WINTER BASEBALL MEETINGS : Holdouts to Counter Collusion Predicted

To illustrate baseball’s collusion course, we take you to a meeting between Al Rosen, president of the San Francisco Giants, and Tom Selakovich, agent for Giant pitcher Scott Garrelts.

Garrelts is 25, throws that chic, split-fingered pitch and is your basic budding star. Selakovich thinks that Garrelts was severely underpaid last season at $205,000, and it angers him.

But the problem, he says, is that Garrelts hasn’t been in the big leagues for three years, and until then, the Giants can renew his contract at just about whatever figure they want, as long as they don’t cut his pay more than 20%.

Selakovich hates that. Therefore, he walked into Rosen’s room here and asked for a $700,000 contract.

Rosen said to Selakovich: “These players with less than three years of service are ours! We’ll pay them what we want!”

Rosen then offered a $250,000 contract.

Selakovich left the room, swore this was an extreme case of collusion and called some of his agent buddies.

“This is crap!” Selakovich told them. “I’m gonna have Garrelts hold out if they don’t pay us. I think us agents should band together and get all these (nonvested) players to hold out.”

In other words, if you can’t beat them with your game, beat them at theirs. If the owners are guilty of collusion, as they have been accused of being when it comes to the nonsigning of free agents, the agents may soon be colluding, too.

Selakovich got his idea from the National Football League. Last year, agent Leigh Steinberg organized a meeting in San Francisco for every agent who had a player picked in the first two rounds of the NFL draft. According to Selakovich, Steinberg, anticipating lower signing offers with the apparent demise of the United States Football League, told them all: “Hold out if you must.”

Selakovich proclaimed Tuesday: “Scott Garrelts will not be in camp on Feb. 19 with the rest of the pitchers if they offer that kind of money. He will not report. Listen, for the first time in modern baseball, we’re gonna have holdouts.”

Will anyone else follow? The Angels can pay Wally Joyner just about whatever they want. The A’s can pay Jose Canseco just about whatever they want. The Red Sox can pay Roger Clemens just about whatever they want. Players need three years in the majors to become eligible for arbitration, and none of those have three years in. So, to fight back, will Joyner, Canseco and Clemens hold out?

The agents for Joyner and Canseco were not available for comment Tuesday, but Clemens’ agent, Alan Hendricks, said: “Yes, (holding out) is always an alternative. . . . If (the owners) play hardball, well, it works both ways.”

But Hendricks did not say he would band together with other agents.

“I think with a Roger Clemens, you don’t need to band together with anyone,” he said. “If you’re going to hold out, you better have the cards. With Roger, we have the cards.”

With very little trading action here, these have become the winter baseball collusion meetings. Agent Dick Moss told writers that one of his free-agent clients--Andre Dawson of the Montreal Expos--has been told by someone in the Expo organization that he had better sign with Montreal or he won’t play baseball in 1987.

So will the agents strike back?

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see holdouts,” Rosen said. “We’re entering a new environment in baseball that everyone has to get used to. A player won’t be happy in the first three years of his contract, and, thus, the holdouts. Yes, we teams control a player his first three years. But then they can go to arbitration and then they’re complete free agents.

“Garrelts is a great pitcher, and he’ll make a great deal of money someday, but he won’t make it now.”