Alan Schwarz, a contributor to ESPN The Magazine, is filing regular Pulsecards from spring training. Today he asks, "Can Mike Magnante save baseball?"

Frank Thomas is yapping about being underpaid. Barry Bonds wants to tell his family where he'll be playing next year. Gary Sheffield just wants to be appreciated.

Makes you wonder whether baseball players have finally let reality slip from their already tenuous grasp. But before you get too jaded, walk up to A's reliever Mike Magnante.

"When they offered me a two-year deal last year," Magnante told me today, "they put in a team option for 2002. My agent said, 'Why don't we try to get that option bumped up a bit?' I thought about it for about 10 minutes and said, 'No, leave it where it's at.' "

Is Magnante just another wacky lefthander? Should we check for lobotomy scars? Nope. He just wants to stay in Oakland -- just wants to keep making money for playing a game -- and having a relatively low option for next year makes it more likely for the A's to pick it up. Magnante will make $1.2 million next year. Had he gotten a higher number, the A's could very well find someone else after the season and send Magnante into the limbo of free agency at 36.

So while he looks down the locker room and sees Mark Guthrie with a $1.8 million deal and Rheal Cormier making $3 million, Magnante's ego takes a back seat to his brain. "I'm on a team I like, that I've been a part of, and that's good," he said with a smile. "I want to keep my salary down to the point where you'd have to be an idiot not to re-sign me. The reality is, I like it here."

In the arctic tundra of athlete consciences, a warm breeze of Magnanteminity.