Ueberroth Terms Chances of Strike This Season as ‘Fairly Good’

Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth said Sunday that he thinks “there’s a fairly good chance” that there will be a strike this season and “the sooner the better.”

Ueberroth was interviewed on the NBC television program “Meet the Press” in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, the site of Tuesday night’s All-Star Game.

“A strike is a failure,” Ueberroth said. “They (the players’ union) are going to set a date (today in Chicago) which is being called a strike date. It’s not a strike date--it’s a failure date. It means both sides have failed to come together.

“It’s not a victory for anybody. The fans lose, the players lose, the owners lose--everybody loses.”

Asked whether he had heard that Aug. 15 was the most likely strike deadline, Ueberroth replied: “I think Aug. 15 is a good guess, but it’s a pure guess. It could be Aug. 1; It could be Sept. 1. As far as I’m concerned, the sooner the better. Let’s get it over with. Let’s get the strike behind us.”

Earlier this season, Ueberroth ordered baseball’s owners to open their books. All but two did so. The bottom line has been the subject of lengthy discussion and interpretation.

“The truth is, you can argue over how much the loss is, but the loss is very real--baseball teams are losing money,” Ueberroth said. “I don’t take the owners’ position; I don’t take the players’ position.

“But I think both sides at the table are beginning to get serious about ‘Let’s not have an industry that’s going to be going down the tubes,’ having terrible problems that they can’t recover from. I think they’re going to work together and solve the problem. . . . I’m trying to keep the rhetoric down and let them get their job done.”

In other subjects, Ueberroth:

--Acknowledged again that there are baseball players involved with drugs. “Somebody had to say, ‘Enough is enough,’ ” he said. “Baseball said, ‘Enough is enough,’ and we’re going after that problem. We will eliminate drugs from baseball. . . . When we’ve done that, we’ll be the role model that we should be for kids across America and will be a leading edge for other sports to follow.” He also said the top-to-bottom drug-testing program he announced this season (excluding major league players) has begun and that both major league owners and minor league players have undergone testing. “I expect to be (tested),” he said. “They haven’t gotten to me lately, but I’ve been moving around.”

--Said the up-for-sale Pittsburgh Pirates should remain in Pittsburgh unless new, local ownership with a commitment to the community simply can’t be found, in which case the franchise should have the opportunity to move elsewhere.

--Said Washington, D.C., Denver, Vancouver, Indianapolis, Tampa-St. Petersburg in Florida, Phoenix and New Jersey (probably East Rutherford) are among “the cities that look very good” for expansion teams. “Most all of them have the fan base,” he said. “They have, sometimes, politicians that are talking. But I have to see the nuts and bolts, the dollars and cents.”

--Said he thought there would not be a boycott of the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Ueberroth, formerly the president of the L.A. Olympic Organizing Committee, said the 1986 Asian Games at Seoul would be a good indication of whether there would be a boycott similar to the 1980 U.S. boycott of the Moscow Games and to the 1984 Soviet boycott of the L.A. Games. “I think they will not have that problem” he said of South Korea. “The two superpowers have learned how exceedingly dumb it is to use athletes as political tools.”

--Said he has no intention of running for political office, particularly the U.S. Senate seat from California next year. “I don’t see Pete Ueberroth as a political candidate trying to be on both sides of issues,” he said. “I try to run things well. I try to manage. I try to make an effect. Maybe some day many years hence--we’ve got a lot to do in baseball--I could do something that might be in an appointed role, but I don’t see me campaigning for anything.”