AS spring training begins this season, I won't be watching. I used to admire baseball players; errant tobacco juice never bothered me. I could chew gum and hit balls through windows just as hard as the next kid on the block. My heroes were Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, and Mickey Mantle. You know the type--all-American boys raised on wholesome farms who battled incredible odds to win lucrative endorsements from coffee and soda empires. They had great nicknames like "Dizzy," "Dynamite," and "Duke." The Yanks were my idols in pinstripes.

I've lost confidence in today's ball-players. They project a different image. All of the "Babes" and "Wizards" of yesterday are gone. Today's stars should have different nicknames, like "Cocaine" Keith Hernandez and Dave "White Powder" Parker. Today's heroes are artificially stimulated--apple pie and hot dogs just aren't enough to produce greatness anymore.

Even worse is that when they're caught, the guilty complain about their sentences. Hernandez fussed and hollered because the league took away 10 percent of his salary. Quick subtraction will tell you that Hernandez is still pulling in about $1.8 million-a-year. Not bad for a would-be felon. It sure beats a prison softball game in which you solidly slap an extra-base hit up left-center field only to discover that you can't round first base because both of your ankles are shackled.

Perhaps what Hernandez and Parker really objected to was the stringent penalty forcing them to donate 100 hours to community service. Talking to misled kids is peanuts compared to the license plates they would have been making in the federal pen if they had not been protected by their all-star status.

Hernandez and Parker do have excuses. They say they were forced into the limelight and nobody offered them a massage to sooth their million dollar job stress. The pressure was too much to handle; their only way of coping was through expensive, hip narcotics. They claim analysts are for wimps. Perhaps they didn't have enough time to take naps.

So as not be accused of partiality, I have conducted a poll of 20 of my favorite convicts in order to gauge their opinions on baseball's severe punishment of Hernandez and Parker. Fourteen of the felons are being jailed for various drug related crimes, five for armed robbery, and one for selling insider-trading stock tips (although he wished to impress upon me the fact that he was truly penitent). Nineteen of society's condemned eagerly offered to exchange positions with Hernandez and Parker. The lone dissenter, a short and lithe drug pusher from Minneapolis who is also a swell switch-hitting shortstop, declined to change places because neither the Mets nor the A's have an opening at his position.

So goes America's game from pinstripes to jailstripes. The most damaging thing is that upon being discovered, our former heroes do not even regret their errors. Instead of making the best of an unfortunate situation by publicly apologizing for all wrongdoing, our guiding stars deny any fault and dispute their petty punishments. Baseball players are only human beings and are entitled to their mistakes. They also are entitled to equal punishment under the law.

I used to love watching baseball because I could see guys who had childhoods just like mine, and I could aspire to play along side of them. Now, I am afraid to watch baseball for fear of seeing my ideals crushed by a bunch of athletic criminals.