DESPITE THE HOOPLA over Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and several new stadia, the industry that is Major League Baseball still has fundamental problems.

The so-called "small market teams" are having trouble meeting superstar payrolls.

Some of these teams are still threatening to move if they don't get tax-subsidized homes with lotsa luxury boxes. Some pundits earlier this year claimed some teams might actually go out of business.

And without salary caps or TV revenue sharing, the economics of the game are still out of whack.

Well, here's my modest proposal to fix it all, or at least some of it.

The way I see it, baseball's problem isn't too many teams but too few.

It needs a third league, a second-division league, whose top-winning teams would cycle into the AL/NL schedules yearly (the bottom AL/NL teams would cycle back into Division 2, a la British Soccer).

The Division 2 league would serve a full six-month season; its players would work directly for those teams (i.e., not a "farm system"). It would permanently provide quality baseball entertainment to the "small market" cities (New Orleans, Washington DC, San Antonio) and the cities that haven't supported MLB lately (Montreal, Pittsburgh). No more stadium blackmail. No more threats to move. Communities asked to support ballpark construction could at least be assured of a long-term amortization of their investments.

The Division 2 League would be more popular than AAA ball (and hence attract better local TV and regional cable deals) because its players would be employed by the local teams, not by farm systems. Fans could get to know their local heroes for a season or two before they moved on.

The Division 2 League would share, on a reduced-percentage basis, in MLB's marketing and merchandizing revenues (and in any future TV revenue-sharing deal). With this income "floor" to count on, team owners could plan budgets based on reasonably-stable revenue projections. Or they could, within limits (if we're starting a new league, let's give it a salary cap from the git-go), work to make the leap into the AL/NL ranks.

This idea would, natch, greatly alter the game's landscape. As many as eight to twelve AAA teams might be either displaced or forced to change their whole player-contract setup. The whole farm-system institution would be thrown into reorganization; and the initial outfitting of the new Division 2 League teams would throw a curve at players' and coaches' salary structures in both the majors' and minors' ranks.

But a little more instability in the short term would lead to a lot more stability in the long term.

And baseball is a game that thrives on stability, at least if you believe all those smarmy baseball essayists out there.

(I'd already been thinking of these concepts when I read that the old Pacific Coast League had essentially operated as a non-farm, near-major league during its approximate 1938-57 heyday. The PCL's president once suggested turning that outfit into a third major league, but the NL moved into LA and SF instead.)

TOMORROW: Some of the worst influences on young writers.

PITCH IN: This time, I'm looking for cultural artifacts today's young adults never knew (i.e., dial phones, non-inline skates, and three-network TV). Make your nominations at our MISC. Talk discussion boards.

ELSEWHERE: Training cats? These guys claim it can actually be done, if you buy their product... "A parable, of sorts, about us, the 'descendents' of Adam and Eve, in the state of exile that is our lives"...

(For an explanation of the above, look here.)

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