What you see pictured above (snapped by me, with my cameraphone in Times Square) is but one outcropping of an epidemic that’s overtaken New York City: The spread of knockoff baseball caps emblazoned with “NY” logos, designed to look just enough like official Yankees or Mets gear to pass the glance test.

Seriously, I’ve seen these hats all over the place — subways, on the street, in clubs… Frankly, I’d be embarrassed to be seen wearing one. They’re downright shoddy-looking.

I’m guessing the only reason Major League Baseball (and any other sports league) isn’t filing infringement lawsuits is that those chunky-fonted logos are just distinguishable enough to not be considered credible copies of their obvious inspirations. But come on — there’s no mistaking their appeal, funky colors and patterns aside. They’re faux team colors for $5 off the street, versus the $20-and-up for the real deal.

They’re no longer in Montreal, but the Washington Nationals are still saddled with a familiar problem: Anemic attendance, despite a spanking-new stadium.

Since we can’t blame a hockey-distracted populace this time around — or some sort of franchise curse — a trickle-down effect in DC’s political mechanics may be to blame for all the empty seats, particularly the highly-visible ones:

Then Jack Abramoff tried to buy off all of Washington. New lobbying laws soon followed, and now the maximum gift given to a lawmaker cannot exceed $50. Which means all the [behind home-plate] Presidential tickets – $325 for single-game ones, $335 on Saturday and $400 for the front row, all more than the best seat at Yankee Stadium, which goes for $250 – that should have gone from lobbyist to Congressman to hard-working staffer no longer exist, and the market won’t get any hotter unless the Nationals do, too.

So cleaner politics means bad business for the nation’s (alleged) pasttime in the nation’s capital. Emblematic of the times, no?

Here’s an interesting Chicago sports alliance: The MLB White Sox and NHL Blackhawks will be cross-promoting each other in their barns during 2008-2009, with offers including ticket sales and other baseball/hockey merchandising.

What makes this especially noteworthy is the speculation around Chicago hosting a future outdoor National Hockey League game, ala the 2008 Winter Classic in Buffalo. This development could be seen as the initial groundwork leading to U.S. Cellular Field (nee New Comiskey Park) being the site of an outdoor ‘Hawks game in a couple of years.

While Soldier Field might seem like the most iconic choice for an ice-over, I said before that a baseball-stadium option might have more of an inside track in Chi-town:

[Blackhawks president John] McDonough, of course, just landed in Blackhawkland after a lengthy executive career with the Chicago Cubs. So I guess it’s natural that he’d tap the two area baseball stadiums as first choice, because they and their overseers are known quanitities to McDonough.

Networking overrides all. The other advantage is the avoidance of potential conflicts with any Bears playoff dates.

Does this mean Chicago will get its Winter Classic (rightly renamed “Windy City Classic”) in the 2008-09 NHL season? I doubt it. The New York option, with the opportunity to stage an outdoor game in Yankee Stadium just before its demolition, is too sweet for the league to pass up. But I’m sure something could be set up for the ‘Hawks to take their turn in 2009-2010.

Baseball’s Washington Nationals are starting this season in brand-spanking-new Nationals Park — and in this age of stadium naming rights, that kind of default facility name is bad news.

If, for no other reason, the depreciative effect:

Had a deal been in place already, the corporate sponsor would be identified with the park from its first day of existence — just as CitiBank will be identified with the New York Mets’ still-to-come Citi Field, just as telecommunications behemoth MCI was linked to Washington’s MCI Center two years before it opened. Some experts believe a relationship that begins on Opening Day — or, in some cases, years in advance — means the fan base will permanently link the corporation with the team.

“With every day that passes once the ballpark is open, the value of that rights deal could very well decrease,” said David Carter, the executive director of the University of Southern California’s Sports Business Institute. “There’s so much upfront media attention and buzz, and that impacts how the name would be received by the public… The opening weekend is a tremendous amount of positive publicity, and that could have a halo effect to a sponsor if one was in place.”

It’s strange to think that a phantom facility is more valuable, marketing-wise, than an already-existing brick-and-mortar structure. But it’s true, and I’ve noted that mindshare has an awful lot to do with it:

The chief reason why the naming-rights prices are super-sizing is that they’re being applied to brand-spanking-new buildings. That’s key. Instead of slapping a new name onto an old building — that comes with an entrenched name and tradition that, sometimes, never gets completely supplanted — the naming-rights holder gets virgin territory. So there’s no chance of Prudential Center being referred to by its “old” name, because there is no old name for the stubborn voices to hang onto.

In a way, things have come full-circle in the stadium naming game: Corporate branding of an events edifice has gone from a crass rarity to an essential element. And as the DC situation illustrates, it’s now even a top-of-list priority.

The Blackhawks may be the next National Hockey League team to host an outdoor game, and that’s just one of the ideas in store for an iced-over Soldier Field:

[Park District Supt. Timothy] Mitchell said the district would like the hockey plan to include a college contest and a way to allow people to use the rink for pleasure skating in a week-long event.

“We think there would be a great interest in citizens skating inside Soldier Field between the colonnades,” said Mitchell.

A practical Windy City winter wonderland. Hopefully the Bears will cooperate by tanking their season and avoiding the NFL playoffs.

Interesting reaction from the Blackhawks’ new brass:

But Blackhawks president John McDonough said discussions about Soldier Field have “been informal on a what-if basis,” adding, “I have friends at all of the venues: Wrigley, U.S. Cellular. I think they’d all like to take a run at it.”

McDonough, of course, just landed in Blackhawkland after a lengthy executive career with the Chicago Cubs. So I guess it’s natural that he’d tap the two area baseball stadiums as first choice, because they and their overseers are known quanitities to McDonough.

One of the odder tangents to emerge from the Mitchell Report: An ex-minor league pitcher is mulling a class-action lawsuit against Major League Baseball on behalf of all the farmhands who didn’t get a shot at the big show thanks to juiced-up work culture:

“If everybody was playing on the same level playing field, Rich would say, ‘OK, you beat me,’” says Hartmann’s attorney Michael Salomon. “But this is not right.”

Hartmann says several former teammates have agreed to join the lawsuit if it is filed, and Salomon says he is exploring legal theories that would serve as the basis of a lawsuit. But mostly, Hartmann says, he’s looking for a platform to point out that the biggest losers of baseball’s steroid era weren’t the fans, they were minor leaguers who were cheated of their dreams because a rival for a major-league job got a boost from steroids.

Hartmann never made it higher than the Class A Florida State League — in other words, the bottom rung of MLB’s developmental system. With a fastball clocking in at sub-90MPH, it’s a stretch to think he would ever have gotten within sniffing distance of a major-league roster, even accounting for the expansion and pitching dearth of the 1990s.

But even moving beyond Hartmann personally and considering the body of minor-leaguers who theoretically were competing against players with an unfair advantage, it’s still a tough sell. Career advancement in pro athletics comes down to meritocracy and timing: Not only do you have to perform at a top level, but you have to count on whoever’s above you to falter so you can take over his slot. A lawsuit here has to prove that performance enhancement drugs would have either opened up that slot (by MLB vigorously enforcing a ban) or given a minor-leaguer a better shot at moving up (by forcing the prospect to risk his health). Too many variables to conclusively prove that either scenario would have shaken up major league rosters.

That’s not to say that there’s no merit in a suit. A strategy of depicting a “steroid ceiling” that kept “honest” players like Hartmann from at least a fair shot at advancement would deserve a long legal look, as would the idea of Major League Baseball fostering a dangerous work environment that rewarded taking steroid-related health risks.

Holy cow! I cannot tell you how many millions of times Phil Rizzuto’s lime-greenscreen TV commercials for The Money Store burned my corneas as a kid. It’s hard to even imagine the old WPIX Channel 11 without these cheesy low-budget spots.

So with his death this week, I guess it’s only appropriate that remembrances of Scooter are linked to his decades-old home as a pitchman.

Personally, I preferred Rizzuto’s shilling over Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio’s Mr. Coffee work. At least it was quick and relatively painless, without even a pretense of reverence.

As Barry Bonds proceeds past his 756th (and counting) home run ball and toward the 3,000-hit plateau, the pitcher he turned into a trivia answer mulls his place in baseball history. Washington Nationals hurler Mike Bacsik is taking in his awkward fame-by-association status with self-deprecating perspective.

He drops a further historical tidbit in the career home run crown saga:

He can only relate to Bonds on one level. Both of them had fathers in the major leagues. Bacsik’s father, Mike, played five major league seasons and faced Hank Aaron in 1976, when Aaron was stuck on 755 home runs.

“If my dad would have been gracious enough to let Hank Aaron hit a home run, we’d both have given up 756,” Bacsik said.

Of course, if the senior Bacsik had coughed up a 756th homer to Aaron, then its likely that his son wouldn’t have been in a position thirty-one years later to serve up Bonds’ requisite 757th record-breaker. If you ignore counterfactual chaos theory and other historical metaphysical theories.

Time to combine two of my favorite leisure topics: Sports and alternate/counterfactual history.

In response to Greg Wyshynski’s look back at Tom Glavine’s aborted hockey career — in which my old post on the subject was cited — I contributed a fanciful comment over center-iceman Glavine’s subsequent National Hockey League career. And I was so pleased by my jotting that I’ve decided to record it here:

Who knows how Glavine’s hockey career would have turned out, and if he would have played for the Kings or some other club. But, as long as we’re playing what-if, how’s this one:

In August 1988, as the Edmonton Oilers were dickering with Los Angeles over a trade package, they get a read on a Kings prospect playing college hockey in Massachusetts. They ask, the Kings oblige, and Tom Glavine gets shipped to Edmonton, along with a bundle of players and picks, in exchange for Wayne Gretzky (with Mike Krushelnyski and Marty McSorley as throw-ins).

Gretzky does his Hollywood thing, while Glavine breaks into the NHL with the Oilers. He blossoms, becomes part of a 1-2 punch down the middle with Mark Messier, and is part of second Cup-winning dynasty for the Oilers through the end of the 1990s.

Hey, might as well maximize the potential!

Yep, the time period fits in just perfectly. Had Glavine committed to hockey, he would have been part of the blockbuster Gretzky-to-LA trade. And would have paid off for the Oilers, unlike practically every other part of the package they got from the Kings in reality.

Of course, this conveniently disregards the financial realities that, Glavine or no, still would have forced the Oil to dump quality players by the early ’90s. Despite my disdain for improbable alternate reality scenarios, I’ll turn a blind eye, just this once.

OK, Craig Biggio, here’s the deal:

You’re retiring after a 20-year career, all with the Houston Astros. You’ve played just about every infield position, you’ve got 3,000 career hits, 400 career stolen bases, and you’re practically guaranteed a spot in Cooperstown.

And none of that will be diminished in the least if you fulfill the final piece of the puzzle: Reaching the top of Major League Baseball’s all-time career hit-by-pitch list, displacing Hughie Jenkins.

At 285 times getting beaned while at-bat, you’re only three plunks away from taking the crown. No one’s going to begrudge you crowding the plate for the rest of this season, and reacquainting your body with that familiar fastball [thud!] in the shoulder or back. Face it — you’re practically a baseball magnet. So play to it!

Naturally, your career wrap-up lends a sense of urgency to the Plunk Biggio blog, dedicated to chronicling your road to supreme plunkiness. When you hang ‘em up, so will that blogger (I presume). Why not have both of you go out in a glorious fashion? After all, he’s looking out for you while you attain immortality, as evidenced by his disclaimer:

Moral disclaimer: The author of this blog does not support or endorse intentionally throwing at Craig Biggio.

Finally, to seal the deal: I propose you follow my advice to you from two years ago:

I think Biggio should embrace his destiny, and start publicly soliciting the beanballs. First step: Adopt Britney Spears’ “Hit Me Baby One More Time” as his at-bat music.

No pitcher’s going to resist that bait. Cue up Britney, and you’ll be getting nailed every other time you’re up at the plate. Why stop at 287? Blow that record away and shoot for 300!

That’s my pitch to you, Craig. Feel free to step in front of it!

Today’s league-wide tribute to the 60th anniversary to Jackie Robinson’s major-league debut, manifested by dozens of players (including whole team rosters) wearing Robinson’s No. 42 uniform number for the day, is a shining moment for baseball. That the uniform idea came about organically, instead of being a commissioner’s-office edict, makes it an even more special touch.

Not to subtract anything from Robinson’s legacy, and not that it’ll ever happen, but I’m waiting for a similar tribute to the late Curt Flood, and how his stand brought about free agency and the rise of today’s big-ticket sporting experience.

In fact, for Flood, I think every major sports league — NHL, NFL, NBA and of course MLB — should acknowledge the debt. He played baseball, but his off-the-field actions touched every pro athlete.

I can’t decide which of the following two uniquely-gifted youth athletes has the more compelling story. So I leave it to you, the readers, to decide:

- From the Detroit area, there’s junior hockey goalie Joe Rogers, who dominates in net despite a birth defect that gave him a malformed right hand.

With [Toronto Maple Leafs goaltending coach Steve] McKichan’s help, Rogers developed a unique style for catching pucks with his right, glove hand. (He needs his good hand to handle his stick.)

“I can’t close it,” Rogers said. “But I’ve developed over the years a catching style where I corral the puck. We went to Vaughn and they made a custom glove, reinforced some parts and added an extra strap so it stays on better.”

The comparison with fromer MLB pitcher Jim Abbott is apparent, even though Rogers actually does have digits on his right hand (Abbott had no right hand at all).

- On the other end of the spectrum: In Omaha, Creighton University’s baseball squad features Pat Venditte, the ambidextrous phenom who’s properly described as a switch-pitcher.

Because he can choose which throwing arm to use on-the-fly while on the mound, Venditte’s versatility can create some at-bat fun:

A switch-pitcher facing a switch-hitter could make a fine Abbott and Costello routine. Against Nebraska last year, a switch-hitter came to the plate right-handed, prompting Venditte to switch to his right arm, which caused the batter to move to the left-hand batter’s box, with Venditte switching his arm again. Umpires ultimately restored order, applying the rule (the same as that in the majors) that a pitcher must declare which arm he will use before throwing his first pitch and cannot change before the at-bat ends.

For all the noise each kid is generating, it’s no sure thing that either will bring his show to the big leagues. Rogers isn’t even in college yet, so he has a long road to go to have a shot at the NHL. Venditte is being scouted by Major League teams as a low-round pick, but again, has a lot of work ahead of him. But hopefully, both will be pros someday. The kicker would be if they make it in the same big-league city!

Curious thing about Tribune’s announcement yesterday on its planned sale of the Chicago Cubs after the 2007 MLB season:

The team and its interest in Comcast SportsNet Chicago were specified as the assets to be moved. But the third obvious component — Cubs-owned Wrigley Field — was left off the list. And apparently, that’s intentional, which triggered loads of speculation over what incoming Tribune chief Sam Zell has in mind by holding onto the landmark ballpark.

Normally, uncoupling a major-pro team from its wholly-owned stadium makes no sense. The key to sports economics these days is not in owning merely the team, but also the facility in which it plays. That way, the owner pulls in all revenue streams possible from the venue: Concerts, conventions, surrounding commercial development, etc. Practically every MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL team today has that sort of arrangement in place (with legal “ownership” being a flexible concept — as long as the money goes into the right pockets, the deed can be in anyone’s name). Given this landscape, a prospective team buyer expects to get the all-inclusive package when buying a sports property.

So why would Tribune seemingly devalue a Cubs sale, or even potentially sabotage it, by excluding Wrigley from the deal? Zell’s real estate background is cited as a factor, as is this unique possibility:

But the Cubs conceivably could bring in more should a new owner agree to a lease arrangement with an eye to the unthinkable, in the eyes of many fans: building a new stadium to replace Wrigley.

That’s a perfectly rational scenario, and very likely the early strategy for this sale. The Cubs are one of the few franchises that can command a premium sales price, even without accompanying stadium control. Wrigley is close to 100 years old; a prospective team buyer would actually be better off not picking it up. A short-term lease agreement with Tribune to continue using Wrigley, while immediately starting efforts to build a modern new park (likely outside of Chicago city limits), makes the most sense. After the team moves out, converting Wrigley into prime real estate development will bring Tribune a hefty windfall.

None of those steps are automatic, of course. But they represent the maximized value that can be extracted from a sale of the Cubs. A traditional team-stadium package deal is still workable, but most buyers would prefer the flexibility of the team-only purchase, with an eye toward the future.

And for that reason, I’m sticking with my prediction on the final bill of sale: The Cubs will change hands for $1 billion. That price will, in fact, necessitate the eventual phase-out of Wrigley Field.

The disintegration of Theoren Fleury, who seemed all but enshrined into the Hockey Hall of Fame until alcoholism brought his career to an abrupt end, was gut-wrenching.

Still, despite the commendable job he’s done in overcoming his demons and getting his life back together — albiet without hockey — his repudiation of today’s NHL is hard to take:

“I do wish my career ended better but for the people who support me, they’d want to know I’m doing well — that’s the most important thing to me,” said Fleury, who scored 455 goals in 1,084 games.

“I know I was a great player, probably one of the top-10 guys that ever played the game. Creative. Electrifying. All that stuff. Yeah, I could have worked harder but I was extremely talented. If I had taken care of myself, I probably could have been better.

“All I know is that I got to play 15 years, I’ve got six rings, I played on championship teams and I played with the greatest players in the game who all respect me.

I don’t deny he was a great player; but all-time? Having it come from the horse’s mouth, as it were, is a bit off-putting. And call me crazy, but it brings to mind a Jose Canseco moment:

Canseco is so shamelessly megalomaniacal that he ends up sounding honest and likable… He writes, “And when I became the first player ever to hit forty homers and forty stolen bases in one season, I was hands down the best player in the world. No one even came close.”

You can bow out any way you choose. One just hopes it’s with a modicum of humbleness. I guess that’s not possible for some.

A few weeks ago, when the Chicago Cubs laid out some $274 million over the next 8 years in payroll commitments, some extrapolated that as a sign that corporate parent Tribune Company was ready to sell the team:

“If Tribune intended to hold onto the Chicago Cubs, the Cubs would not be signing Alfonso Soriano to an eight-year contract for $136 million,” Chass wrote.” …It seems that someone in the Cubs’ hierarchy has given [general manager Jim] Hendry the green light to offer uncharacteristically large sums of money, knowing that the Tribune Co. won’t be paying the bills for much longer.”

Which makes sense. Except — that it doesn’t, and is in fact precisely the wrong conclusion to draw regarding the buying and selling of sports franchises:

“It makes it a lot less attractive for a certain class of buyers,” [a sports industry investment banker] said. “The contracts will make it more difficult to put debt on the deal. It’ll cut down on cash flow. And any prospective buyer wants maximum payroll flexibility. They want to make their own mistakes.”

And he said that even if the signings help the Cubs win their first World Series title since 1908, it won’t necessarily make the team worth more. He said that Walt Disney Co. (Charts) didn’t get a premium when it it sold the Anaheim Angels after the team’s 2002 championship.

That’s fundamental, and follows the template that most recent franchise sales had in recent years, particularly in the sports where guaranteed contracts are the norm (the NFL is the odd duck: not only are most contracts not guaranteed, the league’s TV revenue money by itself covers payroll expenditure, making any adjustments there pointless).

That Chass couldn’t figure that out, with all the previous examples, is shockingly naive, considering he’s supposed to be a sports-biz expert. Goes to show how little business-knowledge depth there is among the sports journalism fraternity, and why just about anything reported about the business side of sports should be taken with a grain of salt.

So why did Tribune decide to pony up, at a time when it’s under pressure to sell all or part of the company? It’s a short-term preventative:

[Sports marketing consultant Marc] Ganis said the Cubs spending spree is management’s answer to the growing fan disenchantment with the team, which manifested itself in falling television ratings and a significant rise in no-shows at Wrigley Field.

“There were quite a few people who couldn’t even give their tickets to people who would show up,” said Ganis. “The no-show rate is the greatest indicator that ticket sales are about to drop unless you do something. If they had gone through a second year like last year, a year from now you’d be seeing a drop in ticket sales.”

Actually, if you can get a prospective buyer to see that light, then a sale of the team is possible. But it’s less likely, especially if the transaction doesn’t include Tribune’s Cubs-related media properties. The spending spree likely means Tribune is holding onto this puzzle piece.

I’ve run across a handful of references lately, in the media and elsewhere, to “the wheelhouse” — e.g., “taking it in the wheelhouse” and “hit him in his wheelhouse”. Enough so to notice their frequency, and enough so to realize that, despite hearing it in the past, not really knowing what it’s supposed to mean.

The dictionary definition doesn’t really help:

Nautical: an enclosed structure on the deck of a ship from which it can be navigated.

Unless there’s an abundance of sailors in my line of sight, I think this one’s devoid of context.

It turns out that baseball provides the slang terminology:

A hitter’s power zone. Usually a pitch waist-high and over the heart of the plate.

From there, it takes on a mainstream life that many a sports analogy does:

It seems to mean that something fits comfortably into an individual’s area of expertise. I assume the metaphor came to be because the wheelhouse is where one navigates a boat — i.e., a place where one is in control.

All of which pretty much sums it up: Targeting a vital area in some way. Perfect for emphatic effect.

It still doesn’t explain the repetitive rash of its use lately, particularly since its well past baseball season. Must be an obscure meme going around.

Today is November 25th. Depending on your outlook, professional sports changed for the better, or for the worst, 37 years ago when All-Star centerfielder Curt Flood told MLBPA executive director Marvin Miller he would sue Major League Baseball, with the intent to challenge and eliminate the reserve clause, the effect of which would allow players to become free agents.

Early on, Flood’s quest was obscured by his apparently rarified position in the sport:

Most sportswriters at the time attacked his assertion that the reserve clause made him feel like a slave. When Howard Cosell asked him how someone earning $90,000 a year, one of the top salaries in the game at the time, could feel like a slave, he responded, “A well-paid slave is nonetheless a slave.”

Which is the heart of it. Even if you’re being compensated handsomely, it doesn’t change the inequity of the structure. These days, it’s a question of principle versus reality: It’s hard to argue that a guy (in any sport) making $15 million a year is being exploited; but considering that, often, that same player could be making even more if he were truly free to market his services to the highest bidder.

That’s why the title of the new Flood biography, “A Well-Paid Slave: Curt Flood’s Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports” is so apt when recounting the history. In turn, it’s just as fitting when describing the current pressures in professional athletics. So we have William C. Rhoden’s “Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete”. Again, exploitation doesn’t jibe with the pricetag.

In honor of Flood’s undertaking — which he fell short of despite going all the way to the Supreme Court, but shortly led to success — I present here my own eight-year-old essay on the impact, not only in baseball and other sports but on American society. The intellectual property rights are owned by the St. Petersburg Times; but since they’re not doing anything with it currently, I’m sure they won’t mind my reproduction here. Besides, they owe me for misspelling my name in print — while I was on their payroll, yet!

Feb. 4, 1976, is not a particularly memorable date for most people. But it should be: It changed the course of American life, as we knew it, forever.

Yes, I know that sounds overblown. But it’s true. That date marked the official endorsement of free agency in major-league baseball. And, let’s face it, things never have been the same.

There was a time when being a free agent was the last thing someone with professional sports ambitions wanted. An athlete then wasn’t a free agent by choice; he was a free agent because no one wanted him. No team figured his talent was worth the investment of one Standard Player’s Contract, for the minimum one-year salary.

So when Jim “Catfish” Hunter, the first de facto free agent in major-league baseball, found out in 1974 that his services were his - and his alone - to offer to any team, his thoughts weren’t about how much money he would make or where he wanted to play.

“I said, ‘I don’t have a job. I got to find me a job,’ ” Hunter recalled years later.

Some reaction, huh? Instead of dreaming about the size of his signing bonus or stipulating a no-trade clause in his next contract, Hunter was worried about where his next paycheck would come from. It ended up coming from the Yankees, but it wasn’t all about the money. Hunter turned down an offer from San Diego that was $500,000 richer, and before that he even thought about staying with his original team, the Oakland Athletics.

Hunter’s concerns were natural for the mind-set of America in 1974. Job security was a central feature of everyday life. More than just economic security, a job meant an identity for the individual, more so than it does today. In exchange for hard work and loyalty to a company, a worker got a steady income, chances for advancement, a social network among co-workers and a retirement fund.

The alternatives? Going into business for yourself, if you could afford to, and taking the attendant risks. Or hopping from one job to another, offering services for a set amount of time before starting over with another outfit and not building a foundation for the future - in other words, being a free agent.

Contrast that with the images free agent conjures up today. When Mark McGwire or David Cone files for free agency, it’s not because he no longer is able to play or can’t find a job. It’s because he no longer is obligated to remain with a team and (depending on recent performance) stands to substantially increase his income by shopping his services.

The revolutionary alteration in a system that controlled a player’s destiny from cradle to grave for nearly a century didn’t happen overnight. It started in 1970 when Curt Flood decided he should have at least some say in where and for whom he played. He challenged the reserve clause, which gave a big-league team all rights to a player for as long as it wanted him.

As a result, Flood, one of the best defensive centerfielders of all time, basically committed career suicide. He also lost his case after taking it to the Supreme Court. (And he did it alone, it should be noted; no other player joined him.)

Flood paved the way for many who followed. Hunter wriggled free because of a technicality: An arbitrator ruled that A’s owner Charles Finley breached a part of his contract and therefore made its provisions invalid. The next year, independent arbitrator Peter Seitz ruled that players Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally were free agents after both played the 1975 season without having signed their contracts, therefore freeing them from further obligations to their teams.

On Feb. 4, 1976, federal Judge John W. Oliver upheld Seitz’s decision, ending the old system and opening the door for free agency.

The Messersmith-McNally decision dismantled the one key legal instrument by which the owners controlled player movement and, more important, player salaries. Without it, the owners had to recognize the right of players to free agency, and they conceded it with the institution of a collective bargaining agreement in 1976.

Slowly but surely, basketball, football and hockey players demanded the same right and got it. As a result, salaries have skyrocketed.

But perhaps the greatest impact of free agency has happened outside of professional sports and is being felt only now. For the generation that’s grown up with free agency, it’s a natural state. People in their 20s who are entering the work force are comfortable with trading on their skills and knowledge to advance in life, rather than committing to one organization that may or may not reciprocate that commitment.

Exaggeration? With more people leaving the traditional work force to start home-based businesses, the concept of free agency takes another step: using your abilities for yourself. A recent issue of the business magazine Fast Company proclaimed in a cover story the creation of a “Free Agent Nation,” noting that about 25-million people, or 16 percent of the work force, basically work independently of a company.

It’s been argued that baseball no longer is America’s pastime and that the game is too slow and old-fashioned to keep up with the times. But 20-plus years ago, it proved to be a trendsetter.

Despite being in the media capital of the world, New York’s professional sporting venues have been largely exempt from the stadium naming-rights merry-go-round. Only Continental Airlines Arena has been corporately-marked thus far, and it almost doesn’t count as it houses two New Jersey-tagged teams (and not for long, with both the Devils and Nets departing over the next few years).

All that’s about to change, with Queens as ground zero. The New York Mets and Citigroup have struck a 20-year deal (optionable to 35 years) to name the team’s new ballpark CitiField, to the tune of $20 million per year.

Note that this deal applies to the future home of the Mets, breaking ground tomorrow and due to open in 2009 — not to their current haunt Shea Stadium. The local news stations here in New York have been teasing the news all night as a renaming of Shea, probably due to the misinterpretation of the AP wire story that begins with the line, “Goodbye Shea, hello CitiField”. Read the whole damn article before going on the air, you hacks…

Can any other naming-rights deal trump that $20-per pricetag? Well, the crosstown Yankees also will have a brand-spanking new ballpark going up soon; and in this town, the Bronx Bombers can just about always top their NL brethren. That said, and given that few areas in sports are off-limits to revenue-generating opportunity, I’d guess that the new Yankees Stadium will retain the name of just “Yankees Stadium”. The perceptional fallout would negate any gain for either team or sponsor.

UPDATE, 11/13/2006: Well, drat. Turns out the stadium name will be Citi Field, not CitiField. That spacing makes all the difference…

I suppose that, for the foreseeable future, every aviation accident that happens in Manhattan will be accompanied by that sinking sense of dread. Somehow, the property damage and the loss of life become mere details beside the immediate question of possible motive.

In any case, terrorism was quickly considered, then summarily dismissed, as the reason for this afternoon’s plane crash at the Belaire Apartments on East 72nd Street and York Avenue. Among the casualties was Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle, who was piloting the craft.

I was in a meeting when the news hit. I wasn’t really anywhere near the site: As you can see, my office near Columbus Circle is clear across town. But there was plenty of buzzing as people checked the Web and made phone calls, and you could hear the fire engines and police cruisers shrieking down the street. Again, in the first several minutes, the prospect of a terror attack kept things on edge.

I don’t think I know anyone who lived in that building. Naturally, I ran down a mental list, short as it was (I don’t know a ton of people in the City yet, and those I do know are in my usual haunts). I had a few minutes of panic just minutes ago, when I thought of someone who might have lived in that neighborhood; I was deciding on whether to call her or send a text message when I doublechecked and realized she’s actually on the Upper West Side, not the East Side. Some small relief.

Anyway, the details on this will be forthcoming. As it is, one day of it was enough.

Even though I followed my usual sports blindness this summer by ignoring baseball, I do recall taking a quick glance at the league pitching leaders sometime in August and thinking, “Those win totals seem kinda low”.

My instincts were true. This season marks the first full (i.e., non-strike) one ever without a single 20-game winner, and the buzz is over whether this is an anomaly or a trend.

“Starts go down, innings pitched go down, complete games go down, so wins go down. It’s kind of simple math,” Orioles pitching coach Leo Mazzone said. “You even talk about shutting people down when they reach 200 innings. If you’re going to win 20 you need to be in the game in the late innings.

“Twenty wins is always a major marker, but 20 is going to go by the wayside and 15 is going to be the standard,” he added. “I don’t think it’s the quality of the starters, I think it’s the evolution of the game.”

I don’t think 20 wins will become unreachable, but it will get rarer. Frankly, I’m surprised it took this long for this to happen. Bullpens are so stocked these days, as the MLB is more of a pitchers’ league than ever. More pressure is put on the middle relievers, and so a game’s pitching performance truly becomes a collaborative effort.

It’s easy to rap the pitchers for seemingly being coddled, but that ignores all the work they really do. True, the comparable position players in other sports don’t function the same way. In football, you have one designated starting quarterback every game, who throws his arm off; but he plays only once a week, for a grand total of 20 full games or so per year. In hockey, there’s typically a starting goaltender who plays the bulk of the season; but most teams like to limit that to 75 percent of the season, and teams don’t play practically every single day like in baseball, and the backup goalie tends to play the split in back-to-back games. The structure of baseball’s season makes it ridiculous to expect a pitcher to hurl 90-mile-an-hour bombs every night.

Hey, if they really want to hang onto the 20-win standard so badly, I guess they could add another 20 or 30 games to the schedule. It’s already ridiculously long now, so I’m sure no one will notice the extra padding…

When MLB pitcher Tom Glavine lost a couple of teeth in a taxicab accident two years ago, his youthful prowess in another sport came up:

Growing up in Massachusetts, Glavine was a two-sport prep star and was picked by the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings in the fourth round of the 1984 draft.

Once asked why he picked baseball over hockey, he joked, “I had all my own teeth and I wanted to keep it that way.”

I guess that hockey-like tooth-loosening stirred some wistfulness in the Mets hurler. Glavine looks back at his decision to forgo pucks for pitches, particularly because of another southpaw the Kings selected in that same draft:

The Kings chose another left-handed player five rounds — 102 selections — after Glavine. Luc Robitaille, with no discernible alternative, signed with them. He has forged a career of nearly unsurpassed offensive accomplishment. When and if he scores another 34 goals, he will add his likeness to the Mt. Rushmore of NHL goal scorers as the seventh player with at least 700 goals, joining Wayne Gretzky (894), Gordie Howe (801), Brett Hull (741), Marcel Dionne (731), Phil Esposito (717) and Mike Gartner (708).

It is Robitaille’s grandeur and the juxtaposition of his place in the draft and Glavine’s that prompt Glavine to wonder about the career path not taken. No regrets. But wonder.

“Oh, all the time,” the Mets pitcher says. “I always wonder what would have happened.

“I’d like to believe I would have made it. There are guys I played against in high school who have played in the NHL, and we had comparable talent then. But there are no guarantees. … I know I would have had to become bigger — I was 6-foot-0, 180 [pounds] when I graduated from high school. Either that or find a way to play as Gretzky played. But I think I had a shot to make it.”

A deferred Gretzky/Robitaille level of career? Hey, dare to dream.

I’m a bit surprised to see him waxing nostalgic like this. I’d known about Glavine’s dual-drafted status for years, but past references from him seemed to suggest that he hadn’t been as dedicated to his prep hockey career as he was to baseball, and so the hockey option wasn’t really as realistic (despite the King’s pick). Maybe that was a case of focusing on the path taken and not dwelling on any long-term second-guessing.

I suppose Glavine chose the right uniform, since he’s likely to end up in Cooperstown someday. If he’d gone with skates, he might never have made it past the minors. Still, it might make for a fun alternate reality scenario.