It's not A-Rod or Jeter -- Jason Giambi is the man on the cover of ESPN The Magazine's baseball preview issue. In this two-part excerpt, Tim Keown explains why. Click here for Part 2.

You know that ache in your sports psyche, the one created by exorbitant salaries and ungrateful players and the growing chasm between professional athlete and fan? There's a good chance the A's could heal that. Why? Because this spring, while the plaintive, high-decibel whine of high-priced ballplayers is being heard throughout the land, the complaints ranging from money to respect to location and then back to money again, here in the A's clubhouse there is a smiling man. Here, there is a locker filled with double-ripped T-shirts, containing neither sleeves nor stomach. Here, there is happiness, banter, hope.

It looks like audition day for a boy band, or the set of a Muscle & Fitness photo shoot, with all the primping and preening and the hair -- oh, the hair. Bleached hair and frosted hair and one head of hair, belonging to eccentric lefty Barry Zito, that looks like it was soaked in redwood deck stain. The Anglo guys are butchering Spanish and the Latin guys are butchering English, and they're all laughing.

Baseball is a game, a fun game. Remember that part? These guys remember, or maybe they're too young to have forgotten in the first place. They're playing ball. For a living. Can you beat that? "This is a high-priced fraternity without the homework," says GM Billy Beane. "Look at us," says 24-year-old third baseman Eric Chavez. "Everyone can be who they are, or who they think they are. It has a lot to do with Jason. You don't have to earn anything with him. Put on a uniform, and you're part of the family."

As the game inches toward yet another collective bargaining Armageddon, ask yourself this: Does Bud Selig root for the A's? The A's present a problem. If they can win on a paltry payroll in a second-tier city with a third-tier building with fourth-tier attendance, then what's wrong with everybody else? "Sometimes I look out there and think, I had bigger crowds in Pony League," Giambi says of the atmosphere in Oakland. "Honestly, if we can't draw this year, we need to get out of Oakland. There's no reason people shouldn't come out and watch the A's this year."

Giambi is in the final year of his contract, and his future is the constant white noise accompanying the team. The A's made a six-year, $91 million offer that Giambi turned down because as much as $15 million would be deferred with no interest. He has expressed his desire to stay, and to take less money to remain with a team that he believes could be baseball's next dynasty. He has also kept quiet about his current contract, which will pay him that un-MVP-like but still livable 4 mil.

"Everybody says Jason hasn't said a word about his contract," Beane says. "They're wrong. Jason did say something about it. He said, 'Thank you.'"

Says Giambi, "I love it here. I want to stay. We've got great talent, my brother's on the team, I love playing for the manager. We're the same as we were when we were losing 97 games in '97. We had the most fun in baseball losing that year. Last year we had the most fun winning."

This article appears in the April 2 issue of ESPN The Magazine.

Tim Keown is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail tim.keown@espnmag.com.