Reason No. 26 why there will be hell to pay if the catfight between baseball owners and players results in a strike/lockout/grounding/timeout:

Have you seen some of the attendance figures so far this season?

Whoa.

I don't want to suggest that there are several sets of eyebrows raised right on Madison Ave., but let's just say that there have been more showings of that ugly old green house for sale at the end of your block than there have been at, say, Miller Park or Jacobs Field this month.

And things are generally considered to be good right now within the game. There hasn't been a strike in the last, oh, 15 or 20 minutes (and counting).

If the players and owners do conspire to shut things down again, some of these gleaming new ballparks -- with gleaming new loans to be paid, with gleaming new interest -- will be about as useful as eight-track tape players for the next 10 years, and who wants that?

Despite April optimism running so rampant that even the

Pittsburgh Pirates and Montreal Expos are liable to begin printing playoff tickets any day now, eight ballparks already have recorded their lowest attendance for a regularly scheduled game -- including seven ballparks so new that the price tags have only recently been clipped off.

And I'm not just talking Montreal here, where the first-place Expos played to a pickup game-like gathering of 3,561 in Olympic Stadium in Tuesday night's win over the Milwaukee Brewers.

Not to be picky, but I see more people than that each week at McDonald's on 39-cent cheeseburger days.

But, as so many of their former fans have, let's forget about the Expos for a moment.

Let's instead cut to the action at some of newer palaces.

Like Comerica Park in Detroit, where the Tigers drew a record low of 10,736 on April 17. Granted, Tampa Bay played a part in that, but still.

Like, Miller Park in Milwaukee, where the Brewers drew a record low of 14,090 on April 15. Granted, perhaps Brewers' fans were boycotting the first-place Pittsburgh Pirates, but still.

Like, PNC Park in Pittsburgh, where the Pirates drew a record low of 12,795 on April 11. Granted, it was early in the Pirates' charge into first in the NL Central, but still.

That's not all.

In Florida, where baseball's contraction plan this winter kept the Marlins more motionless than the ones you normally find in your grocery store freezer, they drew a record-low 23,877 for their home opener followed by an all-time worst 4,466 on April 11.

Houston, Baltimore, Cleveland and Colorado also have recorded attendance lows for relatively new ballparks this year.

Talk about momentum coming to a screeching halt -- it once was easier talking your way into the White House than it was obtaining a ticket to a game at Camden Yards, Jacobs Field or Coors Field.

But before we go any further, you know what?

The problem isn't in empty seats, because this was going to happen sooner or later.

The problem is that baseball has been far too short-sighted in pushing for new ballparks in nearly every city. It's a short-term solution that is disingenuous by definition.

Sure, new ballparks boost a club's finances in the short run.

But no matter how many clubs have new stadiums, not everybody is going to be able to field a winner.

And as we've seen illustrated emphatically this year in Milwaukee, Detroit and Pittsburgh (nine consecutive losing seasons), it takes more than a new ballpark to draw fans.

A total of 17 new ballparks have opened since 1989 (I'm including Anaheim's beautifully renovated stadium), with more on the way in the next few years, such as in Cincinnati (opening next season) and San Diego (2004).

But without a meaningful revenue-sharing plan, the vicious cycle of the have-nots chasing the haves is going to continue, new ballparks or not.

That baseball attendance has even climbed to the point where we can scoff at a midweek Jacobs Field crowd of 23,760 is a testament to both the sport and some of the people who run it, because some of the past numbers, in comparison, are amazing.

Consider that, for Ted Williams' final game in Boston in 1960 (and for the final game of his career, because he decided not to accompany the team on a three-game trip to New York) the Red Sox drew a stunningly low 10,454 to Fenway Park.

And consider that, for Jackie Robinson's first game in 1947, probably the most historic game in major league history, the Brooklyn Dodgers drew just 25,623 to Ebbets Field (capacity: 32,000). And that for the final game of the 1961 season, with Roger Maris gunning to break Babe Ruth's record with his 61st home run, just 23,154 paid their way into vaunted Yankee Stadium to see Maris pass Ruth.

And there's this: When Bobby Thomson hit his famous Shot Heard 'Round The World in 1951, one of the most famous home runs in history, just 34,320 were in the Polo Grounds (capacity: 54,555).

We often hear about the Golden Age of baseball in the 1940s and 1950s, or even the 1960s and 1970s. Yet attendance has never been what it is today -- even while we take note of non-sellouts in Cleveland and Baltimore -- in any age.

Just a little something else for the owners and players to think about as they forge ahead on delicate negotiations that could blow the game right back to the Stone Age.