Vincent to Pitch Expansion Plan

Next on deck for Commissioner Fay Vincent: expansion.

Vincent played a major role in helping the owners and players reach a contract agreement late Sunday night, ending a 32-day lockout.

The deal also means baseball will announce plans within 90 days to expand to two National League cities.

Because of the talks, Vincent had to cancel a scheduled appearance last month before the Senate Task Force on Baseball Expansion.

The late commissioner, Bart Giamatti, met with the task force last year and said there would be expansion in the National League by two teams within three years of a new agreement between the players’ union and the owners.

The failure of the two sides to reach an agreement until Sunday resulted in a spring training lockout by the owners and got Vincent to the bargaining table to iron it all out.

But the task force has its job, too. And its members were getting impatient.

“(Vincent) must satisfy the members of the expansion committee that there is some orderly plan for expansion,” Rep. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) said. “Not just two teams in the National League, but six new teams by the end of the century.”

Bunning, who was a major league pitcher, says the National League may have already made up its mind about where the next two expansion teams will go.

“I think they’ve made a commitment, and this is purely conjecture on my part, to Denver and probably to Phoenix,” Bunning said last month.

Other cities making a pitch for baseball teams include Orlando and St. Petersburg, Fla., Buffalo, N.Y., Indianapolis, Nashville, Tenn., and Washington.

Baseball expansion is of congressional interest because of the game’s exemption from U.S. anti-trust laws.

“The fact that baseball is exempt from anti-trust laws and the billions of dollars that changes hands justifies congressional scrutiny of possible abuses of this monopoly,” Bunning said.