Major League Baseball is a business. Except when it’s not.

San Francisco Giants pitcher Matt Cain was faced with this duality at a press conference Friday. When asked about his potential free agency being just a year away, he made it clear it would take a doozy of an offer from the Giants if the team wanted to prevent him from hitting the market.

“You definitely love being in San Francisco, and we do,” Cain said in a San Jose Mercury News blog post. “We have a year ‘til free agency. That’s something as a player you think about, having that opportunity. It’s hard to say what will happen in these next several months.”

Spoken like a true politician.

Fans never like hearing their favorite players talk like this. They take it personally that Cain wouldn’t want to stay in San Francisco for cheap because they feel they have a personal relationship with Cain and the Giants in general. It’s like watching mommy and daddy fight.

Baseball fans understand great players deserve big paydays. Just like at any other job, exceptional talent should be rewarded.

At the same time, though, fans should be able to expect franchise players like Cain to be around next year. How is someone supposed to develop a sense of ownership over a team when all the best players skip town in search of an extra $1 million?

Prior to 1975, when the contract of a big league ballplayer expired, he couldn’t sign a contract with another team for one year. This encouraged players to negotiate with their current team and increased the likelihood they would stay there longer.

That year, however, a labor relations arbitrator ruled the practice illegal and the era of modern free agency began.

In most businesses, keeping employees whose contracts expired against their will would seem repugnant. But Cain’s current contract pays him $15 million this year, and if the five-year, $77.5 million deal signed this offseason by free agent pitcher C.J. Wilson is any indication of the market for Cain’s services, the longest-tenured Giant will soon not find himself strapped for cash.

Before modern free agency, Cain might have been inclined to give the Giants a discount just so he could keep making money. He would still pull in tens of millions of dollars, he would be fairly compensated and the fans might not have to watch their favorite pitcher jump ship so soon.

In a business where the minimum salary is north of $400,000 per year, invoking labor law to settle contract disputes seems distasteful. Cain should pitch not just for the money, but also for his fans.

If Major League Baseball is a business after all, part of its product should be the idea players are staples of their communities. It should be rare for a hero to leave his hometown.

Alex Grotewohl can be reached at [email protected].