NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - It's never been so tough to be a baseball fan.

The game appears heading towards a devastating players' strike, one that undoubtedly would disgust and possibly forever alienate millions of the sports' remaining fans.

Management argues it desperately needs concessions, and float threats of teams going bankrupt or not being able to make payroll in order to argue their case.

Even a feel-good event like the All-Star game ends with controversy and catcalls as it was halted after 11 innings without a winner.

But a look at how some of the richest -- and the poorest -- teams are acting right now suggests that management isn't really expecting to provoke the sport's sixth strike, and ninth work stoppage, in the past 31 seasons.

Large market teams such as the Yankees, Dodgers and Braves, as well as the poorest team, the Montreal Expos, have either traded for players or are seeking trades for players for a late-season pennant push. If the owners believed there was a good chance that this season wouldn't make it to the end once again, there would be no sense in making the moves.

And some top observers of the game told me this week they remain optimistic, despite a history that says there's never been a new labor deal without some kind of halt in play since the first strike in 1972.

Fay Vincent was the commissioner of baseball when the last labor battles began, the ones that led up to the sport's longest strike that wiped out the 1994 World Series. He was forced out in 1992 by owners who thought he wasn't taking a hard enough stand with the union. He said that the game's financial problems are reason for hope, not despair, among those hoping to see the games continue throughout the summer.

Former Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent says he doesn't think this year's World Series is at risk because baseball can't afford such a devasting strike.

"Baseball has way too much debt. I think it leaves you where baseball can't afford any major confrontation," he said. "I think (Baseball Commissioner) Bud (Selig) wakes up and says 'I'm going to get best deal I can,' or if there's a strike, it's a very short strike. I would be very surprised if the World Series gets blown away again."

Andrew Zimbalist, a professor of economics who has written about baseball economics and consulted with both owners and the players' union, told me he thinks that the two sides are probably not nearly as far apart as their public stances suggest.

He believes the players' union will reluctantly accept a greater share of the ticket and local broadcast dollars flowing from the large revenue teams to the small revenue teams, as well as some kind of internal tax that would penalize teams for having large payrolls, even though both moves would slow the growth in player salaries. He also thinks that some of the other demands of owners are mostly negotiating positions at this point.

"Both sides go the bargaining table holding cards quite close to the chest and bluffing like crazy," Zimbalist said.

He also thinks the players are concerned about the risk of another strike at this point, even if not striking would give the owners much greater leverage in the offseason.

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"I think players are reluctant to go on strike due to damage to the game and damage to individual careers," Zimbalist said, who added, despite his optimism. "I don't think there are many people out there including (players' union executive director) Don Fehr and the owners who actually know what is going to happen."

Despite management's horror stories and some financial stresses for some teams, the worst reports of financial woes remain as easy to believe as Enron's and WorldCom's former claims of financial success.

Friday, the New York Times, quoting unnamed baseball sources, reported that the Detroit Tigers and Tampa Bay Devil Rays had to go to the bank to get the money to meet payroll last month. But the way the teams got the loans they needed was by proving to the banks they were due to get distribution from the Major League Baseball central fund.

The central fund payments are not some form of bailout used to support weak teams. They are the payments due to every team that come from national sources, such as national TV and marketing payments.

Baseball's own figures suggest that going into this season hundreds of millions of dollars have built up in that fund in the years since the last strike, a fact confirmed to me last December by Rob Manfred, MLB's executive vice president of labor relations. When the money from the fund goes to a financially strapped team, such as the Tigers or Devil Rays, it's more like a taxpayer getting his or her tax refund that they earned themselves than it is like a federal bailout of an airline or other troubled company.

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The talks of bankruptcy or missed payrolls probably can't be taken more seriously at this point than the hopes of fourth-place teams to make a second-half charge to the World Series. But threats of bankruptcy are probably not fanciful if baseball does lose a postseason the way it did during its fifth strike in 1994.

Owners and baseball players are both aware of what's at stake if another strike wipes out this year's Series. That's why, despite history, I'm still hoping we won't hear "Strike Six" ever called.