This isn't so much a column as it is a plea.

It's a plea to the people who hold the fate of baseball in their hands.

It's a plea to the people who have to negotiate the next labor deal -- the commissioner and the owners and the union and its players.

The game has recovered in many ways -- but not in every way. It has recovered in many towns -- but not in every town. And as a whole, this sport doesn't hold the same place in the American soul it held before August of 1994.

Our plea is simple: Don't shut down the game. Don't strike. Don't lock out. Don't head to the National Labor Relations Board. Find a way to make a deal -- somehow, anyhow.

This sport needs to get its act together -- because the alternative is disaster at best, suicide at worst.

"Stopping the game this time," says one prominent agent with ties to multiple sports, "would be fatal, plain and simple. Baseball would become, once and for all, a second-class form of entertainment."

We would like to think that isn't true. In fact, we've heard people on both sides tell us it isn't true. They can point to record attendance and record revenues since the last strike in 1994 and use those facts to convince themselves the game would survive the next work stoppage just the way it survived the previous (gulp) seven work stoppages.

But those are tricky facts and tricky numbers. The game has recovered in many ways -- but not in every way. It has recovered in many towns -- but not in every town.

And as a whole, this sport doesn't hold the same place in the American soul it held before August of 1994. Anyone in baseball who doesn't believe that, says renowned sports-marketing consultant Dean Bonham, "is heading the sport on a titanic course to disaster."

"If they think that, I hope they would rethink their position," Bonham says, "and at some point come to the understanding that Major League Baseball means nothing -- ZERO -- to our culture without one prime ingredient: the fans. Anybody who thinks a work stoppage would not be catastrophic to the game simply is not thinking clearly."

Once, we were optimistic that both sides were sufficiently aware of that reality and, eventually, reason would take over and no one would be crazy enough to force another shutdown. Now, we're not so sure.

We've seen the commissioner and his representatives undertake a staggering succession of stances these last few months that they know the Players Assocation can only regard as acts of war.

Because of that, we've seen the union and the players understandably recoil from an open dialogue on real issues, because they've grown so distrustful of the people on the other side of the table and their motives.

Well, at some point very soon, that hostility has to stop. Somehow, these people have to deal with each other as fellow adults who can -- and need to -- meet each other halfway and make a deal.

The last agreement -- inadequate as it may have been in addressing all the revenue-sharing and competitive-balance issues that face this sport -- laid out a road map for the next deal. Now both sides need to follow that map to the next deal.

Of course, that's the highway Paul Beeston, then MLB's chief operating officer, clearly was trying to follow last summer -- when the commissioner yanked the steering wheel out of his hands. It's too late to bring Beeston back now. But it isn't too late to reach an agreement that averts war, makes progress and acknowledges that neither side needs to "win" to constitute a successful deal.

It's not our job to propose the particulars of that deal. It's our job to point out the alternative if there's no deal. So we'll say this again: "Suicide" is not too strong a word to describe that alternative.

"This is not the same world that it was in 1995," says the same agent. "It's not the same economy as 1995. We're looking at a destroyed NASDAQ. People have lost trillions of dollars. And if there's another work stoppage, those people won't support baseball. They might flick on the TV once in a while, but they won't buy tickets.

"Our world is at such risk now, the ordinary rules no longer are what they were in our business. If we can't find a common ground to work together, we'll see the most unforgiving public in the history of sports."

Already, Bonham says, just the beat of the war drums has been enough for him to advise his clients in industry not to hitch their advertising futures to baseball as a whole.

"There are certainly teams out there that have shown a particular resilience and are a good value for sponsorship," Bonham says. "But as a league, as a sport, I'd be hard-pressed to recommend baseball to any major corporation right now. There's so much uncertainty right now, and there's likely to be a great deal of fan animosity. And when there is animosity, there's a rub-off effect on corporate sponsors."

But the advertising arena is just one of many ways the world is different from the world into which baseball emerged from its last labor nightmare. So how can this sport -- or any sport -- be sure this world would welcome it back as if nothing had changed?

"Mark Cuban said it well," Bonham says. "He said, 'We have to market ourselves now as though we're under attack.' And he's right. Major-league sports are under attack now more than at any time in history. There are so many sports and entertainment options out there that compete for the hearts and minds of fans that the impact of a work stoppage today is a lot different than it was a few years ago."

Except this time, people might do more than just find other things to do to fill their lives. They might actually be looking to exact revenge on a sport they cared about more than it cared about them.

"There's no doubt in my mind," says our agent, "that if there's a work stoppage, you'll see consequences nobody has ever seen in sports in the history of the United States. There is no likelihood the public will put up with another work stoppage. I predict you would see some of the most organized boycotts ever seen in United States sports."

How is baseball in any position to afford that backlash? The contraction fiasco this winter has left fingerprints in enough empty seats in enough cities. We don't want to contemplate the effects of the ultimate fiasco on baseball's place in America's hearts.

"There are two compelling questions," Bonham says. "One is: What is that place today, versus what it would be following another work stoppage? The second is: Does the younger demographic that's currently part of baseball's fan base have the same loyalty and patience that their fathers and mothers had? And I would suggest they don't. I would suggest they'd find other entertainment options."

Finally, there's one more issue that makes this a very different world: September 11 and all its consequences have ravaged many a bank account, shifted our priorities and eliminated our tolerance for any kind of labor strife in an industry like baseball.

"The patriotism that exists in this country is a double-edged sword," the agent says, "when people are disrespectful of what they have -- at a time when so many have so little."

"Fans have no interest," Bonham says, "in hearing billionaire owners saying the players are taking advantage of them. And they don't want to hear about players making millions, saying owners are taking advantage of them. They don't want to hear it, and they shouldn't have to hear it."

So Bonham's advice is that everybody just zip up their vocal chords, stop posturing to the public and lock themselves in a room until they have all this figured out.

Great idea. Can't happen. The locks aren't strong enough, and the issues aren't that easily solveable. But somehow, some way, they have to be solved. Or else we're afraid our next job will be looking for rumblings and grumblings in the indoor lacrosse league -- one of the many sports that will have moved past baseball on the new American totem pole if those ballpark gates are ever locked up again.

Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com.