Revenue Sharing

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.

So, when's it going to be? The All-Star Game? The second week of August? The postseason? Baseball suddenly is awash in scary reports that the players will go on strike again during the second half of the season or, perhaps, on Oct. 1 to wipe out the playoffs and World Series. This is just what the game needs, more reasons for baseball fans to start thinking about football. The facts are a little less ominous. The players and owners are engaged in another battle over the revenue pie, and everything that has happened in the past few months is part of a routine exercise in labor/management bargaining tactics.

Human Genome Sciences Inc. said yesterday that its fourth-quarter loss increased as revenue dropped while drug-development and manufacturing costs rose. The Rockville company reported a net loss of $32.9 million, or 26 cents per share. That compares with a net loss of $6 million, or 5 cents a share in the 2000 fourth quarter. The results exclude a one-time, noncash charge of $22.3 million, or 17 cents a share, related to the write-down of stock received from Transgene S.A. in 1998 at the beginning of a drug-collaboration agreement.

PHOENIX - Trying new approaches, Bud Selig and Donald Fehr are attempting to negotiate a labor contract without the acrimony that has led to work stoppages in every previous labor negotiation. But while Fehr's visit to a meeting of major-league owners yesterday was unprecedented, it does not suggest a narrowing of differences. At the conclusion of two days of talks between owners, Selig reiterated his belief that "we need a reform of the economic system." Battle lines are being drawn over the owners' attempts to increase the sharing of local revenues significantly while also instituting a luxury tax on the highest payrolls.

Peter Angelos has had some wild ideas in the eight years since he and a group of Baltimore investors bought the Orioles at auction in 1993. He was one of the first to advocate a reduction in the number of major-league franchises, back when Major League Baseball was still hellbent on expansion. That idea has gained some traction over the past few months. He was the most vocal proponent of what he used to call Camdenization - the use of revenue-sharing funds to help small-makret and medium-market municipalities finance new stadiums for struggling teams.

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.

As he approaches his third anniversary as general manager of Rosecroft Raceway, Thomas Chuckas Jr. surveys the racing landscape and declares: "I believe this is the time for the revival of horse racing in the state of Maryland. "I think the morale in the industry is much more positive than it's been in a long time. I believe it's the dawning of a new era." The harness track in Prince George's County reopens Friday after a four-week holiday hiatus. It ended its 1999 live-racing season Dec. 18 with a 10 percent increase in attendance compared with the previous year and a 1 percent increase in handle.

The Maryland Racing Commission tentatively approved a request from the Maryland Jockey Club to begin a new Laurel Park meeting when the pending revenue-sharing agreement is approved by all parties involved."

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.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Orioles owner Peter Angelos informed his fellow investors yesterday that the club lost between $4 million and $5 million last year, and would have lost nearly $4 million more if the team had not recouped about half its regular-season financial losses with the proceeds from postseason play.Joe Foss, the club's vice chairman of business and finance, confirmed those figures after Angelos conducted his annual partners meeting yesterday morning in Fort Lauderdale. The loss included about $2 million in added revenue-sharing costs that were assessed retroactively as part of baseball's new collective bargaining agreement.