The average baseball salary has never exactly taken its place among those leading economic indicators you're always hearing about -- you know, job growth, housing start-ups, manufacturing orders, the percentage of pharmaceutical research directly traceable to Ozzy Osbourne, etc. In fact, the average baseball salary, grotesque as it has become, isn't even a trailing economic indicator.

But with this week's news that the ABS declined by about 2.7 percent for the 2004 season, it's worth pointing out (if only because I have absolutely, positively nothing to do) that the last time the ABS dropped, in 1995, the greatest economic expansion in U.S. history soon followed.

In academic terms, this is the equivalent of arguing that declines in the automotive sales sector are somehow related to the kind of widespread erectile dysfunction that mandates that every third commercial in every televised sporting event be about, uh, you know. It's easier to argue that the economy is healthy so long as a cup of mocha latte still costs more than a gallon of gasoline, while adjusting, of course, for political spasms within OLEC (The Organization of Latte Exporting Countries), and recognizing that most of us, despite a culture of perpetual indulgence, are getting by on less than 18 gallons of coffee a week.

Economics, you might have noticed, isn't my strength, but don't think that'll stop me.

Let us, as they say, crunch the actual numbers.

The average salary in baseball last year was $2,555,476, according to figures released this week by The Associated Press, representing the crest of a brisk acceleration that began in 1967 (when the ABS was $19,000) and tsunamied with the advent of free agency in the mid-70s. This year's ABS, which will be $2,486,609, while 131 times what it was in 1967, just ain't what it used to be. In the good old days of 2003, players could pass the time dropping hundred-dollar bills from hotel windows just to watch the commotion. Nowadays, they barely use them to light cigars anymore.

Some of these guys, to paraphrase the great Ray Didinger, don't know where their next Hummer is coming from.

For the average baseball player in 2004, a night at the ballpark barely brings in $15,000, or, if you prefer, it's barely $5,116 per hour for work that sometimes requires a player to walk all the way back to the dugout for a new bat should his break, though thankfully not often. Do you know how humiliating bringing home barely $15,000 on one night can be? Alex Rodriguez, newly of the New York Yankees, wouldn't turn over in bed for $15,000. His salary, roughly $134,000 per game, distorts the larger picture so that it can no longer focus on the guys just struggling to maintain multiple country club memberships.

More exactingly, the average baseball player's salary decreased by $68,867 this year, and the ripple effect surely wasn't pretty. Rumor was that several futility infielders fired their pastry chefs, which is, frankly, just too depressing to confirm.

Thank God George Bush has moved boldly to make their tax cuts permanent.

Commissioner Bud "Bud" Selig told reporters this week he thought the unusual drop in the ABS was due to the things-are-tough-all-over economy and the fact that there are debt regulations in the new basic agreement signed in September 2002. Somewhere between 1975 and 2002, probably 2002, the men who own baseball clubs suddenly came to think of debt as, uh, bad.

According to Hal Bodley's column in USA Hooray two weeks ago, baseball's 30 teams have guaranteed $2.8 billion in player salaries for the years 2005-10. Oh yeah, it's a darned good thing those debt regulations are in the new contract.

Any economist who says he or she saw a dip in the ABS coming is, frankly, fishing for a compliment, but last year's increase -- from $2,383,235 to $2,555476 -- represented but a 7.2 percent jump, a single-digit increase for a second year in a row and a possible foreshadowing of big news.

Long gone are the jumps of 53.9 percent (from 1990 to '91) and 21.7 percent ('91 to '92).

In studied analysis, much of this is traceable to A-Rod. When the Texas Rangers gave Rodriguez $252 million for 10 years to leave Seattle, somehow making Seattle better and themselves worse, it turned out to be a blessing in wildly inappropriate disguise for the cause of fiscal sanity.

When it became clear that no one player, no matter how psychotically he's overpaid, can make you win, an almost imperceptible shift toward better management had officially begun.

What you've got in baseball now is your creeping sanity. But it's a long, long creep back there.