Revenue Sharing

The Major League Baseball Players Association has long viewed any kind of luxury tax system as a salary cap in sheep's clothing, but union executive director Donald Fehr drove that point home in a pair of recent memos to players and agents. Fehr called ownership's attempt to increase revenue sharing and institute a huge luxury tax on high payrolls "a wholesale attack on the salary structure," in a recent memorandum to players that was obtained this week by Newsday. If that seems inflammatory, it certainly shouldn't be surprising to anyone familiar with the union's negotiating stance.

The NFL's haughty dispute between big-market and small-market teams over revenue sharing is back. Spurred by rising costs in a sluggish economy, league owners decided yesterday to terminate their collective bargaining agreement with the NFL Players Association in 2011. By unanimous vote, the 32 owners effectively shortened the current CBA by two years, opening the door to a year without a salary cap (2010) and a potential lockout in 2011. Rest assured, America, there will be uninterrupted football at least until then.

Major League Baseball suffered staggering losses during the two seasons that were shortened by the players strike, perhaps enough to persuade both parties in the industry's ongoing labor dispute to reach a long-term collective bargaining agreement soon.The 28 major-league clubs lost $702 million, according to figures obtained from the Commissioner's Office by the Associated Press, $376 million during a '94 season that was cut short by two months and $326 million during a 1995 season in which attendance was depressed by fan discontent.

NEW YORK -- The big trade-off has to come sometime. The baseball strike is in its fourth week, and there may be only one way out of it.The small- and medium-market owners are not going to give up on their crusade to even the economic playing field with their richer counterparts, and history shows that the players union will not crack. The only way out may be a compromise within the ranks of ownership that addresses the financial disparity between the large- and small-market teams.There is growing speculation within the industry that the compromise would include a break in the link between revenue sharing and the salary cap proposal that has frozen the negotiations.

The possibility of a second shutdown of intertrack betting within the past six months arose yesterday at the Maryland Racing Commission meeting at Pimlico Race Course.Cloverleaf Enterprises Inc. president Gerald Brittingham said Rosecroft Raceway is prepared "to pull the plug again" if the Maryland Jockey Club and the state's horsemen and breeders do not come to an accord on an agreement that expires Friday.The harness interests halted intertrack wagering for almost two months last fall and winter before reaching a temporary pact with Jockey Club president Joe De Francis.

KOHLER, Wis. -- Like most of the other 27 baseball owners and front-office representatives huddled here for talks on potential revenue sharing and a salary cap, George W. Bush yesterday was reluctant to talk about the proceedings at hand.But Bush, the managing general partner of the Texas Rangers, turned positively chatty on the subject of William DeWitt, the leader of a minority group of investors that joined Peter Angelos in purchasing the Orioles this month for $173 million.DeWitt, who will divest himself of his 4 percent interest in the Rangers to own a larger share of the Orioles as well as supervise their baseball operations, got a huge thumbs-up from Bush.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Major League Baseball may be headed for another troublesome labor dispute, but union chief Donald Fehr said yesterday that both sides remain committed to toning down the war of words that has accompanied each of the past collective bargaining confrontations. "I think that there has been a marked reduction in the kind of public squabbling we've seen in the last several negotiations," Fehr said. "We're not perfect, but I think we're doing a better job." The sounds of labor silence should be music to the ears of baseball fans who lost patience with the sport during the lengthy strike that cut into the 1994 and '95 seasons and caused the first World Series cancellation since 1904.

The baseball owners say they need a salary cap to save the industry. They say they need revenue sharing to enable weaker clubs to survive.Peter Angelos is their worst nightmare.He's got a plan all his own.It doesn't involve give-backs from the players. And it doesn't require teams like the Orioles to subsidize less profitable clubs.No, the Angelos plan is simple:Build more ballparks like Camden Yards.Makes sense, but the other owners aren't going to appreciate Angelos' state-of-the-game address, because it's everything they don't want to hear.

FOR MOST of the more than 100 years of professional baseball, players were chattel. But over the last three decades, they have racked up an unbroken string of victories. Players now take home more than half the game's revenue, having gone from an average salary of $76,000 in 1977, the first year of free agency, to an average of $2.4 million this season. They control baseball. But where are they leading the game? Yesterday in Chicago, their union backed off plans to set a strike date, at least for now. It's understandable if even the most ardent fans yawn.

HISTORY LESSONS from Prof./Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y. (On "Face the Nation):Question: Senator, the president laid out . . . [a] proposal for $60 billion in tax cuts. It's a question still whether it's good politics, but do you think it's good economics?Answer: Could I give a moment's history here? Because I think we're giving them the idea that the deficit is something that's written into the Constitution, it's the character of a democracy and so forth.Uh-uh. I came to Washington in the [John F.]