St. Paul, Minn. ? Sanity has left the building. On the 25th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death, a day that should have been dominated by tributes to the King, baseball players decided it’s now or never.

They chose to follow that dream of setting a strike date. If you’re a baseball fan, that strike date of Aug. 30 could be when your heartache begins.

Each and every player who voted to strike is nothing but a hound dog. Wouldn’t you like to kick them in the shins with a pair of pointy blue suede shoes? And then tell them, “You’re the devil in disguise.”

Players would blame owners if there is a strike, and owners would blame players because both have suspicious minds. If one side makes a proposal, all the other side wants to do is ignore it and return to sender.

OK, OK. That’s enough of a tribute to Elvis for now, though we will mention that if ballplayers go on strike it would be the sixth work stoppage in baseball since the King’s death and the ninth in 30 years.

Apparently, nothing was learned from the other times players walked off the job.

Job? Isn’t that an odd thing to call playing baseball for a living? You start playing baseball at a young age. You don’t think about money or revenue sharing or haggling over a luxury tax. You’re just a little kid. A luxury to you is a second bowl of ice cream.

When you’re young, you just want to play baseball.

It probably was like that for many of the ballplayers who voted to endorse a strike date. There once was a time when all they wanted to do was play ball.

It’s only when they started to make money that they became tainted. They met other ballplayers, veteran ballplayers, who convinced them they are the game and the game can’t be played without them and the owners always need to be reminded of that.

Walk into a room full of people with nasty colds, and you may develop a nasty cold of your own. It’s tough not to get infected, which is what happens to ballplayers. The disdain and distrust for ownership is passed from one generation of players to the next.

Never mind that baseball players make an average of $2.38 million a year. Never mind that many people in this country raise families on less than 1 percent of that.

Players are convinced owners are trying to restrict their ability to make even more money than they already do. The crux of this battle between evil and evil is over a luxury tax. The owners want to tax teams that spend more than $102 million a year in salaries. (About a half-dozen teams exceed that amount; the Twins, by the way, are about $60 million under it.)

Players believe that a luxury tax will hold down the escalation of salaries. And you know what? They’re probably right.

And you know what else? So what?

Ballplayers are willing to strike because their average annual salary may not increase much beyond $2.38 million for a couple of years. Is it any wonder baseball fans all across America are incensed?

A fellow named George W. Bush spoke Friday for fans everywhere when he said, “The baseball owners and the baseball players must understand that if there is a stoppage, a work stoppage, a lot of fans are going to be furious, and I’m one of them.”

There is about a two-week window to get something done, to hammer out a deal, to avert a strike, to hold back the fury.

But if there is a strike, it’ll be just like when the King died. You’ll be all shook up and left with nothing but memories.