I love baseball. I loved playing it as a kid and watching my own kids play it today. I love the escape of a ballpark.

To me, baseball is America.

I love the game.

I hate what the players are thinking of doing to it.

They’re talking strike again.

It would be the ninth “work” stoppage since 1972. In that sense, a strike wouldn’t be shocking. But it should be. Million-dollar ballplayers striking for more money has to rank among the greedier tantrums of our time.

There may well have been an era when players had reason to consider a job action, like in 1961, when superstar Roger Maris earned only $42,500 during the same season he broke Babe Ruth’s record. But he didn’t whine about it. It was more about the game then than the money.

Actually, I was wrong a moment ago when I used the phrase “million-dollar ballplayers.” That was an underestimate. The average salary this year is $2.4 million. Then there are the superstars. Over 10 years, Alex Rodriguez of the Texas Rangers will get a quarter-billion dollars that’s the annual budget of a medium-size city.

This leads to great inequality between teams. Boston’s top three players Manny Ramirez ($15.4 million), Pedro Martinez ($14 million) and Nomar Garciaparra ($9 million) make more combined this year than the entire rosters of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, the Oakland Athletics and the Montreal Expos.

The whole idea of a union seems odd for people making multimillion dollar paychecks. It’s one thing for union leaders to demand more money for underpaid janitors, quite another when someone like Tony Clark of the Boston Red Sox joins the players’ negotiating committee. I guess he’s upset that he only makes $5 million a year.

Then there’s Doug Glanville of the Philadelphia Phillies, who warned that baseball owners should prepare for the worst. Doug makes $4 million. You can see why he’s resentful.

Cleveland pitcher Paul Shuey was also beating the war drums on behalf of downtrodden players, and why wouldn’t he, with a measly pay of $3.2 million.

Meanwhile, Minnesota’s Denny Hocking said the owners had better meet players’ demands. Denny makes a paltry $1.1 million.

Frankly, Denny should be glad to have a job since there was talk last year of decommissioning his team. The reason is that baseball is losing money, and some think it’s time to shut down less successful franchises. But like most players, Denny Hocking cares only about getting his, not whether fat salaries are dragging down the system.

If players read newspapers, they’d see a now familiar statistic: Last year, says the commissioner, baseball’s 30 teams had a collective deficit of $232 million. Some say it’s less. But the overall balance sheet is clearly being stretched, in large part by bloated salaries.

Players will tell you a strike is about many complicated issues. Instead of demanding more money, they say they want to keep “the status quo.” But that phrase “status quo” translates to such things as no salary cap. Trust me, money is one of the issues.

Perhaps players haven’t glanced at the bleachers the last few years, but if they did, they’d notice a lot of empty seats. Average attendance at games has dropped from 35,000 in 1994 to 28,000 today. If that rate continues, baseball will be unsustainable in 20 years.

But players don’t think that’s their problem. In a way, it’s typical. Unions tend to assume there’s always enough money out there. It has led some to squeeze the companies they depend on right out of business. I worry that baseball players are on the same track.

A few nights ago, I was watching the annual Home Run Derby. It showcases the best of players in more ways than one. The game’s big guns, most on opposing teams, sit side by side on the grass, cheering each other on. They seem to be good guys who love their sport. It gets you thinking.

Wouldn’t it be nice if one had the guts to stand up to strike talk, say that it’s bad for baseball, and an absurd stand for multimillionaires? But none has.

I’m the first to admit the owners aren’t innocent either. Far from it. They’ve been paying these salaries, and trying to line their own pockets. But in my eyes, the act of $5 million players going on strike remains the ultimate tantrum.

I said at the beginning of this column that to me, baseball is America.

And now I’m thinking of Enron. And WorldCom. And the way super-rich leaders have been grabbing unethically for still more money.

I didn’t mean it that way, but I suppose I’m right; baseball is like America, after all.

Mark Patinkin is a columnist for the Providence Journal. His e-mail address is mpatinkin@projo.com.