Baseball Could Be Big Tease

This major league baseball season enters its second half assuming a lot, probably too much.

The Cleveland Indians, bound for their first postseason appearance in 40 years?

That’s assuming there is a postseason.

The Atlanta Braves, finally breaking through to win the World Series?

That’s assuming there will be a World Series.

The Angels, digging deep and paying for the extra starting pitching that ensures they will remain in the American League West race until the very end?

That’s assuming the American League West race reaches the very end.

Picture the 1995 stretch drive: Bill Bavasi gets on his knees, begs, pleads, promises to buy Mighty Duck season tickets if Angel ownership permits him to acquire a pitcher making more than the major league minimum. Ownership holds out for Bavasi agreeing to wear an “I Love Meeko” T-shirt for the remainder of the season. After much torturous deliberation, Bavasi submits and is allowed to trade for David Cone. Cone goes 6-1 with the Angels, the Angels open a 10 1/2-game lead in the AL West, ticker tape is ordered, champagne is imported . . . and on Sept. 30, the players union, convinced by Donald Fehr that its leverage will never again be this strong, votes to walk out.

Bavasi is left to stew throughout an idle October, “I signed Smith, I traded for Phillips and Cone, I gave Marcel all the players he needed and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”

Without a basic agreement, the “hot pennant races” Bud Selig continues to brag about are nothing more than tease and titillation. Consumer warning, baseball fans: The carpet can still be pulled at any minute. It could happen at any time. At a snap of the fingers, Hideo could be no more, Cal Ripken could be told to sit down, the Colorado Rockies could calm down and the Cleveland Indians could go winless for weeks.

On the bright side, Jose Offerman could stop throwing baseballs into concession stands.

“We’re not out the woods yet,” Montreal Manager Felipe Alou said after Tuesday’s All-Star Game. Alou mentioned the World Series--specifically, the prospect of putting one on this October.

“I believe we will,” Alou firmly predicted.

Alou believes there will be a World Series this year. Alert the media! Remake the front page! Call CNN!

Sure enough, there is a World Series on the schedule this fall, but that schedule is not worth the paper it is printed on, unless Hideo Nomo autographs it.

Shutting down this season after shutting down last season would be lunacy, idiocy, heresy, occupational suicide.

But that hasn’t stopped baseball before.

Selig wonders why The Baseball Network is disbanding and the All-Star Game drew its lowest Nielsen ratings since 1967.

Answer, in 25 words or less:

No one trusts baseball anymore.

What’s here today could be locked out tomorrow. Why should fans get excited, how can fans plan ahead when they aren’t sure whether their future includes World Series tickets or World Series pickets? The owners and the players did it once and they can do it again. For once, the hoary cliche is the absolute truth: We’re taking this season one game at a time.

One by one, though, the chapters do add up, and what we have before us now are a few stories so compelling that only the words “labor” and “strife” can louse them up.

In Cleveland, the Indians are attaining atonement for 40 pennantless, mostly hopeless seasons all at once, with a near-.700 winning percentage and the most relentless batting order since the Big Red Machine. Some have said better than the mid-’70s Reds, but you be the judge: Jim Thome or Pete Rose? Paul Sorrento or Tony Perez? Omar Vizquel or Dave Concepcion? Tony Pena or Johnny Bench? Those Reds had one other advantage. They played a whole season.

In Los Angeles, Nomo has become the best and brightest news since Fernando Valenzuela. He seems destined to become the Dodgers’ fourth consecutive rookie of the year and beyond that, who knows? Sayonara Young, too?

In Baltimore, Ripken’s streak hopes to eclipse Lou Gehrig’s before the next work stoppage hits. Finish line: Sept. 6, Camden Yards, against the Angels. Now we know another reason for Gehrig’s “I’m the luckiest man in the world” speech. He suspected, 55 years down the line, Selig was coming.

In Detroit, Sparky Anderson, the manager who walked away when the replacement players walked on, has a group of replaceable parts contending in the AL East. Bob Higginson, Danny Bautista, John Flaherty, Felipe Lira, Brian Bohanon and three games back at the break? Four and a half games ahead of the Yankees? See what happens when they let them play these games.

In Denver, a third-year expansion team leads its division by five games over the Dodgers and the Giants, suggesting that, yes, Ducks, it can be done.

And in Anaheim, known in 1995 as Career Years Here, Chili Davis is contending for a batting championship, Jim Edmonds is contending for an RBI championship, Gary DiSarcina is hitting .320, J.T. Snow is on an 110-RBI pace, Shawn Boskie is 6-2 and the Angels are tied for first.

When will it all end?

The Angels are hoping for Oct. 1, the last official date on the regular-season schedule. And nothing sooner.