Baseball Union Turns In Grievance on Free Agency

Baseball’s Major League Players Assn., in a long-anticipated move, has officially charged the owners with collusion, saying that they have violated the collective bargaining agreement by acting in concert to restrict the movement of free agents.

The union said Tuesday that it had hand-delivered a grievance to the New York office of the owners’ Player Relations Committee late Monday.

Donald Fehr, the union’s executive director, said that he expected arbitrator Tom Roberts to set a hearing date before the clubs go to spring training in two to three weeks.

Fehr had told The Times early in January that a legal response to the obvious absence of a free market was imminent. He would not detail the union’s evidence Tuesday but said that Commissioner Peter Ueberroth is known to have discussed the subject in meetings with the owners and that the Player Relations Committee has provided the owners with advice and recommendations.

“Rather than acting individually, the clubs have been acting under guidelines provided by the commissioner and PRC,” Fehr said.

“There is an obvious agreement among the clubs pertaining to free agency.”

Fehr said that the arbitrator will be asked to award damages to any free agent who has been hurt by the alleged conspiracy and to provide a remedy that could result in a signed player becoming a free agent again.

The union will support its claim with the following facts:

--Of the 63 free agents, only 26 have signed and only five of them have agreed to terms with a team other than the one they played for last season. Those five are Juan Beniquez, who went from the Angels to the Baltimore Orioles; Al Holland, who went from the Angels to the New York Yankees, although his contract is yet to be completed; Darrell Porter, who went from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Texas Rangers; Dane Iorg, who went from the Kansas City Royals to the San Diego Padres, and Tom Paciorek, who went from the New York Mets to Texas.

--No free agent has been offered a contract of more than three years.

--No free agent except Paciorek received an offer from another team before Jan. 8, which, in most cases, was the deadline for teams re-signing their own free agents.

The union, of course, will charge the owners with a blatant attempt to eliminate bidding wars of the type that has boosted the average major league salary to $371,000.

The union’s ammunition includes a recent New York Daily News story in which Yankee owner George Steinbrenner acknowledged that Ueberroth was the architect of the clubs’ new approach to free agency. In that story, he is quoted as saying: “He (Ueberroth) keeps having us tell ourselves how stupid we’ve been in the past.”

Ueberroth could not be reached Tuesday, but he had told The Times in November, when asked about the early indications of a conspiracy, that he was not involved and had never attempted to advise the owners on financial matters.

He said then that if the owners were united, it stemmed from their having operated naively in the past, a situation that changed when the ledgers were opened during the collective bargaining negotiations and they finally realized how much money was being lost.

Barry Rona, legal counsel for the Player Relations Committee, said Tuesday that the union grievance was a one-paragraph, two-sentence allegation lacking supporting facts and evidence.

“There is no rule that demands a club to make an offer to a free agent and no rule that prohibits a club from refusing to make an offer,” Rona said.

“The contention that we have put rules and limits on what the clubs can offer is a lot of nonsense. The PRC has never done anything more than recommended that the clubs be aggressively prudent and disseminated a lot of information regarding the amount of money clubs have wasted on multiyear signings in the past and the comments of writers on the stupidity of the owners’ behavior.

“I will admit that in some ways there has been a change in the bargaining habits of the owners this winter, but it’s the natural culmination of an approach that has been taking shape over the last few years and not the result of any orders from the PRC or commissioner.”

Although some proven free agents remain unsigned--Rod Carew, Cesar Cedeno, Al Oliver, Al Cowens and David Palmer among them--the biggest names from this year’s crop have already re-signed with their previous teams. Not one of them received an offer from another team nor could be certain he would if he passed on the deadline for re-signing with his 1985 team.

Salaries also are not comparable to previous years. Among the top guarantees received by the current crop of free agents: Kirk Gibson of Detroit, $4.1 million for three years; Donnie Moore of the Angels, $3 million for three years; Carlton Fisk of the Chicago White Sox, $1.75 million for two years, and Joe Niekro and Butch Wynegar of the Yankees, $2.4 and $2.2 million respectively, each for three years.

It has been the contention of most agents that Ueberroth first unified the owners on the drug issue, getting almost total support on the unilateral dissolution of the joint drug agreement, and the concept that no player receive a guaranteed multiyear contract unless it included a drug-testing clause.

Tom Reich, a Los Angeles attorney who represents a galaxy of major league players, said Tuesday that the owners became mobilized behind the drug issue and found that they liked the feeling of power.

“They’re running it like a co-op now,” he said. “The PRC is co-op headquarters, and the orders are coming from the commish. He’s real good at galvanizing the troops.”

The union already has filed a grievance with the National Labor Relations Board regarding the owners’ decision to end the joint drug agreement, but no hearing date has been set.

Fehr, despite contrary rumors, said Tuesday that the union is not close to presenting its own drug plan and does not expect to have one before spring training.

Meanwhile, the number of players accepting testing clauses continues to grow, the latest being new Dodger relief pitcher Ed Vande Berg.

Vande Berg, who was paid $310,000 by Seattle last year, had been scheduled to go before a salary arbitrator Tuesday but agreed to a $455,000 contract Monday, a compromise on his arbitration request for $500,000 and the Dodger offer of $425,000.

Of the decision to accept a testing clause, Goodstein said there was no hesitation on Vande Berg’s part and that the union must come to grips with the fact that an increasing number of players believe the drug problem has left them with a new responsibility to their clubs and the public.

The Dodgers eliminated another arbitration debate Tuesday when utility infielder Dave Anderson agreed to a one-year contract for $200,000. Anderson, who made $140,000 last year, had been been scheduled for an arbitration hearing Feb. 20. He had filed for $235,000. The Dodgers had filed at $180,000.

Anderson’s new contract does not include a testing clause because the contract is not guaranteed.