Professional baseball and the journalists who cover it experienced yet another sexual meltdown last week, this time over a Dec. 19 New York Post "blind" item suggesting - without naming him - that baseball legend Sandy Koufax is gay.

The heated overreactions underscored how, in 2003, the mere mention of homosexuality still sends many in the sports world whirling in anxiety.

"Scandalous, reckless and contemptible questioning of his sexuality," shrieked former Washington Post sportswriter and Koufax biographer Jane Leavy, infuriated as well that the item insinuated she had covered up Koufax's sexuality in her best-selling book about the Hall of Famer. The usually thoughtful radio sports commentator Keith Olbermann dra

From coast to coast, sportswriters and commentators alike were dripping with that kind of sanctimony about the Post's misdeed - as if the Post had actually done anything different from what it does on every gossip-drenched, sensational day of its existence (it apologized last Saturday for the Dec. 19 item).

When the Post two weeks ago ran a cover photo of the UN Security Council with weasels' heads superimposed over the French and German ambassadors, even some of the Post's harshest critics seemed to chuckle.

But the paper runs a blind item, buried in a gossip column, about a baseball hero being gay - and all hell breaks loose.

Don't get me wrong: Koufax, a classy and circumspect guy, has every right to correct inaccuracies about himself as well as to try to protect his privacy. And Leavy has an obligation to counter those who might impugn her journalism. But if "there's nothing wrong with being gay," as some were quick to say in prefacing their criticisms of the Post, then why is it so "contemptible" to suggest it? Why not just say it's inaccurate and move on?

Was the Post item really worthy of Koufax's severing last week his 48-year-old ties with the Dodgers, an action that, in fact, resurrected the December item and made it a story? And did it warrant Olbermann pulling out of a book deal and announcing it to the world?

Certainly Rupert Murdoch has done far worse things - including pandering to the brutal Chinese government - than owning a newspaper that runs blind items suggesting that sports stars are gay. The pandering obviously didn't keep Olbermann from taking a multi-million-dollar job with News Corp.'s Fox Sports in 1999 (he's now at the ABC radio network), nor did it keep him from signing on the dotted line with HarperCollins. But a blind item suggesting one of his idols isn't straight has him ripping up his book contract?

The critics' indignation has been couched as a defense of Koufax's privacy. But it's interesting that none of them, nor, apparently, Koufax himself, protested in early January when New York Daily News columnist Michael Gross named Koufax as the subject of the Post's blind item, adding that there was "no way" Koufax was gay.

Gross claimed - without quoting anyone, let alone Koufax directly - that he'd "confirmed" that Koufax lives with a women who "bears an uncanny resemblance to Carly Simon." Funny, but no one charged that this invasion of Koufax's privacy was "contemptible" and "scandalous."

So let's be real: All of the howling is not about privacy. It's about homosexuality and the intense discomfort surrounding it in professional sports.

In his upcoming book, "Going the Other Way," outfielder Billy Bean, who played for the Dodgers' organization in the early 1990s and is now openly gay, discusses the homophobia he witnessed there while he was still closeted. He says words like "faggot" were bandied about every day, by teammates and the Dodgers' coaching staff. It's an environment in which no gay player could think about coming out.

Men of 67-year-old Koufax's generation might not be the ones to change it. But when 34-year-old Mets star Mike Piazza denied similar gossip last year, his shrugging it off and expressing support for gay players offered a little ray of hope. Management, however, must lead the charge.

"The organizations need to step up very much the way that big business did," Bean says, noting that baseball teams still don't have the anti-discrimination policies that many corporations have today.

Creating a safer environment for gay players by instituting anti-harassment sensitivity training would also begin breaking down homophobia. And perhaps that would help stem the frenzied overreactions to blind gossip items.