I wrote the other two installments of the "Free Agency is #!*%@#*!%#*&#!" series during the 1997 major league season, and while you might be thinking, "Oh good, we now get the last of Dave Beck's nut-log ramblings," I felt I should finish with a postmortem to make a final definitive declaration to the world that while I may indeed be certifiably insane, I am nonetheless astoundingly right about free agency.

This essay will not be nearly as lengthy as the others, only because I want to be as concise as possible. I merely wish to answer the question everyone in the world has had about this entire issue, and that is, "What is it, exactly, that Dave wants?"

A fair question -- in fact, it is the only question, as anything I want is exactly what anyone else would want to make them happy, joyous, truly fulfilled individuals. But as I have already committed myself to the most brief discourse here, I will humbly offer only that which I feel the most discerning, yet sincerely mindful individual needs to know about: yes, you got it:

Baseball.

What is it exactly that Dave Beck wants? It is pretty much what Dave Fan wants, and, let's be honest, in many cases it is not what Joe Fan wants. What Dave Fan wants is the Giants to win. He wants to see good, professional baseball. He wants to enjoy the experience that baseball brings -- he wants the highest manifestation of that pastoral, idyllic stuff that George Carlin defines in his humorous comparison of football and baseball. He wants to behold the exquisitely tension-laden moment leading to the grand payoff: the bottom-of-the-ninth, full-count pitch with two outs, the bases packed, and his team down a couple runs.

Simply substitute Joe Fan's team for the Giants and what Dave Fan wants and what Joe Fan wants are really pretty much the same, right?

Wrong.

See, Joe Fan is perfectly content with seeing featured in any postseason action:

The Teams That Money Can Buy.

And Dave Fan isn't.

By miles. By light years. By parsecs and parsecs.

And it isn't necessarily the teams themselves, but it is that they are teams that were bought. The Teams That Money Can Buy.

To Joe Fan, it really isn't that big a deal. And until Joe Fan sees the towering moral correctness of my position painstakingly detailed in my previous essays, then nothing will change.

Once again, it is stunningly simple:

Joe Fan wants The Teams That Money Can Buy.

Dave Fan wants the teams that are built with wise drafting, diligent farm system development, shrewd trading, clear organizational vision, exemplary front-office administration, and yes, prudent fiscal management.

Free agency makes Dave Fan's ideal for baseball impossible. Joe Fan may howl that we can have both, claiming that teams still do all that drafting-development-management stuff, it's just they now have to deal with free agency, too.

In reality, free agency makes superfluous everything but money. In the end, all that non-money stuff only benefits The Teams That Money Can Buy. All the things that are produced from drafting and development by any team will eventually be bought by The Teams That Money Can Buy, and you are being duped if you believe otherwise.

As it stands today, for the second year in a row four of the top five teams ranked in payroll costs wound up in their respective League Championship Series. This year the Marlins simply replaced the Cardinals, and the Indians moved into that top five. I really have nothing against any of those four teams. Except that:

They were bought.

Nothing else but the amount of money involved to get or to keep those players contributed to those teams being where they are. I am saying nothing against the players and their abilities -- in fact it says everything about them because those great abilities were bought by those teams. It had little to do with the smarts, the savvy, the flat-out ability to evaluate and develop talent; it had everything to do with making the highest bid.

Joe Fan certainly may have no problem with that.

Dave Fan does.

Dave Fan is further sick of being patronized and being told things like:

• "Look how well the inexpensive Pirates did!" Folks, Pittsburgh finished 1997 with a losing record. It was as if we were all supposed to be oh-so-impressed that they finished with 79 wins instead of the expected 15.

• "The Expos continue to field a quality team!" I addressed this farce in a previous installment, but I can't help pointing out with disdain the way announcer Bob Costas and his pals in the booth spoke of the Expos' plight during Game 3 of the Division Series between the Marlins and the Giants. I don't blame them in particular because it is certainly an appropriate topic of discussion regarding a sentiment widely shared, and I generally don't watch any other baseball other than Giants baseball so others may have spoken of it in the same way. But Costas et al. were so glib about the pending annual fire sale in Montreal and about the teams ready to show up with the cash to buy, that I just became furious. To me it was not unlike Costas calmly saying, "Hey, Ueck, Here comes some homicidal loon about to attack your mother with a big carving knife. Let's start talking about which morticians we'll need to call."

Seriously doing something about stopping the crazy man is exactly like seriously doing something about free agency. But, of course, if Joe Fan is as phlegmatic as Costas was, then nothing will happen. Joe Fan will continue to get The Teams That Money Can Buy.

Certainly, if Joe Fan pays for it, then he'll get it. That has indeed been my point from Day One. But to put it as plainly as I probably should have from Day One:

That just stinks.

Whether Joe Starplayer gets $5,000 or $500 trillion a year, free agency has mangled baseball, perhaps irreparably. I am not categorical here because I do still have, and certainly always will have, that tiny hope that the greatness of baseball will overcome what the major leagues have done to it.

This, I agree, is a point belabored. So I will close this long and, I will always hope, not-too-futile writing effort, with one last response to a final claim from Joe Fan:

"Hey! But what about your beloved Giants, Dave! They don't have a big payroll, they're in a small market! And yet they won the Western Division title! What about that?"

The most important ingredient for winning championships in any sport is one thing.

Talent.

Oh, certainly there's coaching and chemistry and character and momentum and desire and heart and game plans and out-thinking the other guy and all that other jazz, but it means diddly without talent. A guy who can run really fast or hit a baseball a mile will kick the pants off the brilliantly coached guy who can't. )Sure, there are the instances that warm our hearts when the spunky underdog who plays with inspiration and mettle defeats a superior but carelessly arrogant foe.)

In the case of the Giants this year, there is no question that they did not have the talent needed to win. While they weren't a horrible team, they weren't the best team, and that is ultimately what led to their demise in the playoffs. Eventually, the better team would, and did, catch up and beat them.

It is no secret that the Giants had gutsy determination, and they managed to go a long way with lots of it. For that reason I am tremendously proud of this team. But the fact is that several players on the 1997 Giants played with the heart of champions but have little bankable talent (Brian Johnson and Mark Lewis come to mind), and players such as such as Jeff Kent and J.T. Snow had career years.

The major point is that unless the Giants become one of The Teams That Money Can Buy, they will flounder next year, big-time.

Any team will. They will. Free agency has carved it in stone.

Oh, sure there will be the occasional team with, say, the nineteenth highest payroll who will make their run and maybe do something major in the postseason. But what kind of slim hope is that for a team that is not one of The Teams That Money Can Buy?

The key now is, what happens when teams watch The Teams That Money Can Buy continue to go to the big dance, and they start to realize that they can only get there by being one of them? Remember, it's a zero-sum game out there folks;there can only be so many teams that pay the most for the best players. There will always be The Teams That Money Can Buy, and the rest will... well, um... not be.

What if next year the Pirates, Expos, Brewers, and the Twins just all decide that they're going to go all out. Small market or not, they spend the big bucks. [You remember the Brewers: the newest National League franchise. And market "size" seems determined more by team success than actual population. The San Francisco Bay Area is a small market? Atlanta and Toronto used to be "small." -- GP] Cost be damned, they think, we want to be one of The Teams That Money Can Buy. And they go on to their respective League Championship Series. (Losing buttloads upon buttloads of money doing so, as the Marlins claim to have this year as the price for being one of The Teams That Money Can Buy.)

I'd have nothing against them, per se, I'd still hate that they were bought. What's more notable is that the following year there'd be other teams that would surpass them as The Teams That Money Can Buy, and it'd go back and forth, back and forth, more shelling out the big money to buy a winner.

It's a zero-sum game, yet Joe Fan is happy, because he just wants to see and pay for The Teams That Money Can Buy, whoever they are. (And "whoever they are" will most likely be those teams in the big markets, because the TV powers-that-be were retching over the possibility of a Cleveland-Florida World Series matchup. Free agency increases the chances of Joe Fan's dream matchup, New York-Los Angeles.)

And that is just something that really gets me -- I've shared it before: I simply can't tolerate the fickle bandwagon-jumping fan who toadies up to the media hype. It is just my little prejudice -- and an unjust one, too, I realize, as I would want every breathing living being on Earth to hop right on board the Giants wagon without a second thought. It is my own affinity for the Giants that is unquestionably the operative factor in my argument, because the whole free agency thing has really made me think about the ultimate consideration, put here in a final question:

The Giants are my team and I will always root for them, always, but unless they become one of The Teams That Money Can Buy, what is the true value of my rooting interest? Am I really a fool for giving the most gratuitous allegiance to Our Boys, being happiest when a strikingly mediocre team can actually get as far as the playoffs on grit and desire, yet no further?

I've seen Joe Fan give up his rooting interest in half a second in order to be identified with a "winner," just so nobody will accuse him of being a fan of "that team." Does the success of The Teams That Money Can Buy simply make this spineless sentiment more rampant, because Joe Fan will now discover that his faithful but futile rooting interest hasn't a prayer against them?

I don't know. But if it does, it is just one more thing that Dave Fan hates so much.

So much hate, I know.

Thing is, we all hate bad things. I just wish people would hate free agency a lot more. And do something about it. At least say something about it.

Yeah.

That's what Dave Beck wants.

EEEEEE! Contributing Editor David Beck is a history teacher at a Southern California high school. He has also taught social studies, math, government, and economics, as well as "Aviation and Raisin Chewing: A Comparative Study."

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