GREATNESS in baseball is often marked by generations of fans. As time passes, perspectives change. They may grow stronger. They may fade. Who's chattering these days about the St. Louis Browns? The Minneapolis Lakers? It is this psychology that presents many, many endless debates about the greatest teams and players. Mantle or Mays? Williams or DiMaggio? Unitas or Starr? Russell or Chamberlain? Howe or Hull? Dr. J or Jordan?

Collectors, meanwhile, get to weigh in on such titanic debates with their pocketbooks. The memorabilia marketplace measures greatness in economic terms -- prices are driven by supply and demand. Indeed, when high demand collides with low supply, the result is a price pushed higher. Mark McGwire used to be a much-coveted but hard-to-get autograph. Prices were Ruthian. The supply for McTGwire-signed baseballs remains low -- Big Mac resists autographing -- but since the first 70 home run guy took center stage with alleged steroid use, the price of his signed items has dropped like a bloop single. Interest in him and other Alleged Steroid Club members is . . . eh!

Consider teams, world championship teams. Belov3ed teams, whose greatness departed when the beloved team and its beloved players were uprooted and moved from their beloved homes. Of course, we're talking about the Brooklyn Dodgers. Not the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Brooklyn Dodgers. Brooklyn, not the Chavez Ravine; not the Bronx, not Coogan's Bluff. Brooklyn.

Sweet Spot surveyed veteran observers of the memorabilia scene, some of them passionate Brooklyn Dodger fans, and found a majority of people agreeing that the graying of this generation means a fading interest in the Brooklyn Dodgers, with the exception of items associated with Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella and Gil Hodges and perhaps a few others among the beloved.

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