy of the league once it opens next fall.

Ahhh, the NHL, or as it has come to be known in recent weeks, ``The National Holdout League.''

As the Marlins game is winding down, the anticipation and amp levels will be maxing out inside the Pond, where the Mighty Ducks will be playing their first meaningful home game since succumbing to Detroit in two overtimes in the fourth game of their second-round playoff series in May.

The Ducks will be without half their Magic Wingdom, same as they were in a two-game season-opening split against Vancouver in Japan.

Paul Kariya, who along with Teemu Selanne forms arguably the most exciting tag team in hockey, hasn't been seen or heard from since he won his second consecutive Lady Byng trophy and was named the runner-up in league MVP voting at the NHL Awards show in June.

It has been four months since his contract expired and one year since the Ducks went 1-8-2 with Kariya sidelined with an abdominal injury. Time enough, you would think, to pinpoint the left winger's worth.

Kariya's league-leading 10 game-winning goals suggest he singlehandedly added W's to the team's record. The attendance figures imply he alone did not put fannies in the seats; the Ducks sold out three of their first four home games last fall when Kariya was injured.

We suspect fans, however disgruntled, are resigned to going to the games after having spent the equivalent of five Friday night movie tickets for each seat. Or maybe they'll simply want to demonstrate the game is bigger than any one player.

With every passing day what once was unthinkable becomes more plausible; that the only time we'll see Kariya this year is during his two-week Olympic stint with Team Canada.

The pity for Ducks season-ticket holders is the New York Rangers went after agent Don Baizley's other high-ticket player, Joe Sakic, instead of Kariya. Ducks president Tony Tavares fended off would-be suitors for Kariya by making it abundantly clear the Ducks would match any offer sheet extended to the player.

The Ducks were willing to match whatever the market would bear but have steadfastly refused to dive into a bullish market, never mind that in Kariya they would seem to have a low-risk, high-yield investment.

The sporting public might be more sympathetic to Tavares' warnings of fiscal responsibility now or an epic crash later if some professional sports owners didn't cry out of both sides of their mouths.

Huizenga preyed on South Florida's deep affinity with its hockey team to cut a sweetheart deal for himself that included a public stock offering, then turned his attention to the Marlins.

He spent $89 million to upgrade the team during the offseason and watched average attendance climb 32 percent, to 29,525, in the first half of the season before announcing in June he was putting the Marlins up for sale.

His reasoning was the team was as draining as South Florida's humidity, with losses this season alone expected to reach $30 million.

The boutique and cafe owners in Huizenga's home county of Broward - from which the Marlins draw a sizable portion of their fan base - could have told him about the long, sticky summers when the population and profits shrink perceptibly.

The local weatherman could have reminded him of the daily downpours that proceed with little regard as to whether it's a game day, tweaking baseball's pastoral order and testing fans' patience.

Even taking into account the state of South Florida in the summer, Huizenga's numbers seemed unseasonably gloomy. And indeed, it later came out that some of the money Huizenga was losing was, in effect, going from one of his trouser pockets into another.

That's what happens when the team owner also owns the stadium where the team plays and 70 percent of the cable channel that broadcasts the team's games.

Synergy, you get the feeling, is more magical than Kariya's stick or Gary Sheffield's bat. It can turn a home into a palace and an empire into individual nation states. It can make logic disappear.