The one thing you can say about the people at Major League Baseball, they sure know how to keep their sport on the front page even as the dead of winter approaches. MLB has created a serial story with a new chapter each day.

Regarding contraction, the muck thickens. Commissioner Bud Selig has had to admit he cannot ram through the elimination of two teams for the coming year. There is little question that under current labor laws MLB must negotiate the effects of any such contraction with the players union. That has not happened and the players filed a grievance.

It may be that contraction itself must be negotiated, but not likely, and that is why the players union is willing to give on that issue if the owners will leave contraction for discussion in 2003. However, because the collective bargaining agreement between the MLB and the players is also up, the players union wants to use the leverage the owners have gift-wrapped for them on the contraction issue as part of the effort to get the new deal done.

If the owners will forgo the contraction issue until 2003 and agree on a new contract, then the players union will drop its arbitration over whether the owners can ever reduce the number of teams without negotiating with the players first.

There’s more. Jeffrey Loria, the owner of the Montreal Expos, has a deal to buy the Marlins from John Henry. Loria entered into this deal believing contraction was going to take place for the 2002 season and would include the Expos. He is adamant about completing the deal with or without contraction.

The owners want the Marlins deal to go through because they don’t want Loria to have the windfall of a buyout of the Expos by MLB when contraction finally happens. Besides, the Marlins are in financial trouble too, and the owners want o free up John Henry to be part of the Red Sox purchase or to buy the Anaheim Angels from Disney.

Wait. If Loria is out of Montreal, and there is no contraction, what happens to the Expos? Incredibly, MLB is considering taking over the team in a form of a receivership, a lame duck, in other words. MLB would provide the GM and all the staff, including the on-field manager and coaches.

This proposal would allow a team without a future, in a city without fans, in an operation where no one has anything at stake in winning, to be competing in a regular season of MLB. Everyone from management to players would be looking for a job. What better way to please than losing games to the guys you hope hire you next year? Unbelievable.

The only hope under this scenario would be the Expos turning into the Bad News Bears and winning the whole darn thing. At the Tuesday meeting of the owners in Chicago, the issue of an ownership change in Florida was not on the agenda. Loria believes Selig has committed himself to get the Marlins sale done. Surprise.

Meanwhile, the Minnesota courts are going to hear the issue of whether the state can step in and say no if MLB wants to eliminate the Twins. Florida courts have the same issue before them as to the Marlins and Devils Rays.

It is remarkable that the owners’ consistency in blunders continues unabated. So the rich profits will continue in franchise values, no matter what MLB tried to tell Congress last week with its flim-flam of numbers.

And, yes, the trades and free-agent signings go on with the numbers continuing to reach some other heaven that we can’t see.

Don’t forget, the reception for former UMaine trainer Wes Jordan is at 2 p.m. today at Lengyel Gym at the University of Maine in Orono.

Old Town native Gary Thorne is an ESPN and NBC sportscaster.