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Thursday, July 04, 2002

Baseball has been spinning out of control for more than a decade, so no one should have been surprised this week when the New York Yankees felt the need to acquire an additional power hitter for their lineup, although they already led the American League in home runs by a wide margin. It will cost them about $13 million for 1 1/2 seasons of Raul Mondesi, a known attitude problem who is believed to be on the downside of his career.

Not to be left behind, the National Hockey League -- which is in the early stages of spinning out of control and seems determined to outdo baseball's fiscal insanity -- opened its free-agency period with some stunning signings. Most notable was the $45 million paid to Bobby Holik, a very good but not nearly great player, by -- surprise, surprise -- the New York Rangers and $25 million paid by the Washington Capitals to former Penguin Robert Lang.

Here's what we've learned from these transactions:

*Money rules in baseball and hockey and New York teams have the most money.

*Hockey is becoming more and more like baseball, which means -- unless the rules of the sports are changed -- the Penguins, like the Pirates, have only a slim chance of ever contending for a championships and an even slimmer chance of winning one.

*Craig Patrick is dissolving into hockey's equivalent of Cam Bonifay.

It's almost laughable that there's so much talk about drug-testing baseball players when, on a list of the sport's troubles, drugs are nowhere near the top.

Baseball needs economic reform. Nothing short of a major change in the game -- either massive revenue sharing or a salary cap -- will bring us back the game we once knew.

As the sport spins out of control, the Yankees raise the economic bar, and the Pirates fall further behind.

Hockey is doggedly following in baseball's footsteps, seemingly unaware of what's ahead. The only hope for hockey is that the men running it have the brains and the stomach to strike an equitable deal with the union. Baseball leadership has never had enough of either commodity; consequently, it is where it is today -- genuinely excited that computer nerds stuffed an electronic ballot box to elect a 30th man to an All-Star Game that declines in stature every year.

Hockey people might point to the Rangers' spectacular lack of success to demonstrate that their sport will not become dominated by big-money teams.

But only stupidity has kept the Rangers from zooming to the head of the class, just as poor management kept the Yankees without a title and only one second-place finish from 1982-92.

The Rangers, who added former Penguins defenseman Darius Kasparaitis after signing Holik, might have overpaid for both. It doesn't matter. They can afford to overpay. Teams like the Penguins can not.

Compounding the Penguins' problems are the inadequacies of Patrick, who has far less money to work with than the Penguins are letting on or isn't equipped to deal with the machinations of the present-day hockey marketplace.

Patrick failed to trade Lang in March at the trading deadline and lost him for nothing but a compensatory draft pick.

Kasparaitis might still be a Penguin if Patrick hadn't lowballed him in arbitration last year, which opened a loophole for Kasparaitis to become a free agent after this season. It forced Patrick to trade Kasparaitis at the trading deadline. There's a belief Patrick was able to swing a good deal with Colorado in giving up Kasparaitis, but consider this: What would fetch more, Kasparaitis three months from free agency or Kasparaitis 15 months from free agency?

Patrick allowed key defenseman and team leader Bob Boughner to go to small-market Calgary as a free agent after last season and then went out and signed defenseman Mike Wilson for $2.4 million, which is about $2.35 million more than he deserved. If Patrick had added the money he paid Wilson to the Boughner package, he might have been able to outbid Calgary.

He traded Jaromir Jagr, the best talent in hockey, for three prospects, only one of whom made the Penguins last season. Imagine the Texas Rangers trading Alex Rodriquez for three prospects or the Los Angeles Lakers doing the same with Kobe Bryant.

With the salary bar reset by Holik, Patrick faces the prospect of being unable to re-sign Alexei Kovalev, who will be a free agent in two years. One of the reasons for trading Jagr was to sign the team's other good players. Less than a year after the Jagr trade, Lang is gone, and Kovalev might be unsignable.

It has been an ugly week in sports; uglier still in Pittsburgh.