In its Rookie Orientation Program, the N.B.A. conducts three-day seminars for those joining the league. In the seminars, the league even produces skits in which actors and actresses play out scenes that are true to the lives of athletes. Disreputable agents, drug dealers and scam artists come and go before their eyes.

The program is so successful that Major League Baseball adopted it. In one skit in its program last year, a beautiful young woman in a short, tight dress smiles at a player in a night club.

"She was really gorgeous and seemed so nice," said Mark Wohlers, a rookie pitcher for the Braves, who attended the program. "The player invited her back to his apartment. She asked if she could bring a few friends. He said fine. When they got to his place, she mixed him a drink. And threw in knockout drops. We then saw the woman and her friends empty the entire apartment, from his furniture to his wallet. They pulled up a van outside the home and loaded it up.

"But what was even more amazing was that at the end of this skit, the woman was introduced to us. She said, 'I'm on parole, and what you just saw is something I actually did many, many times.' "

Athletes were also warned of possible paternity suits or blackmail threats to call the players' wives. "I've seen hundreds of those incidents," said Bob Woolf, the sports agent. "Guys can get themselves into the strangest problems. I had one player who had three families in one town and fathered kids in each. And while the first family didn't know about the second and third, the second and third knew about the first." Knowing When To Step In

Despite the league's concerns, there are still limits on what they can accomplish.

"The most complex and difficult part of my job is balancing the individual's interests against the best overall interests of the game," said Fay Vincent, the commissioner of baseball. "I'm not worried about certain activities off the field. If some are, say, going to consort with ladies of the evening, then that's their business. But if they are going to be involved in affairs that impact directly on the game, like gambling or drugs, then I have to step in and try to do something about it. The hardest thing for me, though, is where to draw the line. And sometimes what you can do legally, and what you should do morally, gets fuzzy."

He used Lenny Dykstra, the Phillies' outfielder, as an example to make a point: When Dykstra cracked up his car because of drunken driving, endangering not only himself but his passenger, Philadelphia catcher Darren Daulton, and other drivers on the road, the police took action, but Vincent did not. "But when we learned he had large gambling debts, then I placed him on probation," said Vincent.