The integrity of the game is a phrase heard often in any discussion of steroids and baseball. Major League Baseball says players have to be tested to ensure the integrity of the game; each player who tests positive damages the integrity of the game.

There is no test, on the other hand, for a practice that undermines the integrity of the game. Let’s call it the June 1 Jaunt. That’s the date, give or take a week, on which good young minor league players travel to the major leagues, belatedly summoned by their employers.

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The man who traded Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, Danny Haren, Rich Harden and Joe Blanton, not to mention Aaron Harang, Ted Lilly and Corey Lidle, is not likely to add to that list any time soon the pitchers who currently make up the Oakland Athletics’ starting rotation.

Billy Beane won’t be looking to trade them – unless they fail to do the job he expects them to do – because he won’t have to. That is, he won’t have to until they become more expensive.

The Oakland rotation has four rookies and a second-year major leaguer. Their ages are 25, 24, 22, 22 and 21. Their ages and their experience help explain why the Athletics are in last place in the American League West and scuffling for the third successive season. Injuries, Beane noted, provided another reason.

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Since last winter Bud Selig has been preaching economic restraint for all of Major League Baseball in light of the state of the nation’s economy, and the Atlanta Braves have become the latest team to drink the commissioner’s KoolAid.

I’m not suggesting that Selig is wrong for being concerned about the economy, but did the Braves, long one of the classiest organizations in the game, really have to use his warnings to justify one of the most classless moves in recent years?

The Braves released Tom Glavine this week to save themselves a couple of million dollars.

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