There are two words that should put fear in baseball fans and they aren’t “BALCO Investigation” or “grand jury.” The words are “salary cap,” and while nobody is spending much time discussing the upcoming labor negotiations, it appears the owners will again bring up the two words that union head Donald Fehr and his negotiating committee will refuse to acknowledge. Major League Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement (CBA) ends on December 19, and even though the league is flush with money from multiple revenue streams, the owners want to tighten their payrolls and will offer a two-word solution.

Salary Cap.

Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos is not in commissioner Bud Selig’s inner circle. Angelos made life difficult for Selig in the fall of 2004 when he threatened to sue MLB if it moved the Montreal Expos to nearby Washington. MLB eventually cut a deal with Angelos to make him happy and Washington landed the Expos.

But Angelos, who has been marginalized by baseball’s press, told the Washington Examiner earlier this week that, “In the long run, I think that baseball must have a salary cap. You can’t expect to pay higher salaries to players without the increased revenue, and that means higher ticket prices. The cost of a hot dog and a beer will price a night at the park out of the range of most families, and we can’t do that. So yes, I do think that a cap in MLB is something we really have to look at for the long-term success of the league and the competitiveness of the teams.”

Angelos is joining a group of owners that includes Pittsburgh’s Kevin Mc-Clatchy and San Diego’s John Moores, who have been vocal about MLB’s inability to control players’ salaries.

In 2005, McClatchy said he was rooting for the NHL owners to get a salary cap in that sport’s lockout. The Pirates have been among baseball’s neediest cases under McClatchy’s stewardship. Even a sparkling new stadium hasn’t helped resurrect the Pirates’ ailing franchise.

“We’re not New York,” he told a Pittsburgh TV station. “Nobody should think we’re going to spend at that level. If you look at our market size in comparison to all the other teams, we’re right about what we’re spending.”

McClatchy is spending about $47 million on players this year, which is about $14 million more than he did in 2005. All, big league teams are spending about 8.9% more in players’ salaries than they did last year. The reason is simple: Money is flowing into the industry at record levels.

ESPN (owned by the Walt Disney Company) has a new eight-year, $2.4 billion agreement with MLB that includes all future technology rights. FOX’s six-year, $2.5 billion contract to show a Saturday game of the week, the All-Star Game, and selected playoffs games, is coming to an end, but the network figures to sign a new deal very soon with MLB.

MLB also has money coming in from national marketing agreements with companies, it has started to market itself globally, and ticket prices have skyrocketed, especially the high end tickets at baseball’s newest stadiums.

Baseball’s real problem stems from the disparity in cable television rights fees at the local level. The Yankees and Mets own regional sports cable TV networks, as do the Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Indians. The Chicago Tribune owns the Cubs and WGN, Time Warner owns the Atlanta Braves and TBS. The Tribune Company is also a partner with Jerry Reinsdorf and the Chicago White Sox in Sports Net Chicago. Even the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim just signed a 10-year, $550 million cable TV deal with FOX Sports Net West. Cable TV money separates teams and provides big-market franchises with the wherewithal to spend big dollars. There isn’t, however, much sharing of TV dollars.

There is also is a loophole in the CBA that frees teams from sharing revenue with other franchises and is enraging owners like McClatchy. According to an obscure clause in the 2002 collective bargaining agreement, teams can deduct the “Stadium Operations Expenses,” as reported on an annual basis from the revenue they have to share with the rest of the league.

In other words, unless a new collective bargaining agreement closes that loophole, the Yankees, Mets, Giants, and Cardinals can redirect their revenue sharing into their new stadiums, meaning owners like Mclatchy, who want additional revenue sharing, may end up with fewer dollars than before.

There will be people who say that the upcoming collective bargaining sessions will be easy compared to the negotiations of 2002,when the players agreed to take less money and allow for greater revenue sharing. They will cite two reasons: the partnership between owners and players that brought about the World Baseball Classic, and the new drug testing agreement that toughened the penalties for steroid use.

But the WBC partnership was a win-win for both owners and players attempting to market the game globally, and there were many outside pressures on both sides to get a new steroids agreement in place. There are no outside pressures on the collective bargaining agreement talks this year.

Angelos has fired the first shot in what may be a contemptuous and drawn-out negotiation. It’s awfully quiet on the bargaining front right now, but baseball fans had better get ready for a repeat of 1990, 1994, 2002, and get used to the threats of a strike or a lockout if Angelos reflects the thoughts of his fellow owners and brings up the two most dreaded words in baseball: Salary Cap.