This Cash Still Doesn’t Register

Money, money, money.

The trade was halted, but the thumping goes on, baseball’s real green monster, swallowing our winter with a register-ringing gulp.

Money, money, money.

This off-season, more than ever, it’s not about the Guerreros, it’s about the Benjamins.

There’s money in trades. There’s money in tear-downs. In the case of the Dodgers, there’s money for nothing.

Used to be, we bemoaned baseball’s financial bent only upon the signing of a free agent. Now, money dictates every move, everywhere, from the dismantling of a blessed team to the remodeling of a cursed one.

It’s dull, it’s unimaginative, and it’s not worthy of what used to be the most delightful off-season in sport.

It even had its own name, remember? The hot stove league?

It’s now a gas-converted-temperature-regulated-pilot-controlled-knobs stove league.

If Jack McKeon were still making deals, he would no longer be known as Trader Jack, but Banker Jack.

Cigar smoke has been replaced by decimal points. Midnight handshakes occur not between scouts, but accountants.

The Dodgers took their best pitcher downtown because of money. The Milwaukee Brewers’ best hitter was run out of town because of money.

The Baltimore Orioles sadly think they have gone uptown because of money.

The World Series champion Florida Marlins are once again turning on their town because of money, shooting a first baseman to Chicago and the team MVP into nowhere.

And then there is the Alex Rodriguez-Manny Ramirez fiasco, a proposed trade of baseball’s two highest-paid players that was stalled Thursday because of the ... union?

These guys aren’t steelworkers, they’re sluggers, yet because their contract average is as important as their slugging average, the issue is being decided by a shop steward.

It’s probably too simple to suggest that if the Boston Red Sox really wanted Rodriguez from the Texas Rangers, they would simply take him and the $179 million remaining on his contract and shut their lobster traps.

Isn’t that the way it used to work? You wanted a guy, you gave up a guy, you announced the deal, and everyone went home to wrap presents?

That hasn’t happened here, of course, because the Red Sox want the player, but not his money, so they are asking him to pay a little, and the Rangers to pay a little, reducing the overall value of the contract and baseball’s bloated payroll, and union officials are saying, essentially, “Over our dead bonus checks.”

Which, of course, has made the Red Sox very mad.

“The players’ association’s intransigence and the arbitrary nature of its action are responsible for the deal’s demise today,” said Larry Lucchino, the Boston boss.

Say what? You know it has been a bad baseball winter when the most important quote sends you to the dictionary.

Remember when we were required to run no farther than the Baseball Register?

Here are some numbers those lawyers forgot to mention.

In the three years Rodriguez has been in Texas, the team has won fewer games and drawn fewer fans each year.

In the two games last season that Ramirez missed because of malingering and suspension, the Red Sox were 2-0.

Neither man has been a champion. Neither man has ever led a team to the heights promised by his paycheck.

Yet their respective clubs have held baseball hostage for four days trying to make the celebrated swap while a guy named Ivan Rodriguez quietly slipped out of Miami.

Remember him? He led the Marlins to a World Series championship, yet the team wanted to cut his pay by $2 million a year, so he’s pudging out of town.

All this money, and none of these baseball people can afford a history book.

The last two World Series champions were two teams whose combined payrolls would probably equal the Red Sox new payroll.

They didn’t win with money, they won with leaders, they won with a culture.

You can’t buy a guy’s willingness to be bowled over at home plate to save a playoff game, as Ivan Rodriguez did. You can’t buy a guy’s ability to throw his bat at a Roger Clemens pitchout, as David Eckstein did.

Recent records will show, you can’t buy winning until you have already begun to build it.

Six of the last eight World Series championships were won with team’s whose nucleus was homegrown talent.

Four of the last five World Series MVPs were homegrown players.

How much did the Marlins’ Josh Beckett make before winning that award for the Marlins last year? About one-twelfth of the salary of Alex Rodriguez.

You can’t buy Fighting Fish.

You can’t buy Cowboy Up.

Let’s see, the Red Sox come within five outs of the World Series, and for that monumental failure they fire their manager and gut the heart of their lineup?

The Rangers have the worst earned-run average in Major League Baseball (5.67) and yet they decide to trade their expensive hitter for . .. another expensive hitter?

I hope those teams eventually make that trade, because if they do, neither will win the World Series next year, proving again it’s about more than green.

That, and it will leave Nomar Garciaparra available to be swooped up by those penny-pinching Dodgers.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.