Piazza would still fill the stands, but you would have the added bonus of a having a human on your team, who could interact with other humans in interesting ways. The New York Post would still have something to write about.

You could still have your Rey Ordonez and your John Franco, and with the Promise of continued imparity in the league, your chances of winning the Series may be better than with God.

The Brewers and Pirates stay out of the money, everybody's happy.

Piazza, concerned with the wealth of his team more that the health of the league, should be paid his marginal revenue product, perhaps more so if there's a potential bidding war.

With the Mets' recent signing of Piazza to the most lucrative contract in baseball history, everyone seems to have an opinion about whether the signing is justified.

Some say cancer researchers and Peace Corps workers and inner city schoolteachers should be getting the money, not some guy in a spacesuit trying to hit a round ball with a round bat.

Enough romanticizing, I say.

If Mike Piazza leads the Mets to the play-offs and gets them lots of green and the sport of baseball folds shortly after Mets owner Nelson Doubleday's death, Double-day will have played out the real American dream.

Babe Ruth once justified the fact that he made more money than Herbert Hoover by saying that he had a better year.

By the same rationale, Mike Piazza deserves more money than the Creator. But is that really the issue?