Have you ever had an idea so delicious that the fact that it can't happen is no impediment to the fantasy?

Say, like punching out Michael Douglas in a bar and going home with Catherine Zeta-Jones?

	Would Dusty Baker consider moving across the Bay to manage the A's? He won't discuss his future until after the World Series.

So it is with heavy heart and leaden head that we report that Dusty Baker almost certainly will not be the next manager of the Oakland Athletics.

We'll forego for a moment the fact that there shouldn't be any new manager of the Oakland A's. Art Howe is doubling his salary, quadrupling his public exposure, and will feel eight times the weight every time his lineup card reads "Jeff D'Amico" rather than "Barry Zito."

Fact is, he should never have been allowed to leave by general manager Billy Beane and owner Steve Schott, no matter who the next guy turns out to be.

Reports in both San Francisco and New York say the replacement will be A's bench coach Ken Macha, and the best guess at contract terms so far reads two years and $900,000. But nothing's been finalized yet, and in a semi-perfect world wouldn't be.

Not because Macha isn't worthy of managing a major-league team. But the weirdball scenario is still standing there in front of us all.

Johnnie B. Baker.

While still killing time with this World Series tripe, Baker is not currently interested in discussing the matter. So the Cubs and Brewers and Indians and Mariners and, yes, perhaps even the A's must wait until either the Angels or Giants are crowned champions before they'll have their chance at enticing Baker to manage their team.

Surely, Baker stands to land a lucrative new contract when all is said and done, whether it's from the Cubs, who are looking for a manager and seem willing to pay, or the Giants, who are not looking for a manager and might be smart enough to re-sign him.

But then there is A's owner Steve Schott, who had to birth a litter of kittens to pay Howe the million dollars a year on his current contract -- the one the Mets reportedly just doubled.

While the A's might not seem all that keen on paying a new manager four times what they paid only grudgingly to the old guy, it's still a fascinating thought that begs the question: How much is it worth to you to stick your finger in another guy's eye up to the second knuckle?

Understand here that Schott and San Francisco owner Peter Magowan regard each other with the same mutual feeling one normally finds with firemen and arsonists. The most charitable way to put it is that each man dreams nightly of driving the other into the sea.

But would Steve Schott make Peter Magowan a fool for $4 million? For $3 million and a personal lake stocked with crafty yet suicidal trout?

Imagine the bloodsport here -- a passion play of competing interests, fueled by greed, envy, mistrust and insecurity. Why, punching out Michael Douglas hardly holds a candle to it.

Baker is still in play, although his options are dwindling. The Mariners are, by all accounts, not going to match Baker's presumed asking price of $3M-plus. The Cubs might pay that, but the notorious Former Cub Factor tends to prevent long bursts of success. The Indians are conducting a stealth search so far beneath the radar that groundhog citizens' groups are complaining about the noise.

And then there are the Brewers -- but stop, stop, you're killing me.

No, the only real options for Baker are to re-sign with the Giants (the right thing to do), or throw money and caution to the wind and make a run at the A's job (the perverse thing to do).

Now perversity might not be your cup of meat, as Dylan said. But Art Howe ended up, perversely enough, in New York after helping drag the Athletics out of Contraction Row, in part for the money but also because general manager Billy Beane saw less in Howe than the American League standings did.

Now that's perverse.

And Baker, who has a case of the same working on him in San Francisco from owner Peter Magowan, feels as Howe did, that winning is hard enough without having the boss convinced that it's really losing.

Still, it can't happen. A glorious yet lost opportunity that can only make Bay Area baseball even weirder than it already is. That can only be good for the game.

And nobody would more thankful than Michael Douglas.

Ray Ratto is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to ESPN.com