New York ? Tuesday night, before Game 3 of the World Series, Bud Selig was going gaga on Fox over his new labor agreement with the Players Assn. The commish, loudly and proudly, proclaimed this is the best of times for baseball.

“The sport has never been more popular,” Selig told Fox’s Ken Rosenthal.

At the risk of losing his job, and making Selig look like a doofus on national TV, Rosenthal could have asked The Nutty Professor the following question: “If the sport is so popular, how come ratings for the Cardinals-Tigers Series are in the toilet?”

Rosenthal, who has turned in a good rookie season on Fox, did not go down that path. Neither will the Foxies. When ratings for an event this big are tanking, the suits hide under their desks, stay away from window ledges and definitely avoid sharp objects.

The 2006 World Series is on its way to becoming the lowest-rated Fall Classic of all time. Game 3 recorded a 10.2 rating, down 7 percent from Game 3 of last season’s White Sox-Astros matchup. The three-game ratings average of 9.9 is down 7 percent from the first three games of last year’s Series. The 2005 World Series was the lowest-rated (11.1 average for Chicago’s four-game sweep) Fall Classic in history.

Still, when Mr. Selig talks about how “popular” the game is, he may not be taking the TV ratings into account because he’s feeling giddy about MLB’s bank account. Here’s why. In July, three months before baseball’s postseason began and before baseball’s TV deal expired, Selig & Co. cashed in on a new seven-year TV contract with Fox worth about $2.1 billion. Now, Selig can look forward to counting the new-deal dough even if the 2006 World Series hits an all-time low.

Considering baseball’s 2006 postseason ratings on Fox are down across the board, perhaps the Foxies should have waited until after the World Series to complete a deal, when they might have had a chance to purchase MLB’s TV package at a cheaper price.

As stated here before, it is totally confounding how MLB could seduce any network into agreeing to a contract extension before the current deal expired. The only league this makes sense for is the NFL, for which the possibility always exists that a nonincumbent network will try to bid on a TV package.

The Foxies have nothing to smile about. As a matter of fact, there could even be some embarrassment over their ratings-challenged World Series telecasts. In a three-paragraph story about World Series ratings in Thursday’s New York Post (the newspaper and Fox are both owned by Rupert Murdoch), readers were left to speculate as to what network actually televises the World Series.

There was no mention of Fox in the ratings story.

If this turns out to be the second straight season of World Series ratings residing with the Tidy Bowl Man, there will be no shortage of reasons offered when the autopsy is performed.

Baseball suits rhapsodize about the beauty of the regular season. The 162-game grind. Who will be left standing on top when October comes? And yet, less than 48 hours after the regular season ends, teams with the best records are not rewarded. Division winners and wild-card entries are treated equally. Home-field advantage aside, there are no major handicaps for wild-card teams. Arguably, this can help lead to sudden elimination of power teams – such as the Yankees – that produce big-time ratings.