Major league baseball -- even as it prepares to return to the field -- is still the most unlucky game in America.


At the moment, baseball has virtually cornered the market on vitriol. As long as men who are motivated by personal vendettas and past insults -- like Jerry Reinsdorf, Bud Selig and Don Fehr -- are in control of baseball, the game will continue to be a disintegrating disaster.


The sooner these three men, and a handful of their less-famous cohorts, are fired or at least marginalized, then the sooner baseball can stop being a joke and begin its long journey back to being a great sport, worthy of affection.


Oh, sure, baseball is back. Big deal. The game is back all right -- awash in public disgrace. Baseball is back with a dozen hard-line owners, led by Reinsdorf of the Chicago White Sox, looking like the biggest idiots in the history of the sport.


It's back with a defaced, truncated 144-game season and a discredited commissioner. And it's back with franchises that -- thanks to the game's leadership -- have gone from financial difficulty in August 1994 to imminent meltdown in April 1995.


Any law-firm Rotisserie League can cash in its IRAs and buy the Mariners.


For the game to heal, it needs a new deal. To get that new deal between players and owners, baseball needs new faces in central roles.


Selig is the biggest problem. Every day he remains as "acting" commissioner is another day too long. He should never have held the job for a minute.


An owner as commissioner? When the best interests of baseball and the best interests of the Brewers are in direct conflict, which do you think will come first?


At this moment, Selig is as frozen as a statue. He appears calm. He appears rational. He appears in control. In fact, he is in complete denial.


Wake up, Bud, and smell the tear gas. The National Labor Relations Board has filed unfair labor practices charges against the owners twice and a judge has issued an injunction against the owners. Not one major league player broke ranks and crossed the line.


Who do the owners get their legal advice from, anyway, Oil Can Boyd?


The owners themselves admit that they have lost $700 million in revenue, and God knows how much goodwill. And the game is back exactly where it was Aug. 11, the day before the players called for the strike.


This is Bud Selig's legacy: He took control of the game when it had small, manageable financial problems. At most, a few teams, like his own, might have needed to be sold, moved or aided by revenue sharing.


Now, in less than eight months, the game is at the brink of total financial comedy.


Yet some owners want Selig to become the game's full-time commissioner!


At least Sunday brought hope that Reinsdorf's hour in the sun is passing when the owners voted 28-0 not to lock out the players. What an eloquent "0." That expresses the number of owners who now align themselves with Reinsdorf.


For three years, the Chisox owner -- galled by defeats in previous negotiations and collusions settlements -- helped dream up ownership's strategy of super-majority voting rules and replacement teams with the ultimate fantasy of breaking the players union.


Presumably, Reinsdorf's fangs have now been withdrawn from the throat of the game. We can hope.


In coming days, the owners must decide among themselves whether they want to cut their losses and allow baseball to begin to heal itself. Or they can decide to try the whole nutty fiasco all over again, beginning Aug. 12, 1995.


If the owners will unseat, or at least gag, their leadership, then the union should seriously consider replacing Fehr.


The best, and the worst, that can be said of Fehr is that he has relentlessly used every legal means to do his job: make money for the players.


He has never misrepresented his motives or his agenda. He has not been caught in any lies nor has he, in retrospect, misrepresented the actions of ownership. He has just fought like hell and baseball be damned.


The players ought to thank him on their knees for saving them from the union busters and then replace him with a moderate respected by owners -- like agent Ron Shapiro. And he just loves to beat the owners like a drum.


Baseball is back. But if Selig, Reinsdorf and Fehr are allowed to remain in their current power positions, it may well be gone again before this season ends. Impossible? No.