Words 1. Actions 0.

They all say they want baseball, the people who can make that happen.

The players are begging for it. The commissioner assures us that the owners whose interests he serves are 100 percent committed to it. The peanut vendor, the beer guy, Joe Blow down the street in his throwback Seattle Pilots cap: They're all on board.

Of course, there is on board, and then there is on board.

And so Rob Manfred, the owners' man in the commish's office, said the other night that, golly, the owners really want to launch some sort of truncated season, but those darn players are being so darn greedy. They want their full prorated salaries, darn it, and the owners just can't do that.

Why, look at them over there, huddled in the soup line in their raggedy Armani. It's enough to make a strong man weep, isn't it?

In the meantime: "It's time get back to work," the head of the MLB Players Association, Tony Clark, says. "Tell us when and where."

"I'm not confident," Manfred rejoins.

Which invites this question: Then why are you commissioner?

Because, listen, a real commish would step up to the plate and take his cuts, to employ a painfully lazy baseball metaphor. Yes, the players will make goo-gobs of money if Manfred did that. But (also yes) the owners are making goo-gobs of money, too, and will continue to do so. Not even the small-market owners are going to have to subsist on PBJ if baseball gets going again.

Let's take my own crummy baseball team, the crummy Pittsburgh Pirates, as an example. The Pirates are no one's idea of big spenders, and yet they're paying Greg Polanco $35 mill over the next five years. They're paying pitcher Chris Archer $25.5 mill over the next six years. And Josh Bell, one of their few bonafide stars, will rake $4.8 mill in one season.

You can look at this two ways.

You can say, "See, these salaries are out of line, and small markets like the Pirates can't afford to pay them."

Or you can say, "How can these owners say they can't pay these salaries when they're paying them?"

See, the truth is, none of these owners, small markets or behemoth markets, is exactly destitute. So getting their man Manfred to hem and haw and stall is simple greed, too.

Which is why it's time for Manfred to stop doing that, and act like a commissioner.

It's time for him to say this to the owners: "You know what? I'm the commissioner. We're playing. Now. We owe it to the fans, and it's in the best interests of the game, which is part of the commissioner's historic mandate.

"If you guys don't like it, fire me. But as long as I'm commissioner, this is what we're doing."

He might not last five minutes, saying all that. But it would be a glorious five minutes.