''I'm a pretty sophisticated man,'' Mr. Hagemann said. ''I know what's happening with corporate America, but I honestly believed baseball was beyond that. I was wrong big time.''

The decision came from New York. The Atlanta Braves became part of the AOL Time Warner conglomerate in January when America Online merged with Time Warner. Since the merger, the company has eliminated nearly 2,500 jobs. One of those on the list of the eliminated was Mr. Hagemann, who was instrumental in the trade for John Smoltz, a skinny 19-year-old minor-league pitcher in the Detroit Tigers' farm system. Mr. Smoltz went on to become the National League Cy Young Award winner for the Braves in 1996.

According to Mr. Hagemann, he was done in by dot-com guys.

Costs did appear to play a role.

''It was a simple monetary decision,'' said one Braves official who exchanged his frankness for confidentiality. ''Sad but true. He cost too much.''

''Ah, John, you deserved it,'' Mr. Ford managed to say through the whole pouch of chewing tobacco wadded in his mouth. ''The question is: what took so long to fire you? We've been carrying you for years.''

It was a joke, but Mr. Hagemann grimaced as though he were wearing a pair of ill-fitting shoes. ''Yeah,'' he said. ''I went from the penthouse to the outhouse before the first pitch of spring training was thrown.''

Mr. Bassetti laughed, sipped his coffee and nodded. The same thing happened to him a few years ago. The Los Angeles Dodgers released him after 25 years. ''Whole damn game has changed,'' he said.

Baseball scouts do not make the Hall of Fame. When average fans talk about the greatest of all time, they do not speak the names of Tony Lucadello, who in 50 years of scouting signed 50 big leaguers to amateur contracts before putting a revolver in his mouth in 1989 on a high school ball field in his hometown, Fostoria, Ohio; Hugh Alexander, known as Uncle Hughie, who had no left hand, couldn't pitch or hit, but knew promise when he saw it; or Ralph DiLullo, who always dreamed of signing a Hall of Famer and once almost did. But the Chicago Cubs were too cheap to sign a kid named Sandy Koufax.