Adam Dunn . . . Manny Ramirez . . . Pudge Rodriguez . . . Ken Griffey Jr. . . . Pedro Martinez . . . Tom Glavine . . . Frank Thomas.

As of Thursday, they were among the 90 or so free agents competing for about 20 available roster spots.

Welcome to the real world, fellas.

Could it be possible that Baseball is actually mimicking the market conditions that are affecting everyone else? You know, when the economy is bad, how companies hire kids at a fraction of the salary made by older workers?

Hey, it worked last season for Baseball with the low-budget Tampa Bay Rays, all the way to the World Series.

Washington Nationals President Stan Kasten was selling the derivative angle in a recent interview with the Washington Post. "We all saw last year's Tampa team, and Colorado, Arizona and Cleveland before that, all built on that framework," he said. "And when you see something like that that works - we all try to pull from the best sources and best practices. We all try to copy what works."

That's fine, but tell it to the union when it starts screaming "collusion," although the union would be spectacularly foolish to do so when the ticket-buying public is more concerned about keeping a job than subsidizing Dunn's retirement plan.

And tell it to the New York Yankees, who are plowing ahead as if nothing in the world is amiss. But when Super Bowl tickets were going for face value or less and Citigroup is rethinking its stadium deal with the New York Mets, things are most assuredly amiss.

So, naturally, Baseball must act accordingly and change its behavior. Are some teams taking advantage of the tanked economy to avoid high-priced talent? Probably. But Bud Selig, who made over $18 million last season to preside over a robust game about to lose some of its steam, was right the other day when he was hinting at the Marquette Law School that "the system will need tinkering."

Of course, it needs more than tinkering. It needs a salary cap. And that's not just the small-market entreaties of the Mark Attanasios, unless you'd eventually like to see the Yankees playing the Cubs, Dodgers or Red Sox every fourth night.

Look, I'm no economist, but it seems like this whole mess started when people who could afford $150,000 houses started buying $500,000 houses. When the broken links from the chain reaction eventually come back together, things are going to be different, maybe for the better. As if they'll have a choice, there's no reason why the games we follow can't be leaner and tighter as well.

It's already begun to happen in Baseball. Before the $75 million contracts were vanishing this winter for the Dunns of the game, and before Sheets was turning down $11 million or so for one season from your Milwaukee Brewers , players like Sammy Sosa, Mike Piazza and Shawn Green all quietly went away. So did Barry Bonds as a player, although now you'd like to see him disappear from view for other reasons.

It's never sensible to begrudge big salaries, because players only get what the market will bear. But the fact that this bear of a market is biting certain kinds of players is another sign that Baseball, along with the world, is evolving.

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