For those of us who are easily amused, the best cheap entertainment over the last week or so has been the ongoing saga of the Yankees’ attempts to pry Randy Johnson loose from the fevered clutch of the Arizona Diamondbacks through the intermediary Los Angeles Dodgers. The predictable collapse of the deal amid weird rumors, mutual recriminations, and ominous accusations pushed the fiasco into absurd territory charted only by Major League Baseball’s pathetic attempts to secure a publicly financed stadium in Washington, D.C.

Apparently, the Big Unit deal would have sent the possibly injured Javier Vazquez and prospects Eric Duncan and Dionner Navarro from the Bronx to L.A. The Dodgers would have sent Shawn Green, Kaz Ishii, and Brad Penny, plus middle reliever Yhency Brazoban and a middling prospect to Arizona. The Diamondbacks would have sent Ishii, reliever Mike Koplove, and Johnson, a 41-year-old with serious knee and back problems, to the Yankees. Money would have flown about in all directions.

Never has so much fuss been made over such a lot of undesirable players, seemingly every one of whom has issues. According to some reports, Vazquez didn’t want to be shipped off to L.A.; to make the point, he refused to submit to a medical examination and made it clear that he would exercise his right to demand a trade after the 2005 season if the deal went though. Green and Johnson, both of whom have no-trade clauses, seemed to want contract extensions in exchange for waiving them.

Nothing much is wrong with any of this. If Vazquez wanted to pitch for the Dodgers, he wouldn’t have signed a contract extension with the Yankees last winter. Green and Johnson, likewise, are fully within their rights to demand concessions for waiving their no-trade clauses.

The real hold-up – and the cheap entertainment – came from the zaniness of the teams involved. It’s hard to tell which comes off worst in the aborted transaction.

Certainly, the Diamondbacks look like boobs who have been saved from their own idiocy. After a season in which they lost 111 games despite having the best pitcher in the National League, one would assume they would perceive a Johnson deal as a chance to acquire a lot of cheap young talent to speed what looks to be a long, excruciating rebuilding process. Instead, they were set to accept a package built around Green and Penny.

Due to a ruined shoulder, Green has gone from a tremendous defensive outfielder to an execrable first baseman, and he hit fewer home runs in the last two seasons combined than he did in 2001. He will make $16 million in 2005. Penny, due to a rare nerve condition in his elbow, may either be fit for spring training or finished with his baseball career. He is due for salary arbitration, and will probably make close to $8 million in 2005.

In other words, Joe Garagiola Jr. was set to trade Randy Johnson for players the Dodgers would have to pay other teams to take off their hands! The Mets ought to get involved in this deal posthaste. Garagiola Jr. would doubtless salivate at the chance to acquire superstar talents like Mike Piazza, Tom Glavine, and Cliff Floyd.

It’s harder to pin the Dodgers down as morons. Actually, they could be celebrated as heroes. Their mysterious refusal to consummate the deal occasioned high comedy when Yankees President Randy Levine embarrassed himself by whining that, “from here on in, we will think long and hard before we ever do business with the Dodgers again.” Provoking this outburst was a service to baseball fans everywhere.

Glasses should also be raised to Dodgers GM Paul DePodesta, who explained his reasons for killing the deal thusly: “There were specific things in this deal that didn’t work out. There were a lot of things to work out, a lot of things that were tentatively agreed on, but still details that we needed to work through.”

However we may marvel at De-Podesta’s oratorical skill, it’s hard to understand the Dodgers’ game plan. Vazquez is still one of the most valuable young pitchers in the game, and he could have been peddled to a team like the White Sox or Phillies after the season, if necessary. His refusal to take a physical cannot be taken seriously as a reason the trade fell through; the teams involved have the right and the means to force him, if necessary, to submit to one.

Furthermore, while a flowchart the size of this newspaper would be required to keep track of all the moving parts in this trade, it seems that the Dodgers would in the end have saved about $12 million this season had they not backed out of the deal. That would have been enough to cover the costs of the five-year, $55-million contract they appear to have given J.D. Drew, a young superstar on the rise. (Of course, the Drew signing begs the question of why the Dodgers chose not to re-sign Adrian Beltre, whom they patiently developed into a franchise player only to sit by as the Mariners signed him to a bargain contract that will pay him $13 million a year).

The Yankees, though, come off worst of all. They have been trying to acquire Johnson for a year now, and all their efforts have come to naught. In their zeal, they seem to have forgotten to ask two questions.

First, why exactly is Johnson, a cranky old man with serious health issues who wants a preposterously lucrative extension, so desirable that they are willing to trade a fine young pitcher and their only real prospects for him?

More importantly, given that Johnson will only approve a trade to the Yankees and that Garagiola has, on available evidence, the shrewdness of a kumquat, why haven’t they simply offered up a package of Enrique Wilson and Bubba Crosby? They could point out that the last time Johnson wanted a trade, in 1998, he pitched horribly and did his club (the Mariners) no favors with his constant outbursts in the press and grouchy demeanor in the clubhouse. It would be equally simple to point out that since the five-time Cy Young award winner will go to the Bronx or nowhere, the Diamondbacks will have to take what they’re given, and like it.

In these dark days, such logic seems beyond the Yankees. Granted that their problems in this deal may come from over thinking, the end result is still that they’ve proved unable to outwit the hapless Diamondbacks. It’s understandable that Yankee fans might not find this all that funny, but everyone else is clutching their sides with laughter.