Baseball Players Association

News item: Severna Park's Gavin Floyd (Mount St. Joseph) took a no-hit bid into the eighth inning against the struggling Detroit Tigers yesterday on the way to his second victory of the young season. My take: Great to see him getting off to a good start. It'll also be good to see him make his first appearance as a pro at Camden Yards on Thursday, barring a weather disruption in the Chicago White Sox rotation. News item: An unidentified construction worker told the New York Post he cursed the Yankees by burying a Red Sox jersey under the visitors clubhouse at the new Yankee Stadium.

This isn't 20/20 hindsight. I predicted at the outset that Major League Baseball would regret embarking on the wide-ranging steroid investigation that was ordered by commissioner Bud Selig and undertaken by former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell last month. Now, I'm sure of it. The probe already has created new friction between MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Association, which has labeled the investigation a "substantial disruption" to the sport's labor relationship in an e-mail that was sent to agents and obtained by Newsday and the New York Post.

TOKYO -- Hiromitsue Ochiai's best years as a baseball player are almost certainly behind him but his moment for the record books may lie just ahead.Mr. Ochiai ended his 15th major league season in early October when his team, the Chunichi Dragons, faltered in a stretch run. A triple crown winner and .350 hitter in the mid-1980s, his average this year was a good but distinctly mortal .285, knocking his name off the top of the Japanese lifetime batting chart.But in terms of the numbers that dominate the American game, the independent-minded Mr. Ochiai has emerged as Japanese baseball's most important player.

Major League Baseball may be hell-bent on contraction, but the decision to fold two franchises before the start of the 2002 season faces so many obstacles that the final outcome could be much different than baseball owners intend. The Major League Baseball Players Association, the strongest union in professional sports, has made it clear that the players will fight to preserve the 30-team configuration that ownership now considers unworkable. The owners already face a restraining order and a court hearing aimed at preventing them from folding the struggling Minnesota Twins that was scheduled for today and rescheduled for Tuesday in Minneapolis.

Major League Baseball apparently remains committed to disbanding two franchises, but commissioner Bud Selig hinted yesterday that the industry's controversial contraction plan probably won't be implemented before the 2002 season. "Baseball will contract," Selig said, after owners huddled for the second time in three weeks at the O'Hare Airport Hilton Hotel outside Chicago. "I can't give you a timetable today. Some things are out of our hands." The owners gathered to receive an update on the plan to reduce the number of franchises, but the only decision announced yesterday was that Selig's term as commissioner had been extended through 2006 by a unanimous vote of the 30 clubs.

ONCE AGAIN, I find myself in the strange position of being disappointed that big-name major league players do not know how to lie effectively. Isn't that something they practice on the backfields during spring training? Rafael Palmeiro barely got his accidental ingestion theory out of his mouth last week before somebody - presumably inside Major League Baseball's central authority - leaked the identity of the offending steroid (stanozolol, and try to pronounce that after a couple of Zimas)

NEW YORK -- Three days of furious maneuvering bred hope that a settlement might be near in baseball's labor dispute, but a players union proposal to end the 30-day strike was rejected yesterday just hours before a management-imposed deadline to save the rest of the 1994 season.Acting commissioner Bud Selig traveled to New York to join the negotiations, but a meeting between the union and management bargaining units lasted only long enough for the owners to dismiss a compromise revenue-sharing proposal that had been hastily devised by the players.

VERO BEACH, Fla. - Two weeks into his annual information tour through spring training camps, Major League Baseball Players Association director Donald Fehr is still playing defense. Baseball owners have used the heatstroke death of Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler to justify a new effort to restrict the use of products that contain the weight-loss aid and stimulant ephedrine. The Senate, which held hearings last June to examine claims of widespread steroid use in Major League Baseball, is pondering a new inquiry to take a similar look at the way professional sports deals with ephedrine and other potentially harmful legal supplements.

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig took his lumps from members of the House Judiciary Committee yesterday, but he stuck to his contention that Major League Baseball is in dire financial trouble and needs to eliminate two franchises to improve the industry's revenue picture. Selig traveled to Washington to appear before the committee, which called for a review of baseball's antitrust exemption after club owners voted in November to close two teams - believed to be the Minnesota Twins and Montreal Expos - before the start of the 2002 season.

Embattled Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker, whose infamous diatribe against gays, immigrants and minorities made him the off-season poster boy for political incorrectness, got a limited reprieve from arbitrator Shyam Das and is expected to report to the Braves' spring training camp today. Das cut the 28-day suspension imposed by baseball commissioner Bud Selig to two weeks, ended Rocker's spring training ban effective today and reduced his $20,000 fine to $500 in a controversial decision that was condemned by both Major League Baseball and the players union officials who had asked the arbitrator to strike down the penalty entirely.