The Yankees are close to a deal with CC Sabathia for a reported $161 million.

The Red Sox reportedly have Mark Teixeira in their sights for roughly $20 million a year.

The Mets and Francisco Rodriguez have agreed on $37 million for three years.

The baseball world is out in Las Vegas for its annual winter meetings, the annual money for free agents, who move through the offseason as if the air is full of dollar bills just waiting to be plucked.

Business as usual, right?

Not really.

Because it all seems somehow obscene.

No one wants to see how the sausage gets made.

No one wants to see how a professional sports team is put together, either.

At least I don’t.

Not now.

Not when every day brings more dire reports, every day brings more reports from the front in this economic tsunami, this free-fall of American business that is happening all around us, complete with bankruptcies, layoffs, foreclosures and the pervading feeling that this is all built on land that’s shifting beneath our feet.

Not when there is fear and uncertainty everywhere, real people with real problems, and by all reports there’s more pain coming. Not when we can see the economic wreckage around us, with no real end in sight.

But we’re supposed to get all excited about some player signing some new contract that is going to make him part of America’s new royalty?

Sorry.

Not now.

Not me.

The world has changed.

At least the so-called wizards of Wall Street do their deals behind closed doors. Not the lords of baseball. They parade around Vegas, the national symbol of excess, as if it were yesterday and nothing had changed, as if we’re not facing the country’s worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, as if there aren’t too many people worrying more about how they’re going to pay the bills than who is going to play first base next summer for the Red Sox.

The Yankees are on record as saying they have money to burn, courtesy of their new ballpark and their purging of some contracts.

It’s all business as usual, right? The baseball version of the rich get richer and the poor get children.

Except it now seems somewhat obscene, as if you feel like washing your hands after you hear about it.

Welcome to the new reality.

Because if there’s always been a disconnect between professional sports and the real world, now it seems almost cavernous, a distance that speaks almost symbolically to the haves and have-nots.

Or I suspect that the thought of Sabathia making $161 million to pitch for the Yankees for the next seven years might be a little difficult to digest if you’re wondering what happened to your retirement account.

Once upon a time, no one really knew what athletes made. It was seen then as no one’s business, except in the rare case when a superstar’s contract was seen as a marketing ploy. But those days are as gone as flannel uniforms, not only in baseball, but in all sports, where in this age of agents and salary caps, players’ salaries are as available as the Internet.

This all adds to the perception that athletes walk with kings, of course, that they not only are different than you and me, but they’re in a different tax bracket, too. In a celebrity-obsessed culture, the fact that A-Rod makes more than $20 million a year is one of the reasons he seems to live on the back page of the New York tabloids, a good thing for the Yankees.

Or at least it used to be.

Will there be a backlash now?

Will we start to look at fat-cat athletes the way we now look at fat-cat Wall Street honchos with their enormous salaries and their golden parachutes, as pampered and out of touch, seemingly oblivious to the cold realities all around them?

We’re going to find out.

There already are warning signs. There have been stories in the New York papers critical of the supposedly sweetheart deals the Yankees and Mets have been given to build their new stadiums. There are rumblings that certain teams in smaller markets have already started cutting back. The Tribune Company, which owns the Chicago Cubs, went bankrupt on Monday. Advertising is off for the Super Bowl.

Where is this all going to end?

No one knows.

And if we all know that professional sports is Fantasy Island, there are daily reminders that more and more the front page of the paper is full of economic horror stories and the sports page is full of stories that seemingly have little to do with the real world.

Yesterday was just one more example. The lead story in the paper was that people calling the state’s unemployment agency were unable to get through, while a story on the sports page told how the Sox were in hot pursuit of Teixeira.

Disconnect?

You tell me.

But I know one thing.

I no longer want to see how the sausage is made when it comes to putting together a pro sports team, no longer want the money thrown in my face.

For it all seems somehow obscene, a leftover from another time, something not to be trumpeted but to almost feel embarrassed about.

breynold@projo.com