Of course baseball is not basically a business; if it were it would have gone out of existence in the 1890s. Let us suppose that the economic structure of baseball were to collapse, that the "business" of baseball were to become untenable and go the way of dinosaurs, while the public interest in the sport of baseball remained alive. Would baseball then cease to exist? Of course not. New economic structures would sprout from the ground like mushrooms. New businessmen would appear, anxious to make a buck by catering to the interest in the sport. There would be new contracts, new agreements, new logos, and perhaps a few new players along with the new "businessmen" -- but there would be baseball just as before, as pervasive as ever, suffering no more than the jolt of an unexpected speed bump.

Suppose, however, that the sporting interest in baseball, the omnipresent public interest in who is winning and who is losing and why, were somehow to vanish. Would the business of baseball then carry on as before? Why, of course it could not; lacking the public dollars that follow the public interest, the business would immediately cease to exist. The business, and even the athletes, are the mere servants of the craving for the sport.

So obviously, the game is essentially a sport. It must be a sport to survive. The business will survive precisely as long as it remains a sport.

What is so curious is that otherwise intelligent men can be tricked into failing to see this, and will say with earnest faces that of course baseball is basically a business. Why do they think this? Because Peter O'Malley sees it basically as a business? Because Reggie Jackson sees it as basically a way to make a living?

But this is merely a fault of perception, a disorientation in their habits of thought that results from their peculiar relationship to the enterprise. Consider the same argument as it might apply to anything else -- let us say a can of O'Malley's Beef and Beans. Obviously, to Albert O'Malley, who owns the business, it is basically a business. To Roger Jackson, who drives a truck for O'Malley, Beef and Beans is basically a way to make a living.

But to the man who buys the Beef and Beans and takes it on his picnic, what is it? It is essentially a food, of course. No one but a jackass would argue that because Beef and Beans is basically a business to Albert O'Malley, because it is a business to Roger Jackson, it therefore is basically a business.

The unique thing about sports fans is that they have so much trouble understanding this. It would be stupid for Bill James to believe that because baseball is a business to Peter O'Malley and Reggie Jackson that therefore it must basically a business to him, too. It would be stupid that it is not he who must accomodate the businessman, but the businessman who must accomodate him. In the Beef and Bean business, even Albert O'Malley and Roger Jackson would certainly recognize this. They would remind themselves daily that what they were dealing with here was essentially a food. They would regard such daily reminders as being essential to their being able to serve the public. They would never allow themselves to lapse into thinking that what was essential to the business was their getting their dollar.

The unique arrogance of the baseball businessmen is that, seeing themselves quoted in the paper every day, seeing their own distored perspective on the undertaking reflected in the daily press, they have allowed themselves the luxury of forgetting this.

But what is far more remarkable is that baseball fans go along with it. Baseball fans have the ultimate victim mentality: they are actually willing to treat their own perceptions as merely an illusion. Baseball fans will swear up and down that what baseball is is not what they see baseball as being, but what Reggie Jackson and Peter O'Malley see it as being.