Major League Baseball Goes Rather Slowly When It Comes to Expansion

For baseball fans in Washington, Phoenix and other cities, the latest news on expansion isn’t exactly encouraging.

Although major league baseball says it’s committed to expansion and, while a tentative plan does appear to be taking shape, any real movement on adding teams appears to be two or three or more years away.

Instead, expansion apparently is only one small part of baseball’s vision of itself for the 1990s and beyond. In the next decade, expansion will be addressed but so will interleague play, realignment and a host of other ideas.

The fans of Washington, Phoenix and Denver can be encouraged that expansion is now considered inevitable, but a number of owners apparently agree with Milwaukee’s Bud Selig, who says, “I’m not on the expansion committee, but I see very little interest in it right now.”

However, a moment later he adds that there will be expansion. Why?

“There’s something about the inevitability of it,” he said. “I don’t know that time can deny it.”

There is also this: At a Feb. 25 meeting of the owners’ new expansion committee, a plan did appear to be taking shape. The gist of that plan was that six teams would be added over the next decade. They will eventually be broken down to form two leagues of 16 teams (with each league divided into four four-team divisions).

Based on conversations with several owners and several persons close to owners, it appears three cities are clear frontrunners. The first is Phoenix and the second the Tampa-St. Petersburg area. Baseball, apparently, also intends to add a second Florida city, and Miami, with its new Joe Robbie Stadium, is in the forefront.

That would leave Denver, Washington and Buffalo as the favorites for the other three spots, with Vancouver and New Jersey close behind.

The criteria for expansion cities hasn’t changed, and they include a stadium that is controlled by the franchise, local ownership with roots and local political support. But criteria are guidelines. For instance, Phoenix is without a stadium or a definite plan, but no one doubts Phoenix will get a team.

Meanwhile, the Tampa-St. Petersburg area is building a domed stadium, only adding to the area’s already solid frontrunner status.

When the teams will be added is unknown. One reason is that two important contracts--the game’s network television contract and the basic agreement between players and owners--expire after the 1989 season. Informal discussions have already begun for a new television contract, but the negotiations over a new basic agreement are expected to be long and bitter.

The odds of a strike are so good that at least one player, Minnesota’s Gary Gaetti, had his contract written so that the bulk of his money would be paid before the 1990 season. Further, teams have tried to insert clauses that would prevent players from receiving their money in case of a lockout.

Yet, such matters always are resolved, and when they are, baseball probably will move quickly on expansion, perhaps adding two teams as early as the 1991 or 1992 seasons. The other four probably would then join over a four- or six-year period.

Publicly, most baseball officials are very careful not to make promises.

“If you run a hamburger chain and 21 of the 26 restaurants are losing money, you don’t run out and add four new ones,” Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth said. “Baseball is in the best shape it has been in a long time, and we can go about expansion the proper way.”

On another level is the work being done by various candidate cities, and you can almost rank them by the amount of effort they’re putting into those candidacies.

For instance, Phoenix and Denver still don’t have stadiums or definite plans for stadiums. No matter, both are dead-solid locks to get teams.

“To us, it’s not a question of if, but when,” said Dave Maurer, a Phoenix civic leader heading the campaign for baseball. “We’re the fastest-growing city in the fastest-growing state in the country.”

Washington, another city virtually certain of getting one of the six teams, also has problems. The District now has control of RFK Stadium--a huge hurdle--but the renovation work probably won’t start until next year.

Washington’s ownership plan also is unclear. While city councilman Frank Smith, chairman of the D.C. Baseball Commission, talks about a plan to attract minority investors from all over the country, other members say the team ought to be owned by the area’s heavy hitters, people such as developers Oliver Carr and Ted Lerner.

The problem is that, while those prominent figures may still be interested, they won’t say they’re interested. The hope inside the commission is that when it is again time to present baseball with a plan, Carr and others will be part of it.

Meanwhile, some of the lesser cities have hustled so hard and so fast that they’re impossible to overlook.

St. Petersburg’s Suncoast Dome appears to be a model 45,000-seat, baseball-only facility, and Miami’s Joe Robbie Stadium can be turned into a first-rate baseball facility for $7 million. The effort in Buffalo has been even more impressive--good enough that, from nowhere, Buffalo is close to being a lock for one of the six teams.

The primary ownership group is headed by Bob Rich Jr. of Rich Products, and his effort started by buying the city’s local minor league team and building it from moribund to top of the line.

This season, the Class AAA Bison (a Pittsburgh Pirates farm team) move into 19,500-seat Pilot Field, a new downtown facility that can be expanded to 40,000 in six months. The Bison sold out their first game in 84 minutes and season-ticket sales have passed 8,500, which would put them in the middle of the pack among major league teams.

“What we’re doing is following Ueberroth’s criteria to the letter,” said Michael Billoni, general manager of the Bison. “If we don’t get an expansion team, it won’t be because we did anything wrong.”