NEW YORK - The question goes to the very origin of the baseball species. CC Sabathia will pitch Game 1 of the World Series for the Yankees, Cliff Lee will pitch for the Phillies, and the city of Cleveland will lament what was. The lesson for everyone is simple, really primal.

It is good to be the carnivore.

Baseball is a zero-sum game. The Indians' loss was the Yankees' and the Phillies' gain. Lee vs. Sabathia. It is emblematic of what still can be the innate unfairness of this sport - less unfair than it used to be, but still so unequal when it comes to revenues. It is emblematic, too, of the journey the Phillies have taken as a franchise over the last few years. Because it wasn't that long ago when they couldn't afford to keep their prime talent, when there weren't enough dollars in their bank account to paper over the cracks.

Now the Phillies are hunters at the trade deadline, and not the other way around. And now the Indians, who developed both Sabathia and Lee and then discarded them to Milwaukee and Philadelphia in successive seasons in exchange for prospects - the time-honored baseball transaction of the financially downtrodden - can only wonder what might have been. Sabathia then came to the Yankees from the Brewers as a free agent.

"It's amazing," the Yankees' Johnny Damon was saying yesterday. "It kind of goes to show you what the Indians had to do to their team. They thought that both of them were going to be lost for nothing. They had to trade two former Cy Young winners and two guys who are going to start Game 1 in this World Series. It's unfortunate that some teams have to do that.

"But I'm just glad we got CC. It would have been nice to get Cliff Lee, too, but that didn't work out."

Easy, Johnny.

"I don't know," Lee said, with a laughing shake of his head, when somebody asked what they might be thinking in Cleveland. "I mean, they can't be feeling too good about it. I mean, it's two guys they could have had on their team that are now on different teams facing each other in the World Series. That's the way this game works sometimes, though."

It is hard to be philosophical, though, when they tear the heart out of your franchise and then tell you to be patient.

"Tell them, 'Don't blame us,' " Sabathia said.

They are friends, Sabathia and Lee. On April 16 of this year, they faced each other in the first game in the new Yankee Stadium - months before Lee might have imagined that he would be in Philadelphia. Lee was the winning pitcher for the Indians in a 10-2 rout decided in the bullpens. That day, Lee (six innings) and Sabathia (5 2/3innings) each gave up only one earned run - and then they had dinner together.

"We never talk about baseball - it's weird," Sabathia said. "That's just something that doesn't come up. We'll say 'Good job' and things like that, but it's just not sitting down talking about pitches and things like that. It's nothing like that. He just came over to the house. My wife cooked, and he came over and hung out. That's just how we are. We've always been pretty close, pretty cool. The conversations are really never about baseball, though."

Sabathia remembers Lee as a September call-up in 2002 and how, "He went out and dealt." Lee remembers the transformation of Sabathia, younger than him but more experienced, "As a young pitcher that would borderline get mad and throw the ball as hard as he can, to a guy that nothing fazed him . . . "

Now, together, they will ascend to the game's biggest stage. Both are aces in every baseball sense of the word. Both are carrying the hopes of their franchises as the World Series begins. Both are handy symbols - of the Yankees and their free-agent cash; of the Phillies and their determination to turn a single World Series into a dynasty. Tonight is one game, but it is so much more.

"My first series, I get to watch that," said A.J. Burnett, the Yankees' Game 2 starter. "I'm nervous already just talking about it."

But what must it be like in Cleveland? Will they watch? Will they just avoid the whole thing? Can you imagine what they're thinking?

"No, but I can imagine what people in New York are thinking about it," Burnett said.

Send e-mail to hofmanr@phillynews.com,

or read his blog, The Idle Rich, at

http://go.philly.com/theidlerich.

For recent columns go to

http://go.philly.com/hofmann.