Baseball Players, Owners Collide on ‘Collusion’

Collusion. The dictionary defines it as “secret cooperation for a fraudulent or deceitful purpose, as a secret agreement between two or more persons to defraud a person of his rights often by the forms of law.”

In baseball, which is exempt from the antitrust laws dealing, for example, with monopolies and price fixing, the regulation that governs collusion is found in Article 18, Clause H of the collective bargaining agreement between the Major League Players Assn. and the 26 owners.

It is headed “Individual Nature of Rights” and reads: “The utilization or nonutilization of rights under this article 18 is an individual matter to be determined solely by each player and each club for his or its own benefit. Players should not act in concert with other players and clubs should not act in concert with other clubs.”

This is the stipulation that the union claims the owners have violated over the last two winters, charging that the owners have acted in concert to restrict the movement of free agents.

The owners contend that the widespread withdrawal from the free-agent market is basically a coincidental development stemming from Commissioner Peter Ueberroth’s order to open their ledgers during the collective bargaining negotiations of 1985. Until then, they contend, they had been operating naively, unaware of the number of clubs losing money.

They also acknowledge that statistics gathered by the Player Relations Committee, the owners’ negotiating arm, have had a dramatic influence, since the statistics document a significant erosion in performance after a player signs a multiyear contract and also establish that the clubs are paying more than $50 million to players who signed multiyear contacts and are no longer active.

The union scoffs at the “coincidental” defense, charging that the owners are taking their instructions from the PRC, which is getting them from Ueberroth.

Was it just coincidence, the union asks, that no free agents received a contract offer of more than three years last winter, and no free agents, including Kirk Gibson and Donnie Moore, received offers from a club other than their own before the Jan. 8 deadline for re-signing with their own clubs?

Is it just coincidence, the union asks, that no free agents with offers on the table from their own clubs, including Tim Raines, Lance Parrish and Andre Dawson, had received even one offer from other clubs before Thursday’s deadline, that a variety of contract proposals by Jack Morris, the winningest pitcher of the ‘80s, was rejected by four teams and that, again, no players have received more than three-year offers and no pitchers have received more than two-year offers?

The union believes the owners are engaging in a flagrant case of collusion and has been attempting to prove it through the grievance process. A hearing that began last summer before arbitrator Tom Roberts is not expected to produce a decision for several more months.

It is uncertain how a decision favoring the union would affect the allegedly victimized free agents of the last two winters. There has been speculation that the union will order a strike at the start of the 1987 season as an additional expression of its anger, but a union officer, asking anonymity, said Thursday that the union would take no additional action until a decision is reached in the grievance hearing.

In the meantime:

--The union, still pursuing evidence, will be watching to see what happens to a quality group of free agents who passed on Thursday night’s deadline and cannot re-sign with their previous teams until May 1. Will they finally receive other offers or will they still be sitting and waiting May 1?

--The union, concerned that the owners are acting in collusion on another economic front, is considering a grievance, protesting that about 40 players were not mailed contracts by Dec. 20, which made them free agents, deprived them of the right to go to salary arbitration and allows their respective clubs to re-sign them at more than a 20% cut.

Nowhere are the new economics seen more vividly than in Kansas City, where the Royals have said they will no longer agree to multiyear contracts, did not offer contracts to Steve Balboni, Buddy Biancalana, Dennis Leonard, Hal McRae and Jorge Orta--the team is now negotiating with the first three--and made 1987 offers that included a maximum 20% cut to Bret Saberhagen, who won a $925,000 arbitration verdict last year, and Charlie Leibrandt, whose 1986 salary of $770,000 was also won in arbitration.

Said an owner, requesting anonymity: “It’s time to return to the real world.”