Every time Prince Fielder launches a home run at Miller Park in Milwaukee, Bernie the Brewer, the team's mustachioed mascot, whooshes down a yellow slide into the Kalahari Splash Zone.

The fans like it. But is it art?

Only in Miami.

Lost in the debate over the hundreds of millions in public subsidies for the Marlins' stadium is the $7.7 million in tax dollars set aside for public art.

About $2.5 million of that is earmarked for a ``home-run entertainment feature'' akin to Bernie the Brewer's slide (which used to be a beer slide, ending in vat of brew, until some complained), or the New York Mets' big apple rising from a top hat, or the Houston Astros' life-size locomotive that chuga-chugs across the rim of the stadium, or the granddaddy of them all -- the Chicago White Sox's fireworks-spewing, pinwheel-festooned ``exploding scoreboard.''

All are fan favorites, but none is what you'd call a masterpiece, artisticly speaking. So how does a home-run celebration get classified as ``art?''

Miami-Dade's public call for proposals reads: ``The home run entertainment feature should conceptually celebrate the Miami Marlins, the ocean, light, movement and the spirit of baseball.''

Although a drop in the bucket in relation to the overall $515 million stadium cost, the unconventional use of arts money has raised some highbrow eyebrows and triggered a philosophical debate over the definition of art.

``Art should move your soul. It should be a thing of beauty and something that causes you to see things in a different light,'' says Becky Roper Matkov, a member of the Art in Public Places Trust, which oversees a $4.6 million budget for the county's program.

Rabid baseball fans might think that home runs can ``move the soul,'' but Matkov thinks it's a stretch to call an exploding scoreboard, or whatever is ultimately approved, artistic.

``I find it an inappropriate use of public funds,'' she says.

Some other trustees of the public art program have no such qualms, seeing a priceless opportunity to sell the city.

``Everytime there's a home run on television,'' says Susan Ackley, a public art trustee, ``people are going to say, `Oh, that's Miami,' and I do see that as a positive feature.''

Ackley personally wishes the stadium were built with more private than public funds.

But since that's now more or less a moot point, after the courts ruled in favor of public financing, she would like to focus on making the home-run feature ``iconic.''

Home-run celebrations often do become synonymous with their cities. So much so that when an old stadium is leveled and a new one built, the feature is often replicated.

That's what happened at newly opened Citi Field, where each New York Mets home run is celebrated by an apple rising from a top hat -- just the way it did at noisy, decrepit Shea Stadium.

No home-run feature is as bound up with its team and its city as the ``exploding scoreboard'' at U.S. Cellular Field on Chicago's South Side.

Team owner Bill Veeck, a consummate showman who famously sent a midget to the plate when his team needed a walk, introduced the feature at Comiskey Park in 1960. With each home run, the scoreboard would shoot fireworks and send massive pinwheels rolling up and down columns.

When Comiskey was replaced in 1991 by U.S. Cellular Field, the latter was equipped with a new and improved exploding scoreboard.

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