by Doug Alexander

(Doug Alexander is executive director of the Partnership for Commonsense Justice.)

When it is finally written, baseball's epitaph will not be about steroids, outrageous prices for a hot dog and a beer at the ballpark, or World Series games played in the snow. It won't be about arrogant and overpaid players, advertisements on team jerseys, the designated hitter or whether or not Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame.

It won't be about beer coming out of the stands, it will be about things going in.

The end of baseball will come about when all of the fun is finally sucked out of the game by people engaged in America's other favorite pastime. . .litigating.

Baseball is not alone as a target for litigation, but the game definitely endures more than its share of strange and unnecessary lawsuits.

The courtroom may eventually replace the batting cage as the best venue for watching baseball action and the 7^th inning stretch might be set aside for depositions and mediation.

Kids won't be playing baseball at recess anymore because it requires running and running is no longer allowed at recess thanks to a Broward County, Florida school board edict that allows principals to ban running if they are concerned about liability. And we wonder why obesity is so prevalent in America.

Kids won't be playing youth baseball anymore because the parents of a 12-year-old sued their son's coach and the league he was playing in when he lost a ball in the sun during practice and got hit in the head. Coaches in another youth league were told that they could not sit players down for misbehaving. . .everybody plays no matter what. That's a good way to encourage better behavior.

Women quit going to the ballpark because special ladies day ticket pricing and giveaways were banned after the Oakland A’s were sued by a man who wasn’t given a commemorative cap at a Mother’s Day promotion that was preceded by a 5k “Race for the Cure” event. I would submit to you that free hats on Mother’s Day is not discrimination, it's marketing. Nevertheless, the A’s decided to settle for $510,000 rather than endure the cost of the court process.

Everyone else quit going to games when nets where put up all around ballparks instead of just behind home plate and home runs and foul balls were disallowed after enough people sued because they got hit with balls flying into the stands. In one of many such suits against baseball teams, a patron injured by a foul ball claimed the team had an obligation to issue more explicit warnings.

How about a sign on every seat that says “Don't sit here if you can't duck.”

If you have ever been to the ballpark and read the back of your ticket, you know that you are warned that balls occasionally come into the stands. Common sense tells you the same thing. Apparently that was not enough warning for this particular “fan” who claimed she didn't know what a foul ball was.

Forgive me for exaggerating the possible outcome of all of these lawsuits, baseball is not going away anytime some, but each of these situations and lawsuits actually happened.

The filing of frivolous lawsuits continues unabated and small businesses bear the brunt of many of them. We're not talking about Yankees big or multi-national corporations in China accused of putting lead in paint. We're talking about “mom and pop” stores all over America whose only transgression is having liability insurance, something they may not be able to afford once they finish paying to defend themselves in court or as in the case of the Oakland A's, to settle in order to avoid a protracted court process.

Legitimate lawsuits are about people. Real people with real issues who deserve a day in court and real people with real businesses who aren't necessarily negligent because someone suffered an injury on the premises.

But far too many lawsuits aren't about people at all. Most of the time they are about money and only about money. Our penchant for seeking compensatory satisfaction for every slight, real or imagined, has made the cost of litigation higher in the United States than in any other country. An estimated 2 per cent of our gross national product is to going to pay for litigation, twice that of other industrialized countries and three times what is spent in France and Great Britain.

So the next time your hear someone singing Take Me Out to the Ball Game you may want to think about suing them for false advertising.