Let's remember that baseball's revenue sharing plan still is subject to approval by the Players Association. If Selig wants to change it, he'll have to negotiate the changes with the union.

Let's remember that the union continues to think a salary cap is the work of Satan. If Selig wants to impose one when the current collective bargaining agreement expires, he'll be met with exactly the same response the Players Association gave the owners the last time they tried to jam a cap down the union's throat. The players will walk. Selig, more than anyone, should understand what happens to commissioners who don't take hard-nosed and unforgiving stances in these labor battles. He replaced one who didn't, Fay Vincent. That's another baseball reality we, as well as he, should remember.

Following sports used to be like watching a pretty good card game. You would watch for a season and see what each team had. You would know that the Indiana Pacers, say, could use a good power forward

Who's telling the truth? If this was a multiple-choice question, the answer would be e) all of the above. Lemieux is right when he says the sport needs some sort of salary cap. If you look closely at the free-agent signings, there are five or six teams that are driving prices up. The NHL is following the lead of Major League Baseball and creating a two-tier system in which the rich teams collect pennants and fans in the smaller markets simply do penance. The salary caps that are in place for the National Basketball Association and the National Football League aren't perfect, but the experience in those leagues has gone a long way toward ensuring the success of small-market teams and providing a semblance of competitive balance. Damphousse is right when he says the owners must discipline themselves, but he's off-base when he says NHL teams are making money. While revenues have risen, they're still not keeping pace with costs, and the situation is particularly bad for the Canad!

"A salary cap can be a lot of different things," Bettman said. "Cost certainty can be a lot of different things. What we want to make sure is that we don't have disparities - disparities between revenues and expenses, disparities between clubs. We want to have competitive balance among all of our teams."

product is now at risk because of a money race in which only the

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