BASEBALL : Players Stimulate Money Market on Both Sides of Bay

The name of the game was changed to Baysball during the 1989 World Series between the Oakland Athletics and San Francisco Giants.

Noting what has happened in that area since, a more appropriate term may be Paysball.

No teams have done more to stimulate this winter’s salary spiral.

Intra-market competition?

General Manager Sandy Alderson of the A’s sighed and said it was more the result of both teams’ success--coupled with the market’s overall escalation.

“Of course, we’ve both helped create that escalation,” he added.

Consider:

--The Giants emerged from their World Series drubbing and signed free-agent right fielder Kevin Bass of the Houston Astros to a three-year, $5.25-million contract.

--The A’s, in the wake of the Minnesota Twins’ signing of Kirby Puckett for three years at $9 million, went to four years and $12 million to retain Rickey Henderson.

--The Giants soon gave Kevin Mitchell the biggest single-season raise in baseball history--$1,423,000--signing the National League’s most valuable player for one year at $2.083 million.

--The A’s responded with a two-year, $7-million extension for pitcher Dave Stewart, giving him an average annual salary of $3.5 million, the largest in baseball. Briefly.

--Will Clark then became the biggest of the bigs when he agreed to a four-year, $15-million contract with the Giants, his 1993 salary guaranteed at $4.25 million.

And along the way:

--The A’s signed catcher Terry Steinbach for two years at $1.8 million.

--The Giants went to three years and $3.8 million to sign shortstop Jose Uribe, and have a combined $3-million guarantee to pitchers Scott Garrelts and Mike LaCoss for 1990.

But none of it, Giant President Al Rosen insisted, had anything to do with the club across the bay.

“We’re in competition, of course, in the sense that there’s some overlap of fans, but our real competition is in our own league,” he said.

And, confronted by an industry-wide problem, you either pay the comparative and competitive price or foreclose on your fans, Rosen said, adding that the current spiral reminds him of the boy who cried wolf.

“I know we’ve talked about dire consequences before, but this time I believe the wolf is there,” he said. “I’m desperately concerned. It will become very difficult to operate if salaries continue to escalate at the current pace.

“The question, of course, is why do it, why keep paying them? Part of the reason is an attempt to keep up with the Joneses. Part of it rests with the system itself. Look at Mitchell and Clark.

“We’re talking about premier players coming off premier seasons at a time when they’re approaching free agency and arbitration.

“If we don’t sign them, we’re telling our fans we’re not interested in competing, and that’s not why we’re in business.

“I mean, Will Clark is a future Hall of Famer, maybe the best player in the game. With a four-year contract, we’re buying out two years of free agency (1992 and ‘93). We had to predict where the market would be then and the type competition we’d face to keep him.

“I never thought we’d get to 4 million this fast, but it might be a bargain considering where the market is headed.”

The Giants may be headed to a new stadium in Santa Clara. It was once suspected that the Bay Area wasn’t big enough to support two teams. Now both are successful on the field and at the gate, but the ability to draw people, Rosen said, is a “minimal variable in the current escalation compared to the national TV money accruing to each club. Of course a lot of us have spent that already.”

Each of the 26 clubs receives about $15 million a year from the contracts with CBS and ESPN. Among the Giants, Mitchell and Clark alone are guaranteed almost half of that in 1990.

Alderson figured he had to make choices, knowing that Henderson had to be retained and Stewart rewarded for three consecutive seasons of 20 or more victories.

Thus, Dave Parker, Tony Phillips, Storm Davis and Matt Young all left as free agents, receiving higher or longer offers elsewhere.

Voicing amazement at the rate of the current escalation, Alderson said:

“At the end of last season I projected our 1990 payroll in excess of $20 million, and that included retaining all of our free agents. Now we’ve lost four of those free agents and our payroll will still be in the $20-million-plus range.”

In the current collective bargaining talks, the clubs have proposed revenue sharing that would provide better stability and cost certainty, and help equalize the big and small markets, they believe.

Some see it, however, as another attempt by the owners to gain protection from their own greed.

Ewing Kauffman, co-owner of the Kansas City Royals, recently sold his Marion Laboratories to Dow Chemical for an estimated $700 million. Is there any wonder that the Royals, operating in baseball’s smallest market, suddenly extended Bret Saberhagen’s contract for three years at $8.9 million and lured the Davis boys away from Oakland and San Diego, giving Storm $6 million for three years and Mark $13 million for four?

Alderson alluded to the need for a better system and said:

“As long as you have people selling their companies for $700 million, it doesn’t matter how much cable revenue you receive or how many partners you bankrupt, you’re going to have people operating in what they perceive to be their own best interest, no matter how it affects the industry.”

The Giants also recently signed free-agent catcher Gary Carter, but they have only guaranteed him $250,000, with the possibility Carter could make $1.2 million if he appears in 110 games.

A knee injury that required surgery restricted Carter to 50 games with the New York Mets last year. He will be 36 in April but said his knee is strong again.

Terry Kennedy and Kirt Manwaring, the Giants’ catchers last year, batted a combined .193 against left-handed pitchers. Carter, whose home run totals have fallen in each of the last four years and whose runs-batted-in totals have dropped in each of the last three, is scheduled to platoon with Kennedy in 1990.

“The Giants already have a lot of offense, so my hitting would be a bonus for them,” Carter said. “They’re looking for me to handle the pitching staff and use my experience behind the plate. I’m excited about this opportunity.”

Chris Brown, a former Crenshaw High teammate of Darryl Strawberry, and a man who has gone from the Giants to the Padres to the Detroit Tigers to a triple-A deal with the Pittsburgh Pirates amid injuries and accusations of malingering, has signed a triple-A contract with the Cincinnati Reds, who see him as third base insurance if Chris Sabo has problems recovering from knee surgery.

Might Brown unseat him?

“Let’s get serious,” Sabo said. “Really, they can bring in anyone they want. They can bring in Wade Boggs. The eight best players will play, and I’ll be one of the eight.”

After futile bids for Wade Boggs, Jack Howell, Steve Buechele and Brook Jacoby, the Atlanta Braves finally got a third baseman in the trade Wednesday with the Seattle Mariners for Jim Presley, who was a power hitting fixture with the Mariners until a back injury reduced his status to that of a platoon player last year.

Presley hit 12 homers after averaging 20 in his previous five seasons, but the Braves believe he can bounce back, citing his age--28--and the expectation that Presley will see more fastballs in the National League. Besides, they were desperate.

Last year, they used seven third basemen who totaled 38 errors. And in the seven seasons since Bob Horner hit 32 homers in 1982 and then moved to first base, their primary third basemen totaled only 31 homers.

But despite all of that, speculation persists that the Braves may create something of a third base vacuum again by trading Presley and a pitcher to the Boston Red Sox--who would use Presley at first base--for relief pitcher Lee Smith and third base prospect Scott Cooper.

Threats of lockouts and strikes are minor irritations when compared to the heartache former Dodger Dennis Powell, now a Seattle relief pitcher, has endured.

On Wednesday, 10 months after his younger brother, Calvin, was killed in a Georgia car accident, Powell attended funeral services for his older brothers, Bennie, 34, and Jimmy, 33, who were killed in another Georgia car accident.