A few years later, the A's have survived the Mark McGwire trade better than the Cardinals.

The A's moved McGwire, the last vestige of their good old days, to St. Louis for a remainder bins worth of talent, the last vestige of which is setup man T.J. Mathews. The A's were scorned, mocked and spat upon, they struggled to win games and retain fans, and even after their intriguing 1999 season are still trying to rebuild the fan base of the early '90s.

The Cardinals got a planet's worth of public relations, and McGwire became a national icon. In doing so, he hid a multitude of sins, including two mediocre seasons and manager Tony La Russa in St. Louis' well-upholstered doghouse.

Today, rather than remain devastated by the loss of this era's preeminent home run hitter, the A's are feeling almost too good about themselves. The Cardinals, on the other hand, are trying to figure out why everything other than McGwire went so gruesomely wrong.

This is good 411, as the kids like to say, because it means that what seems evident today in the Griffey trade probably won't hold much more than a season, and almost certainly won't by the beginning of 2002.

True, the Reds got Griffey, one of the game's transcendent figures, for the price of Brett Tomko, Mike Cameron and two minor leaguers. True, the Reds kept their bullpen intact. True, they got a bounce in ticket and official shmata. True, they apparently have improved a team that nearly won the NL Central.

But for this deal to work to their full satisfaction, the Reds have to strike now, while they are still admired for their brass, applauded for their thrift and hailed for their seizure of the moment. After all, as a wise man once said, the only pennant you can win is the one coming up; five-year plans are for Communists, and you know how well they've done the past several seasons.

The Mariners, on the other hand, will claim they have improved their starting pitching, which wasn't all that horrible before, and this Antonio Perez, one of the two minor leaguers, is just the sort of infielder for whom Baseball America does sliding pants-only centerfolds.

They will tell you that they are revitalizing their dead-ended team, and that Griffey had offended too much of that rabid M's fan base to remain in town even a moment longer. They had to do it, by Zeus. Had to.

Of course, they didn't have to. They could have held Griffey until the July shopping sprees and wait for some rich team this close to heaven to bowl them over with players. They could have insisted that the Reds do better than Tomko, Cameron, Perez and the what's-his-name to be identified later. They could have told Griffey that he'd made his public relations bed and could damned well lie in it.

They could have done any of these things because, well, this is America, and this is why Uncle Milt fought in Korea, by cracky.

They weren't forced to make this deal. They chose to. And now, they can do what the A's did and eat two years of dreadful pub, hoping that Pat Gillick hired enough smart scouts to keep this from becoming a total disaster.

If he did, the furor over the Griffey deal will subside, just as the steam created by the McGwire deal eventually dissipated. All the M's have to do is win, and soon, without their best player, their best drawing card and their first true superduperstar.

In short, the Reds' window of opportunity is now, and the Mariners' comes in three years. Any longer than now, and the Reds will find that saviors -- which is what Griffey is being paid to be, whether realistic or not -- don't engender patience in the audience.

Any longer than 2003, and the Mariners will find that trading one really good player for three or four so-so players is a sure way to get a general manager fired, and convince an owner to sell.

Other than that, it's just another cat-and-dog baseball deal. Just ask Billy Beane and Walt Jocketty. They only went gray over it.