The baseball season starts in a little more than a week. But, before the games begin, let's take one last preseason look at baseball economics, 1991. Without a doubt, 1991-1994 will be a critical four-year period in baseball history.

In the next four years, the National League will expand by two teams, baseball's television contract with ESPN and its $1 billion television contract with CBS will expire in 1994 and the basic operating agreement between the player's union and the owners will also end.

Nineteen ninety-four may also be baseball's last opportunity to address the financial inequities existing between teams from large television markets and teams from small television markets. This inequity threatens to leave small-market teams either bankrupt or with perpetually mediocre teams.

The basic operating agreement negotiations in 1994 will be the next opportunity for the owners and players to adopt some manner of revenue sharing and/or salary cap policy. Recognizing this, Major League Baseball is conducting an 18-month study of the game's long-term economics. But don't expect this study to generate any radical reforms.

Baseball owners will resist any change in the game's financial structure because the capitalist psychology of the owners -- their preoccupation with profit and their macho ethos -- will not permit revenue redistribution.

Some quick counting reveals that a coalition of small market teams could easily force action on revenue sharing. Eleven of baseball's 26 teams -- Montreal, Pittsburg, St. Louis, Cincinnati, San Diego, Baltimore, Detroit, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Seattle and Minnesota -- are small market teams that should be able to find common cause in calling for revenue redistribution.

If almost half of the major league franchises could be expected to vote in favor of revenue sharing, why doesn't such a movement exist? The answer lies in the psychology of the owners, a distinctively capitalist psychology.

Like most American capitalists, baseball owners are concerned with short-term profit to the exclusion of other concerns (e.g., the fans in smaller cities and the overall health of baseball).

Currently, most teams are making profits and therefore have no incentive to help those that are not. The only franchises in short-term danger are those that are under-capitalized and located in small markets. In the March 25 Sporting News, Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincet reported that 11 teams lost money last year. This sounds bad, but of those eleven, some lost money only because of the unexpected cost of collusion damages paid to the player's union. Other clubs that operated in the red last year have owners with deep pockets who are willing and able to absorb the losses.

Until at least 10 to 13 teams are in significant short-term financial danger, the owners will not act on revenue redistribution. Financial analyst Mike Megna accurately noted in the March 25 Sporting News, "Football says, 'we are all in this together.' But baseball says, 'what's mine is mine and what's yours is yours and if you are in the wrong place, too bad.' "

A basic tenet of capitalism is that the strong will prosper, and that the weak go to work for the strong. In macroeconomics, the strong are those countries that enjoy some natural competitive advantage -- lots of oil, temperate climate, an educated populace -- over the competition. In baseball, the competitive advantage is a large television market.

In the short-term, small market teams can compensate for the competitive advantage of the big market teams through smart management, good scouting and hard work. But eventually, a revenue inequity threshold is crossed, beyond which the small market teams are condemned to permanent mediocrity or are forced out of the business.

Baseball may have taken a tentative step across that threshold this winter when the Boston and Oakland payrolls each surpassed the total yearly revenues of the Seattle Mariners.

Any owner who would lead the challenge to baseball's revenue structure would have to have the temperment of a revolutionary socialist. Unfortunately, baseball owners are macho capitalists. They desire to be, in the words of Michael Lewis -- author of "Liar's Poker" a memoir of life on Wall Street -- Big Swinging Dicks (BSDs).

BSDs work 18 hour days and make millions of dollars. BSDs say things like, "you gotta be a tall dog to piss in the high weeds." BSDs cut multimillion dollar checks to strong, fleet outfielders and graceful pitchers.

BSDs do not divide up lunch tabs. BSDs do not whine about not having enough money to compete. They get to work and make some more money, damn it. BSDs believe that if you don't have enough chips to play the game, you should cash out and let someone else sit at the table.

It goes against every macho corporate instinct to engage in the collective, nonprofit action that revenue sharing requires. Baseball's revenue structure will change only after some of the BSDs find themselves trapped in last place or out of a job.