Woes of baseball found in root of one word: Greed. (Commentary).

AS a kid, I worked in a baseball stadium. I arrived hours be fore the game. I saw the sprinklers watering the field. I saw the first players meander out for their stretches.

It never occurred to me, watching this gentle, orderly process, that the game of baseball could one day become a complete and unholy mess. But it has. Oscar Madison's laundry basket is neater than this.

You had an All-Star Game that ended in a tie, because the managers refused to ask multimillionaire pitchers to work more than two innings. You had a commissioner saying two of his franchises might lack enough money to last the season. You had players bristling at the idea of drug tests, even as fans told pollsters they believed their heroes were juiced.

And, oh yeah, the threat of a strike.

Mike Tyson doesn't have stretches that bad. Yet in the end, when all the culprits are lined against the wall, baseball can only point to the face in the mirror.

Its name is Greed.

Let's begin with money. The reason so many teams are in trouble is because they can't do enough business to cover payrolls. The reason their payrolls are so high is because, players demand astronomical salaries. Players demand those salaries is because certain owners are too greedy to resist paying them. The reason certain owners can afford to pay them is that they're too greedy to share money they get from local TV and other sources. And the only thing that would keep these greedy owners in check, a salary cap, doesn't exist, because the players are too greedy to agree to one.

You'll notice that the word "fan" does not appear in that circle.

Now, under normal free-market circumstances, the richest would survive, they would cat the others, form multinational conglomerates, and we would have two or three people owning all the teams. So we are told it would be bad if all the teams were owned by a small group. And we are told it would be bad if 30 cities didn't each have a franchise.

Then we are told that, even though the business stinks, any time an owner wants to sell, there's another rich fool willing to shell out hundreds of millions to get into the club.

Meanwhile, as the owners fight over their still-closed books, the players are convinced they are gods on earth. They are not here to cater to the mortal fools who cheer them. They're here for their own legends.

And so if one starts to pull away from the pack, others want to catch up. If one swallows a questionable supplement, or sticks himself with steroids, others do the same. Never mind that children wishing to be like their heroes might endanger themselves in the process. Never mind that a game won by outside substances is not a fair game.

Finally, the fans want only to see a game. And the other week in Milwaukee, the game was called off after 11 innings. The reason: They didn't want to "overwork" the pitchers.

Translation: Our "investments" are more vital than your interest.

Pretty soon, watching baseball won't be much different than watching the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. People yell and scream and win and lose there, too.

But it doesn't resemble the game I remember. They say baseball is a game rich in tradition. I say it's becoming a game of memories.

Mitch Albom is the author of the bestseller "Tuesdays With Morrie."