Baseball Owners

NEW YORK -- This was supposed to be Opening Day, but it appears that everything about the 1995 baseball season -- including the actual day that regular season games will begin -- remains open to question.Baseball owners decided yesterday to cancel tonight's replacement opener between the New York Mets and Florida Marlins, and it became apparent last night that teams already are beginning to disband replacement rosters.The Associated Press, citing an unnamed source, reported late last night that the players and owners had tentatively agreed to start the season on Wednesday, April 26, if there isn't a lockout.

Like a lot of you, I've long had mixed feelings about interleague play. I was for it at the beginning, turned against it soon thereafter and now apparently owe commissioner Bud Selig an apology for insisting that it was a get-richer-quick gimmick that eventually would lose its appeal to the masses. Clearly, it hasn't, if the attendance numbers from the past weekend are any accurate representation of how much the nation's baseball fans like it. Nearly 1.65 million fans showed up to watch a weekend of what was largely non-rivalry interleague play.

The baseball owners really gave it to Marge Schott, huh? She can still watch the Reds in person. Still make major policy decisions. She was allowed to pick the person to run the team in her "absence." Let's see, what can't she do?Oh, right. She can't sit in her field box. She can't give the manager her lineup suggestions, which she never did anyway. She can appeal her 12-month suspension in seven. And she's out $25,000, which is tip money in baseball today.Call it the Mario Mendoza of suspensions.

Well, that didn't take long. Less than 24 hours after The Baltimore Sun published a story about the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum's year-long search for the owner of a rare and valuable baseball card, the owner has surfaced. A man identifying himself as Glenn Davis of Bethany Beach, Del., contacted the museum -- and the newspaper -- Tuesday to say he was the owner of the 1914 Baltimore News Babe Ruth rookie card. It's one of the most valuable cards on the market, with an estimated value of $500,000.

WASHINGTON -- Under threat of sanctions by the National Labor Relations Board, Major League Baseball owners last night lifted the salary cap that they imposed six weeks ago.The action, which becomes effective on Monday, removes a serious obstacle to the successful conclusion of the collective bargaining negotiations, but it does not end the strike or guarantee that the 1995 season will start on time.Pressure has been mounting on both sides to make meaningful progress in this latest set of collective bargaining talks.

DETROIT -- Major League Baseball's Executive Council met here last night to plot labor strategy and map out the future of a troubled sport, but there still is little hard evidence that the industry is ready to pull itself back together.The five-hour caucus opened three days of quarterly meetings of the owners at the Westin Renaissance Hotel -- meetings that Boston Red Sox general partner John Harrington characterized as "very important" and yet unlikely to yield significant headlines.The owners are expected to discuss a wide range of issues this week, including revenue-sharing, interleague play and the several ownership transfers, but the game's labor dispute remains the most important issue facing the sport as the 1995 season draws to a close.

Baseball owners are willing to go a long way to claim a victory in the game's bitter labor dispute -- even to another sport.The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the National Basketball Association yesterday, dismissing a union claim that the NBA's salary cap violates federal antitrust laws. The court said that antitrust laws do not apply in cases where a collective bargaining relationship exists, and baseball owners quickly seized on the decision as proof that Major League Baseball's antitrust exemption is not a significant factor in the sport's long-running labor war."

NEW YORK -- His speech to the owners having been delivered, his determination not to relinquish power having been established, baseball's embattled commissioner sat behind his desk in his shirtsleeves yesterday afternoon, clipped the end of a cigar and reviewed the tumultuous events of the past couple of days.The titles of some of the books on the shelf to Fay Vincent's left captured the moment beautifully. Two had the word "chaos" in the title. Another was called "The Reckoning." Still another, "Enough's Enough."

Major League Baseball owners voted yesterday to disband two franchises in an effort to ease the financial strain placed on the industry by a group of struggling small-market teams. Baseball commissioner Bud Selig announced the decision at a televised news conference at a hotel in Rosemont, Ill., last night, after owners reassembled for a quarterly meeting that had been postponed in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Selig did not specify which two clubs would be bought out by the remaining teams and folded - leaving fans in at least four major-league cities to wonder whether they will have a team next season.

PHOENIX -- Major league baseball owners gave "preliminary approval" yesterday to three-division realignment within the National and American leagues, interleague play and expansion of the playoffs from four to eight teams, beginning with the 1995 season.Milwaukee Brewer owner Bud Selig, the commissioner pro-tem, said the "sentiment was overwhelming in favor" at a meeting of all 28 clubs of adding four teams and an extra week to the postseason. Asked if there was much opposition, Mr. Selig replied: "There were no cases of cardiac arrest."

Has it really been 15 years since the baseball work stoppage to end all baseball work stoppages caused the cancellation of the 1994 World Series and threatened the sport's reverential status as the national pastime? The reason I ask that question is that we're in the midst of another postseason in which the chasm between the small-revenue and big-revenue teams is very much on display. The New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies, who appear destined to face each other in the World Series next week, represent the hugely populated Northeast corridor that generates more media-related revenue than any other section of the country.

It probably was a coincidence that NFL owners decided to knock two years off their collective bargaining agreement with the players union on the same day No. 3 draft pick Matt Ryan agreed to a $72 million contract with the Atlanta Falcons, but that doesn't mean the two top football headlines of the week were unrelated. Quite the contrary, management has cited out-of-control rookie compensation as one of the main rationales for abandoning the current CBA in 2011, and Ryan's new deal - which guarantees him at least $34.75 million before he plays his first NFL game - conveniently illustrated the point.

Former Sen. George Mitchell urged baseball owners yesterday to cooperate with his investigation into players' steroid use, saying Congress might force witnesses to testify later if they don't do so voluntarily now. "I believe it will be in your best interests, and the best interests of baseball, if I can report that I have received full cooperation from your organizations, and from others, in conducting this investigation," Mitchell said in prepared remarks...

Phoenix -- Major League Baseball has done a pretty good job of keeping its employees on message about the World Baseball Classic, but you can bet there will be some changes in the format before WBC II. The biggest complaint, though usually off the record, is the timing of the event, which is going to disrupt spring training and disadvantage internationally diverse teams such as the Orioles (11 players possibly participating) and the Los Angeles Angels (nine). Trouble is, there really isn't a good time to hold it. The other logical month would be November, but that's the time when the greatest number of players are rehabbing injuries and it would also cut too deeply into an offseason that seems to get shorter every year.

Major League Baseball's owners will convene in Philadelphia today for two days of meetings that will culminate with a coronation of sorts. And Orioles fans can relax. This won't involve an announcement about the Montreal Expos moving to Washington, Northern Virginia or anywhere else, for that matter. The Expos will be discussed, but their new home won't be decided. The coronation is for none other than Allan H. "Bud" Selig. Last year, in a meeting with the Associated Press Sports Editors, Selig said he planned to step aside when his current term expires on Dec. 31, 2006.

Perhaps the good baseball fans of Washington are waiting for Yogi Berra to weigh in on their chances of fielding a major-league team in the foreseeable future. If the quotable New York Yankees great were to deliver an observation on the decision by baseball owners to plant the Montreal Expos in Puerto Rico for a significant chunk of their "home" schedule next season, it might go something like this: "They can't put a team in Washington. Nobody goes to big-league baseball games there." That logic is not nearly as tortured as the rationale for sending the Expos on the road for an extra 22 games to play in a small ballpark in San Juan.

Q. How can you pay millions to a friendly and powerful legislator legally? A. Call yourself a publisher, him an author and it an advance.Baseball owners and players have given up the game in favor of sumo wrassling.

Looks as if some major league baseball owners haven't heard about the self-fulfilling prophesy. That's the prediction that becomes accurate simply because it is propounded. The baseball moguls have been predicting financial doom with the expiration of their lucrative national TV contract this year. They insist they can't afford all those stratospheric salaries they insist on agreeing to anyway. Fans are turning away from their tubes when baseball is programmed, they point out. Their remedy?

Orioles owner Peter Angelos spent a lot of time on Amtrak's Acela Express the past few weeks, commuting between Baltimore and New York to play a major role in the negotiation of baseball's new labor agreement. He returned last week confident that the sport finally is on the right track, though he admits that the contract ratified by baseball owners on Thursday is not going to solve baseball's financial problems all by itself. "I was pleased that the two sides were able to fashion an agreement and able to avoid a strike that would have been disastrous to both sides," Angelos said.

The Major League Baseball Players Association has set an Aug. 30 strike date, putting pressure on the players and owners to reach a new labor agreement or risk the sport's ninth work stoppage since 1972. Bargainers have just two weeks to avert a strike that could wipe out the final month of the regular season and - in the worst case - mirror the 1994 dispute that vexed fans and caused the cancellation of the World Series. The decision to set the strike date was made yesterday in a conference call of union player representatives.