Grant free agency for all.

• Author: Barrett, Wayne M.

MAKE ALL BASEBALL PLAYERS free agents. Let the owners move their franchises from city to city unimpeded. Let free enterprise reign. Let complete capitalism be the law of the land. Let entrepreneurship be the buzzword of the sports world. "Model workers of the future will possess rare, sought-after skills. They must be fiercely competitive, but able to work in creative teams," wrote novelist Kevin Baker in a New York Times op-ed piece. "They cannot expect lifetime employment with any one company but must be ready to move and to adopt new skills in mid-career. Their rewards are to be commensurate, constrained only by the market. Who better fits this description than a major league ballplayer?"

Instead, the National Pastime has showered us with an eight-month strike, a threatened lockout, replacement players, scabbaiting, a late arriving 1995 season, and socialist propaganda, including claims that: * Large-market franchises will buy up all the best players, leaving the smaller, less affluent markets at a competitive disadvantage. If that is so, why has major league baseball had exactly one repeat champ during the last 16 years?

Back in the late 1970s, New York Yankees' owner George Steinbrenner supplemented an already talented club with free-agent signees Reggie Jackson, Goose Gossage, and Catfish Hunter. The Bronx Bombers promptly won back-to-back World Series in 1977-78, a division title in 1980 (with the best record in baseball), and an American League pennant in 1981. Since then, Steinbrenner's policy of signing high-priced free agents has not changed, but the Yankees have gone 14 seasons without a championship.

In other words, crowns can not be bought simply by gobbling up the most expensive players--they have to be the needed ones, and they don't necessarily have to be expensive. When the players' strike canceled the latter part of the 1994 season, the Montreal Expos stood atop the National League East Division standings, trailed by the runner-up Atlanta Braves. The Braves have the highest payroll in the majors; the Expos, the second lowest.

* There needs to be revenue sharing, to level the playing field so that the small-market franchises can compete financially with the big-market teams. There are two major problems with this line of thought. First, a dollar isn't always a dollar, depending on where you live. For example, in general, someone who lives in New York will make more money than someone who does the same job but lives in...