{image1} Congratulations, Milwaukee. Looks like you've built yourself a monorail.

Oh, sorry. For those of you who are not Simpsons devotees, let me catch you up to speed. Season Four, Episode #71: "Marge vs. the Monorail." In a cutting satire of the "Music Man," the town of Springfield is duped en masse into building a monorail with a windfall of money from a Monty Burns environmental fine at the power plant. Why build a monorail? Well, the guy who pitched the project (Lyle Lanley) had a song and a dance. And lots of (supposedly) good reasons. Marge, sensing nothing but a huge waste of money, goes to another "monorail town" and finds that it is indeed a scam, and a dangerous one to boot. She also finds "Lyle Lanley" to be a con artist on his way to Tahiti. Springfield finally opens their monorail, only to find it malfunctions badly, as all hell breaks loose.

Now, replace "monorail" with "Miller Park," "Springfield" with "Milwaukee" and "Lyle Lanley" with "Bud Selig" and you too can see how life often closely imitates art.

Why did you guys build Miller Park? For all the song and dance reasons Bud and his straw-hat singers told you about. "Competitive balance." "Sustainable revenues." "Building a winner."

Well, what a crock that turned out to be.

The recent bombshell discovery that the Brewers are prepping to slash their already third lowest payroll in the majors by upwards of $30 million for 2004, was a gut punch to loyal fans who have been holding out unrealistic (irrational?) hope in the wake of a decade of utter incompetence.

Only now maybe you will see the mop-haired Uncle Bud for what he really is, and what he'll always be: a two-faced, shameless, shakedown artist. Period. End of sentence.

You guys got lied to by the Seligs. Welcome to the club.

I've been changing wet pants legs for better than 15 years here in D.C. waiting for a baseball team to call my own. All along, Selig and the owners keep saying it's raining, even when I know they are peeing on my leg. Baseball ain't coming here. Not now, not next year. Never. N-E-V-E-R.

This was after Selig called Washington, D.C. the "prime candidate" for relocation almost three years ago when the original contraction gambit failed. Well, if we are such a "prime candidate" then why is baseball polishing off plans for more Expos games in either San Juan, Puerto Rico or Monterrey, Mexico next year?

A small story in Sunday's paper said baseball officials met with city politicos from the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. (Chant it with me: "Monorail, monorail, monorail!") I just had to laugh under my breath. Baseball's never ending search for the next sucker means never actually thinking about how laughable a team in Hampton Roads would be until you see the size of the check.

During baseball's "lockout summer" of 2002, I was firmly on the ownership side of the debate regarding the basic financial structure of the sport. Not that I bought everything Bud and the fat cats were selling, but it doesn't take a Warren Buffett to understand that when the Yankees can outspend you 3-1 without breaking a sweat, there are fundamental issues of competitive balance.

But if you are Selig and selling hard on how more revenue sharing and new stadiums will help the little guys like your Brewers, well then you better damn well write the check for players when those dollars come flowing in.

I've heard the arguments that you can "do last place" for a lot less money next season, and that the model to follow is like the Twins of four years ago. Wait until the farm system sends up the kids, we'll be cheap and good and then Wendy Selig can go shop for another vacation house somewhere.

Whatever. Bottom line is that the stadium was built to help the Brewers be a team to be proud of, not to be a personal casino for the Wendy and her daddy. So much public trust was trampled in the process to get it done, so many necks were stuck in the political guillotine, there is an obligation to at least hold the line on salaries while waiting for the farm hand help to arrive.

When Selig was making his push for a new park, the darkest fear of Milwaukee area baseball fans was that you would lose your team once again if the stadium wasn't built. It's the fear baseball has been lording over all these cities that built new ballparks in the last decade.

But how real was that threat? Not very. Not only has baseball not moved a franchise since the 1971 Senators, but do you really think the commish was going to move his own team to somewhere like Nashville or Portland?

While he was lying to you guys about the dire consequences of not footing the bill for a ballpark, he was lying to us in D.C. about possibly getting a team.

That, my friends, is the kind of thing only a used car salesman can pull off. Like snowing the customer on options while flim-flamming the finance department from the same shady back room office.

Shame on both of us for falling for it.

The spooky similarity to the Simpsons episode I mentioned is that both the monorail and Miller Park malfunctioned right from the start. The monorail throttle was stuck open while Homer panicked in the cockpit. Just like the Miller Park roof leaked as Bud froze when the All Star Game came grinding to a halt in extra innings.

Unfortunately for Brewer fans, Selig isn't likely to skip off to Tahiti like the "music man" did in the Simpsons. Any hope that he will finally see the damage he's doing to the team and city he claims to love and sell the club is pure fantasy.

I wish I had a happy ending to this latest Brewer episode, but I don't. As I have said many times as a sports fan: "Players and coaches come and go, but owners are forever."