Baseball Owners

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...

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Baseball owners are expected to approve the sale of the Los Angeles Dodgers and discuss their slow-moving search for a permanent commissioner during the three-day quarterly meeting that begins today at the Renaissance Vinoy Resort.Media mogul Rupert Murdoch agreed last summer to pay an estimated $350 million for the Dodgers franchise, which includes Dodger Stadium, the club's spring training site in Vero Beach, Fla., and a baseball complex in the Dominican Republic, but the controversial deal met with some initial resistance from rival West Coast clubs.

Fact: In their 47-game history, the Ravens have exactly three wins against teams that finished with winning records. They beat the Steelers in 1996, the Giants in 1997 and the Jets this year. Otherwise, they have beaten only teams that finished .500 or worse.Opinion: The release of Willie Greene last week means the Orioles basically gave away Jeffrey Hammonds to the Reds, which is disgraceful. The whole episode is an example of how constant change in the front office can set a team back.Fact: The Orioles have a higher winning percentage under Peter Angelos (.551)

ATLANTA -- Interim baseball commissioner Bud Selig left open little hope yesterday that baseball owners would reach a consensus on realignment before their three-day quarterly meeting concludes today."

Baseball owners are nothing if not confusing, a muddle of contradictions and bizarre decisions that inevitably makes them look silly.On one hand, Florida Marlins owner Wayne Huizenga is a hawk, demanding a labor deal that will drag down player salaries. On the other hand, he reportedly is prepared to make a prohibitive offer to free-agent outfielder Albert Belle -- $10 million per year, or a whopping 15 percent more than Cleveland intends to offer -- an agreement that is bound to drive salaries higher.

The man who gets credit for bringing baseball back to life last year after a disastrous eight-month work stoppage says he's increasingly hopeful that players and owners will forge a new collective bargaining agreement.There are "signs of movement" between players and owners, said William B. Gould IV, chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, and the person who nudged the two sides to end their dispute last March."I'm not involved directly in the negotiations and can't be because of my [NLRB]

YOU CAN'T blame fans for their skepticism about the long-overdue accord between baseball owners and players. So much has been lost during this dispute.Two strike-shortened seasons. A year without a World Series. Utter contempt for the public shown by both sides. Losses of $1 billion for owners, $400 million for players. Sagging attendance and TV ratings. Fans angrily turning away from the former national pastime.Salvaging a labor agreement at least prevents matters from getting worse for a few years.

LOS ANGELES -- Baseball owners used to be a conservative lot. Change came slowly, if at all, and major change came only when the tide of history no longer could be restrained.Now, the game is changing so rapidly that it is starting to get ahead of itself.The owners voted unanimously yesterday to approve interleague play in 1997, even though they have no assurance that the Major League Baseball Players Association will go along with the plan and no tangible proof that it will provide the economic bonanza that would justify it.The new format calls for each team to play 15 or 16 interleague nTC games next year, depending on the number of teams in its division.

MAJOR LEAGUE baseball has created major-league trouble for itself. That dastardly strike seems to have triggered a steep decline in popularity.Attendance is down dramatically. So is the television audience -- and the all-important advertising revenue. Even sales of major-league tee-shirts and other logo-stamped clothing and equipment are plummeting.Pretty soon, the national pastime could become just one of many sports occasionally viewed by fans.Why this plunge in the game's fortunes?Here's one reason overlooked so far: The greedy owners picked a commoner to run the game.

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.

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.

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.

Major-league baseball players earn an average salary of about $2.4 million for a six-month season, but they are talking about going on strike. The Boston Red Sox franchise recently sold for nearly $700 million, but baseball management insists that the game is awash in red ink and headed for an economic meltdown that can only be averted with a dramatic change in the distribution of industry revenues and a new mechanism for controlling the growth of...

WASHINGTON - The head of the baseball players union yesterday told Congress that players should not be tested for steroids without reasonable grounds for suspicion, and he warned against new policies that would "smear" athletes. "This discussion can be summarized in a single word: privacy," Donald Fehr, executive director and general counsel of the Major League Baseball Players Association, told a Senate Commerce subcommittee. The players union has "always believed that one should not, absent compelling safety considerations, invade the privacy of someone without a substantial reason," he added.

When baseball commissioner Bud Selig publicly pledged that baseball owners would not do anything to interrupt the 2002 season, it was a move intended to put fans at ease and the Major League Baseball Players Association on the defensive. It certainly accomplished the latter. Union leader Donald Fehr fired back that the announcement was a veiled threat to implement new work rules after the season, when the players would no longer be able to derive bargaining leverage from the threat of a strike.