By Kim J. Harmon

STURBRIDGE, Massachusetts – There were no players making $25 million a year. No owners whining about how they could not compete in the marketplace. No threat of a strike that could shut down the national pastime for many, many months.

It was just base ball.

Good, old, simple base ball – the way it was 160 years ago.

It was the 126th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and at Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, there was a special re-creation of the game of base ball that was brought over from England (and later transformed by Abner Doubleday into the game that is known today).

The place may be a pre-fabricated mockup reminiscent of an old colonial village, but in OSV the old game of base ball was as pure at heart as a bunch of kids playing in a meadow after their chores had been finished for the day.

At the time, the game was known by several names – round ball, town ball, or goal ball. As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote in 1824 at Bowdoin College, “ . . . there is nothing now head of in our leisure hours but ball, ball, ball . . .”

For me (who actually got up their with a stick no bigger than a sawed off broom handle and belted a base hit – to the tune of at least a couple of huzzahs!), it was comforting to know that the ideal of the game would survive despite what 30 billionaires and 750 multi-millionaires were all prepared to do – from our perspective – 160 years in the future.

It was almost bucolic there on the Old Sturbridge Village common, as about 30 of us split up into two teams to play a traditional match.

The ball was a soft leather hide stuffed with cotton and crudely stitched together. The bat was a small, narrow stick. And the bases – for that was what the game was called – were actually six-foot-long poles stuck into the ground in a triangle position.

We played by local rules, which had the players running in a clockwise position around the bases. Oh, sure, they could run to any base they wanted after striking the ball (there were no foul balls, so any ball struck in any fashion was a live ball), but they had to go from first to second to third in order to score.

For instance, if the batter – or striker – hits the ball towards first base (which is where our modern day third base would be), then it would not do to attempt to run towards that base. No – run to third base and then hope to hustle over to first when the next striker hits the ball.

Confusing? It was a little bit as players were running willy nilly all over the place and sometimes lost the path towards home plate.

Not me. I struck a fly ball, watched as it was juggled by the fielder (a fly ball had to be caught cleanly, not off the body, to be an out), and reached first without incident. With a hit by the next batter, I lumbered over to second and then came home on a hard smash into the trees ranging over first base.

After our team scored 10 tallies in the top of the first inning (local rules – everyone got up once and then that inning was over), I became the feeder and began to mow down (unintentionally, I assure you) some of the kids on the other team. I got a few hisses and even one consarn it! for that, but the other team got its fair share of hits and even a couple of runs, but our squad held its own.

We may have won, but that hardly mattered to anyone – especially baseball fans – who got anther chance to experience the game in all its purity.

And so it was a shock – emotional and otherwise – leaving OSV and stepping back into the 21st century and realizing that major league baseball was heading for its ultimate Armageddon.

Right now there is just a threat of a strike, but I can’t see how it is anything but a certainty. Maybe I’m a pessimist, but all those people who feel that the players – in the wake of September 11 and the enormous damage suffered in the previous work stoppage – would not be so stupid as to strike may just be deluding themselves.

The players have always been a strong group, but the owners are much more unified now and to save the game they may have to shut it down for a while. The way it is going now, there are only a handful of teams (four at the outside) who have any shot at capturing the World Series every year and all the rest are simply playing out the 162-game string.

Something has to change.

I can admit that, but it still sickens me that these two groups can’t figure out a way to carve up a billion-dollar pie. Greed is at the heart of it, to be sure, but deep-seated animosity between the two sides is the more damaging thing of all.

The game is going to change. We all have to accept that.

And I’m one of those guys (you know who I’m talking about – the lunatics on sports talk radio who spout off dozens of cockamamie ideas) who has an idea how baseball can save itself and return itself to its former glory.

First – eliminate six teams (which still gives you three divisions in each league, four teams per division).

Second – institute a hard salary cap (like the National Football League).

Third – share revenues across the board (also like the National Football League).

Fourth – eliminate the designated hitter and (at the same time) eliminate the concept of American League and National League and have constant play among all the divisions to make baseball more of national and less of a regional game.

The ideas sound simple . . . which is why they will never fly.

So, when the players go on strike next month (or, at the latest, in September) I can always look back at that brief game of base ball I played in at Old Sturbridge Village when – 130 years ago – it was played just for fun.