My initial contact with the teams doesn't give me much hope for their development into contenders.

And the teams don't seem very discriminating about the talent they recruit. I called both the Marlins and Rockies this week, advertising my 400 batting average during my senior year of high school (1 was 2 for 5 as a part-time outfielder for the Pasadena (Calif.) Polytechnic Panthers) and asking for a tryout.

Both teams were very encouraging. The Rockies said I could get a tryout simply by sending a letter and self-addressed stamp envelope to Major League Scouting Bureau, P.O. Box 1330, El Toro, CA, 92630.

The Marlins scouting office was even more accomodating. The woman answering the phone dutifully took down my name and number. She said they would send me a listing of their nationwide tryouts. And she said I should call back after the June draft. Then, presumably, we could talk contract.

While fans in Miami and Denver may be ecstatic, they should consider how much they're losing. In Florida, spring training used to be special. Now, the Sunshine State, which really isn't that pretty during the frequent summer thunderstorms which will no doubt wash out many a Marlin game, has a glut of baseball.

In addition, both Denver and Miami had minor league baseball teams. Now they'll get the same quality of play, though they'll pay more than $100 million for the privilege of starting these new teams Last year's minor league Denver Zephyrs vs. the Rockies in a best of seven series I'll take the Zephyrs in six, if only because they'd be more familiar with the new team's home park, Mile High Stadium, a structure perfectly designed for one sport football.

The Marlins will also inhabit a football stadium, Joe Robbie, though it makes a passable ballpark with a little bit of dressing up. The Rockies will stay in Mile High until construction on Coors Stadium (yes, it's named after the beer) is completed sometime later in the decade. This new stadium is already being billed as another Camden Yards, the year old Baltimore Orioles park which was widely praised by fans with short memories for being just like an old-style ballpark. In reality, Coors will turn out like Camden--a soulless, state-of-the-art ballpark which serve not only to rob the city treasury but also the popular memory.

Some will argue that expansions like this one are important because they introduce baseball into virgin territory, like the mountain time zone. That's a noble idea, but there are too many nasty side effects.

With 50 more major league jobs a year, there are fewer qualified baseball players. But the worst thing about expansion is that it lowers the quality of play fans will see, and that serves the purposes of no one. At least, almost no one.

The rich greedmongers who own professional baseball teams make a huge profit on these glorified, minor league franchises, even as they destroy the major leagues. It's easier for baseball to expand--and feel good about itself--than to look inward and face its real problems.

But in this way, baseball is only reflecting America. Everywhere now, we are asked to accept less quality for more money. Instead of making baseball a faster, more watchable game that attracts young people (which can be done with a few rule changes and discount tickets for children), the powers-that-be build new ballparks with corporate contributions and municipal funds. The end result is that too many baseball fans are lowering their standards. We don't expect better from the teams we see on the field. In fact, baseball, like our schools and businesses, is teaching us to accept mediocrity.

Opposing expansion is not anti-capitalist and un-American. On the contrary, it's un-American to let a national treasure be devalued right in front of our noses. Some say expansion is good because it gives people like Florida Marlin Scott Pose a shot at being a major league baseball player. But how much is that worth, when teams half-seriously consider giving a tryout to a Harvard sophomore who can't hit a curve ball?

Bigger is not better. James Michener's novels keep getting longer and less readable. Overhead costs are bankrupting the newly renovated, expanded Crimson. Gandhi, the movie, might have won an Oscar, but it would have been just as good--if not better--without the second reel.

Certain people in Florida and Colorado still think differently, though. But I'll call them again in October, when their views may be colored by the deep, dark despair of last place.

If, that is, I can still remember their names.