As you watch Bud Selig's brow arch in pain at the podium, it's time to think once again of the one fundamental truth you need to remember about the business of baseball:

Nothing is ever what it appears to be.

So let's consider the bulletins emanating from the latest in a never-ending string of baseball owners' meetings:

A new contract for the commissioner. ... The commish revealing that the sport supposedly lost $500 million this year. ... Selig saying he's actually welcoming the opportunity to sing the We're So Broke We Need Our Antitrust Blues to Congress next week. ... The commish insisting that despite all the mounting obstacles, "we will contract." ... Etc., etc., etc.

How are you supposed to digest all that? It's not as hard as it seems. Just remind yourself:

But why stop there? If the financial picture is so bleak, why would Expos owner Jeffrey Loria and Marlins owner John Henry want to sell their teams -- and then leap right back into the same paralyzing pit of bleakness by buying other teams?

Nothing in baseball is ever what it appears to be.

Let's take those bulletins one by one. You'll see what we mean.

Selig's contract extended three years
If commissioners of baseball were elected by the American people, and then Bud Selig had his term extended unanimously, well, that would be one heck of a story.

But commissioners aren't elected by the public. They're not elected by fans, players or hot dog vendors. They're elected by 30 owners, voting in a closed room, with no eyewitnesses and no earwitnesses.

So when those men announce Bud Selig has just had his term extended unanimously, you should regard it as being no different than a team announcing its manager has just had his contract extended a year so his players won't consider him a lame duck.

These owners have just embarked on another messy trip to the labor battlefield, and "battle" is the word of the day, too. These sides have spent the last two weeks fighting over a matter as simple as the date on which they'll argue contraction issues before an arbitrator. So what happens when they get to the difficult issues?

Whatever happens, we know -- and the union knows -- who the commissioner will be. And that's all that was accomplished by this announcement. It was these owners' way of saying they won't be kicking Bud Selig out the back door if negotiations run amok, as they did seven years ago with poor Richard Ravitch.

So great. Now everybody knows Selig is still the commissioner and will continue to be the commissioner. We only have one question:

If the business of baseball is in such disastrous shape, how come he wants to keep leading it for five more years?

Selig says baseball lost $500 million
We're not going to pretend the business of baseball is a model of perfection. Obviously, franchises like the Expos are a debacle that need to be dealt with. And the system needs significant tinkering.

But when the commissioner says 25 teams lost money, that the industry lost $500 million -- in a season in which it actually took in more money than in any year in history -- well, hold on.

And he can claim, if he wants, that when he reveals these figures in detail next week at an antitrust hearing in Washington, "there will be no more dispute." But you can bet your Expos season tickets that the general public, the House of Representatives and the Players Association will be doing more disputing than Al Gore's Florida legal team.

"As Don (Fehr) likes to say, since 1890, we've been hearing that no franchise makes money and there's not enough left-handed pitching," said Gene Orza, associate general counsel of the Players Association. "So I find it interesting that this week alone, we've learned that a member of the Blue Ribbon commission (George Mitchell) wants to become part of an ownership group (to buy the Red Sox).

"And he wants to join a former owner (Tom Werner) who was out of the sport and now wants to get back in. And they're in competition with a group that includes another former owner (John McMullen) who's also trying to get back in. To me, this doesn't fit the profile of a sport that's in trouble."

But why stop there? If the financial picture is so bleak, why would Expos owner Jeffrey Loria and Marlins owner John Henry want to sell their teams -- and then leap right back into the same paralyzing pit of bleakness by buying other teams?

Does that make sense?

Oh, we're sure that a decent number of teams are losing money, in the narrowest definition of the term. But in sports, you don't judge businesses purely by their year-to-year profit-and-loss statements. You also judge them by wins, losses and, especially, franchise value.

"Why does the price keep going up and up and up for these franchises?" wondered one longtime agent Tuesday. "You don't look at profits and losses of these franchises. Just track what these people paid for their franchises and what they're worth now. The fact is, this has always been a depreciation, tax-writeoff, equity-building type operation. That's how you judge the baseball business."

Selig wildly disputes that assessment, of course. But we are in an age now in which more media companies own clubs than ever before -- Disney (Angels), Fox (Dodgers), Time/Warner/AOL (Braves), the Tribune Company (Cubs), Tom Hicks' Southwest Sports Group (Rangers). The New York Times Co. is trying to join the Red Sox bidding. The Yankees just created their own cable network.

What's the value of those franchises to those companies as programming alone? How are the rights fees -- which those companies pay to themselves -- computed in the profit-and-loss statements?

Maybe Selig has every answer to every one of those questions. But Congress will be asking. And the union will be asking. So he'd better be ready with a better answer than the one he gave Tuesday to a question about how he could explain why so many successful billionaire businessmen could become such bad businessmen only when they got into baseball.

"It's the system," Selig claimed. "It's a very easy answer. I have an 8-year-old granddaughter who could answer that question after she looks at the numbers."

He also has an 8-year-old granddaughter whose grandfather has sure made a lot of profit on his initial $150,000 investment in the Brewers.

Selig says "We will contract"
By all rational measures, it's time for the commissioner to concede there isn't time to pull off contraction in time for next season. Instead, the commissioner will go only as far as saying he is taking this day by day.

Well, count the days. There aren't many.

Spring training is 10 weeks away. There's no schedule. There's a lawsuit raging in Minnesota. There's a union grievance weeks away from being heard, let alone resolved. There's a congressional antitrust hearing on deck. No particulars of a dispersal draft have been agreed on.

And all that has busted out at a time when Selig hasn't even named the teams to be contracted yet.

When he does, if he does, there will be more lawsuits, more grievances, more hearings -- and a big rumble of unhappiness from 10 minor-league towns, to boot.

Yet when the commish was asked if he was convinced there just wasn't time to pull this off this winter, he said: "I'm not ready to make that judgment. ... We're taking this day by day, hour by hour."

The most he was willing to concede was that "time is running. There's no doubt about that."

He keeps reflecting back to how the Braves moved to Atlanta and the Pilots moved to Milwaukee just days before the season began. But there's a difference between teams moving and teams disappearing off the face of the planet.

If they're going to play, they might need to accumulate some players. If they're not going to play, the other clubs need a whole different schedule than the ones they printed on their schedule magnets in September.

Yet Selig insists there is no "drop-dead date." He says ownership anticipated every one of these roadblocks. So while those roadblocks mean delays, he admits "baseball will contract. I just can't give you a precise timetable because in some part, it's out of our hands."

No one doubts there is strong sentiment among owners to contract. You can make a case for it. The union, given the right context, might even have been convinced to go along with it.

But there was never time to make it happen this winter. So the politically correct thing for Selig and his owners to do would have been to concede that from the beginning. Wouldn't it?

Then everyone could have started negotiating the new labor deal -- and contraction in 2003 -- without first trying to jam an issue this controversial down the union's larynx. That was an act of war, not an act of negotiation.

And as we've said many times, the tolerance of the American public right now for a war among baseball people is zero -- if not less than zero.

At a time when September 11 has changed all of our lives, cost thousands of people their jobs and plunged the country into recession, does the commissioner really expect sympathy when he claims a $3.5-billion industry has problems?

It does have problems. But are they as bleak as he made them out to be?

"To be honest with you," said one baseball official who attended the meeting, "it's just the same old stuff. How many times have you heard it before?"

The commissioner, of course, portrayed it as very different stuff. But repeat after us: Nothing in baseball is what it appears to be.

Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com.