Garvey May Challenge Rule on Player-Owners

There are rules within baseball that could force Steve Garvey to retire prematurely if he ends up buying the San Diego Padres this winter.

According to Major League Rule 20--which concerns conflict of interest--no one is allowed to be an owner and a player at the same time. Garvey currently is trying to put together a group to buy the Padres from Joan Kroc, but he also has a year remaining on his Padre contract as a player.

So what will he do? Be a player or an owner? Presumably, he can’t do both.

However, Garvey said Saturday that he is well aware of the rule, that there’s a “gray” area of interpretation and that Commissioner Peter Ueberroth will have the right to decide whether Garvey can indeed do both.

John Boggs, a close associate of Garvey’s, said: “First, we have to have a serious bid on the table and the Padres have to like it. Then, the next step would be to sit down and talk to Ueberroth.”

Ueberroth was unavailable for comment Saturday, but one of his aides, Rich Levin, said: “The way I understand the rule is that he (Garvey) can’t play and own the team at the same time. If he goes ahead and buys it, I assume he’d have to make some kind of assurance that his playing days are over.”

But, according to Boggs, Garvey could orchestrate a deal whereby his contributions toward ownership wouldn’t begin until 1988, when he is expected to retire. In other words, he could organize a group of investors now, have them buy the team, then join them after retirement.

“There are 90 ways to skin a cat,” Boggs said. “This could work thousands of different ways. We don’t know what Rule 20 states until we push it. Those rules were written to protect, but they’ve never been challenged.”

In part, the rule states: “No player shall directly or indirectly own stock or any other proprietary interest or have any financial interest in the club by which he is employed. . . . A player having any such interest in the club by which he is employed shall be ineligible.”

Earlier this week, Ueberroth told USA Today’s Hal Bodley that he’d like to see former players “like Steve Garvey or Reggie Jackson” buy a major league team. But he warned that they must retire first.

“Yeah, but we don’t know what’s going to happen,” Boggs said. “Ueberroth might say: ‘Steve, you’re a very honorable person, and I will approve it, but I don’t want you to take a position of management until 1988. You’ll have to appoint someone else to operate things in 1987.’

“See, if Steve Garvey were somebody like Cal Ripken--who’s probably going to play for the next 10 years--it’d be different. But we have a situation here where Steve’s contract is up after 1987. All this just gives the commissioner the power to say, ‘No, you can’t,’ or, ‘Yes you can,’ based on the individual involved. Steve’s a different case.”