25th Player Now the Odd Man In

“W e’re giving 110%.”

--Major league baseball cliche.

“We’re giving 96%.”

--Major league baseball reality.

For the past five years, 26 major league baseball teams have been living a lie. All of them are guilty, every time an owner or a general manager swears that every effort is being made to bring home a winner.

For the past five years, 26 major league baseball teams have refused, outright, to use all available resources.

The Basic Agreement of 1985 did nothing to alter the traditional structure of the 25-man roster. It’s still there, in the books. But the agreement did allow owners the option of coming in below that figure.

And you know what they say about owners.

Give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a player off the roster.

This is the same kind of bullheaded thinking that gives us spring training lockouts and two sets of rules for the same sport. For the sake of saving one $68,000 salary, plus expenses, this billionaire boys club embraced the 24-man roster, flaunting it in front of the players’ noses--for the apparent lack of anything else to flaunt--while conveniently ignoring such pennant-winning principles as the competitive edge.

It has been the quiet collusion, the accepted collusion. Imagine running a business where 25 salesmen were needed to keep you abreast of the pack--and then, one day, deciding to cut back to 24.

Economic suicide?

Not when Tom and Dick and Harry have also given their word to scale back, just a little gentleman’s agreement to keep the overhead more manageable and the workers in their place.

From 1986 through 1989, not one team broke rank. Not the Atlanta Braves or the Chicago White Sox, who certainly needed the help. Not the Detroit Tigers, who finished one game behind Boston in the 1988 American League East, a gap they might have closed with one more pinch hit.

Gene Mauch hated the 24-man roster. To him, it was akin to handing over your sword. Management’s standard rationale is that the 25th man never plays anyway--that he’s either the 11th pitcher buried in the bullpen or a third-string catcher who doesn’t do squat. Not so with Mauch.

Mauch would exhaust his entire bench--sometimes in the course of one inning--if it meant scoring a run and winning a game. He’d pinch-run with Ruppert Jones, bunt him over with Rob Wilfong, drive him home with a Jerry Narron pinch hit. He’d use Gary Pettis as a defensive replacement. He’d bring Terry Forster on to get that last left-handed out.

To varying degrees, all managers agree with Mauch. As a strategist, Doug Rader is Mauch’s antithesis--no tinkerer, he prefers to ever chance it with what’s on the field--but he, too, was hamstrung by the 24-man roster last spring. Seeing the need for an extra hand in the bullpen, Rader had to choose between an 11-man staff or a five-man complement of reserve players for opening day.

Rader opted for the 11th pitcher and, two days into the season, he lost his second baseman, necessitating a call to Edmonton for a replacement that could have been in Anaheim in the first place.

But the 24-man roster is good for baseball. Without it, we would never have been enriched by such memories as:

--Devon White, hours away from scheduled knee surgery, hobbling up to the plate in the bottom of the ninth inning because Cookie Rojas had run out of pinch-hitters.

--Fernando Valenzuela guesting in right field in extra innings because Tommy Lasorda ran out of outfielders.

--Tony Armas, 35 and heavy-thighed, serving as the Angels’ defensive outfield replacement in 1988 because the team had no room for a real one.

--Johnny Ray getting thrown out at the plate in Arlington, Tex., because pinch-runner Mark McLemore was in Edmonton.

Recently, though, there have been rumbles about a return to 25 men in 1990. In an appropriate twist of irony, the owners may have forced the abandonment of the 24-man plan by their own 32-day lockout.

Discovering that three weeks of spring training is not enough time to prepare a pitching staff for a 162-game season, teams are talking about utilizing the vacant No. 25 slot again to carry an extra pitcher. Philadelphia Phillies President Bill Giles said he would go with 25 men “unless the commissioner of baseball tells me to use 24.” Fay Vincent, the commissioner of baseball, says he has no problem with 25-man rosters since the Basic Agreement has no problem with it, either.

And if one team relents, the rest will follow. St. Louis Cardinals Manager Whitey Herzog has already joined Giles in line. Angel General Manager Mike Port is considering the same move as well.

Next season, there will be no choice. A provision in the new baseball accord officially reinstates the 25-man roster as the law of the land, no skimping allowed.

Do it this year. Do it right. The owners and the players already have agreed to play a complete baseball season in 1990. How about playing it with complete baseball teams?