Baseball’s Rolling the Dice Again

Recently, my son discovered Monopoly. We played a few games. Soon, he got serious and unearthed something called “The Monopoly Companion� at the library.

Winning strategies from world champions. Tips sheets on which properties had the best pay-off ratios. How to create a housing shortage. When to stay in jail. How to pretend you’re a nice person so that others in the game will be duped into trading with you.

Nothing has changed my view of a favorite amusement so much since baseball invented free agency. No matter how wonderful a game, you can always turn it into a job if you take it seriously enough. Whatever happened to rolling the dice and hoping you landed on Boardwalk?

In baseball, you can’t just roll the dice between April and October anymore. Instead, you can be compulsive about the sport 12 months a year. Understanding hot stove league baseball isn’t so hard these days. Not if you’re good at three-dimensional checkers. Sometimes, the growing complexity of this once simple game seems like a multiplication of the fun. But sometimes you want to scream, “Enough already.�

For example, the Cleveland Indians and Florida Marlins played in the World Series a few weeks ago. Name their lineups now.

If you can, you are certifiable. It’s possible no one on earth can name these clubs’ Opening Day lineups. Because these teams don’t exist anymore. Blink and they’re gone. That’s modern baseball.

Matt Williams, Marquis Grissom, Tony Fernandez, Bip Roberts and Orel Hershiser started Game One of the Series for the Indians. They’re history. So are Brian Anderson and Jeff Juden. Through multifarious three-way trades, free agent signings and expansion team draftings, the Indians now have Kenny Lofton, Travis Fryman, Dwight Gooden, Ben McDonald, Steve Karsay and, probably, several other people, too.

Don’t get too attached to any of them. Think of Jacobs Field as a bus terminal.

As for the Marlins, they’ve been blown up. Kevin Brown, the team ace, was traded for three minor leaguers Monday. Gotta lower that payroll if you’re gonna sell those world champions. It’s not just Moises Alou, Robb Nen, Jeff Conine, Devon White, Jim Eisenreich, and, soon, Dutch Daulton, who won’t be back. Even the pitching coach and bench coach have hit the trail. Last one out return the movie rentals.

It’s taken 20 years, but baseball has moved into the totally fluid world of utter personnel flux. General managers and owners now know that, each winter, they can act like a bunch of hyperactive 11-year-olds sitting around a game board screaming, “I’ll give you Park Place, Water Works and $1,000 for New York Avenue and Marvin Gardens.�

Off-season baseball is really just one big swapfest among grown-up rotisserie geeks. For example, say you have a salary slot for a player who’s in the three-years-for-$24 million category. Andres Galarraga, Darryl Kile and Lofton all fit that description. So, the Big Cat went from Colorado to Atlanta, while Lofton left Atlanta for Cleveland, which had plenty of cash to spend because Williams was gone. The Rockies then signed Kile away from Houston. Everybody got whole. Except the Astros. Now they have to decide: save money or sign some of the leftover free agents, such as Rod Beck and Cecil Fielder.

Got it?

Of course you don’t.

Luckily for baseball, while almost nobody cares about all 30 teams, nearly everybody cares about their own team.

Baseball is still the greatest soap opera in sports. That’s what keeps reviving the game. It has the most detail, the most vivid characters and, even in the off-season, the most continuous “action.� Counting spring training and the postseason, baseball can grab your attention more than 250 days a year.

The trick these days is not to allow it to become an obsession. Keep your focus small. Enjoy what appeals to you. Ignore the rest. Wait until next season to figure out who the Jays added and who was subtracted. They’ll take the field soon enough. Then take a fresh mental picture. No, it won’t be ‘97’s team. But try not to get grouchy.

As Red Sox fans have recently learned, sometimes it takes a year to find out what really happened. Boston didn’t simply lose Roger Clemens to free agency last winter. The board game that baseball has become is considerably more complex than that.

The Red Sox actually swapped Clemens for Pedro Martinez--this season’s National League Cy Young winner. It took the Boston front office a year to find the proper pitcher on whom to bestow the money made available when Clemens departed. Martinez is nine years younger.

Baseball’s game of Monopoly has one indisputably serious problem. It’s anti-monopolistic. There’s far too much competition to suit the capitalist owners. No sooner did the sport expand than the new Arizona Diamondbacks redefined the off-season market by giving modestly gifted shortstop Jay Bell $34 million for five years.

“Some of these signings defy description,� huffed Yankees owner George Steinbrenner last week. And that was before Boston came to terms with Martinez--for $75 million. Of course, maybe the Red Sox think they can pay him with orange $500 bills.