Replacement Players

WASHINGTON -- After President Clinton's negotiations to end the baseball strike ended in failure, the president was asked if he would throw out the ceremonial first ball on Opening Day if major-league owners fielded replacement players.That night Clinton ducked the question as if it were a high hard one from Ben McDonald. Yesterday, though, White House press secretary Mike McCurry said the First Fan would, in effect, honor the players' picket lines.The big lefty will not be throwing out the first ball if the owners follow through on their plan to have replacement teams, McCurry said, a stance he described as being "consistent with the president's view on the issue of strike replacements and replacement workers generally."

Baseball found a way to get Cal Ripken off the field in 1994. It stopped playing. The season lasted until Aug. 12, when players went on strike. Team owners canceled the remaining 249 games of the regular season, and there was no World Series for the first time since 1904. Ripken had enough time to hit .315, and his 75 RBIs were second on the team to Rafael Palmeiro's 76. It was Ripken's finest season since being named Most Valuable Player in 1991. It also was his shortest, lasting 112 games and jeopardizing The Streak.

SARASOTA, Fla. -- Orioles general manager Roland Hemond informed the American League yesterday that the team will play spring exhibitions only against players under minor-league contracts -- and won't play against players with replacement contracts.It was confirmation of owner Peter Angelos' stand against the use of replacement players, again drawing the lines between the Orioles and the rest of baseball."We will not play a team that does not comply with our policy," Angelos said last night.

ARLINGTON, Va. -- Union head Richie Phillips said locked-out major league umpires will return immediately if owners agree to continue talks until a new collective bargaining agreement is reached, USA Today reported today."

NEW YORK -- On a day when the baseball players union took what the clubs view as a fantasy step in their ongoing labor dispute by filing 123 players for salary arbitration, a union official also raised a possibility yesterday that would provide all-too-real consequences for major-league managers, coaches and trainers.Eugene Orza, the Major League Baseball Players Association's associate general counsel, said union officials soon will talk to managers, coaches and trainers about their intentions of working with the replacement teams that clubs are forming.

Nearly 300 players who once played in the major leagues and were members of the union served the 27 clubs as replacement players during the strike-stricken exhibition schedule, lists compiled by the union show.The team-by-team lists the union sent to members of its executive board last week totaled 1,554 players who appeared in exhibition games before the players ended their strike April 1.Included on the 27 lists, in bold-face capital letters and underlined, were 291 players, or just under one-fifth, who formerly played in the majors, paid union dues and received union benefits, including money from sales of union-licensed products.

Twelve-time American League All-Star shortstop Cal Ripken voiced gratitude yesterday for the job done by fired Orioles manager Johnny Oates."I think Johnny has done a good job," Ripken said. "There's been a rebuilding of Oriole baseball here the last so many years, and Johnny's been a big part of that."When I came up, we were competing for the pennant. Then we went through a painful rebuilding situation. The last few years we pushed to take the next step again."Surprised?"I've learned not to be surprised by too much that's happened in baseball," Ripken said.

NEW YORK -- With President Clinton already on the record with his views of the baseball shutdown and Congress preparing for hearings on the game's antitrust exemption, state and city politicians are joining the battle to get striking players back on the field.Richard Brodsky, Democratic assemblyman from New York's Westchester County, said Monday he would introduce a bill in the New York State Assembly Tuesday that would prevent the Mets and the Yankees from playing games with replacement players in Shea and Yankee Stadiums.

Phil Regan's barber told him to look at the bright side."You could be the only manager never to win or lose a game," he said.The barber was assuming no major-league baseball would be played in 1995. He could be right, but Regan might be managing the Orioles anyway.Not the real Orioles, mind you.The replacements.Will it happen? Not if Peter Angelos gets his way. But then, no one thought the owners would cancel the World Series or implement a salary cap, so who can predict these things anymore?

There hasn't been much to like about the goings-on in baseball lately, but there is one good thing:Everyone in authority with the Orioles is dead against playing replacement players if the work stoppage continues on into the regular season."