BASEBALL / ROSS NEWHAN : Cleveland Voters Help Turn Lights Out in Municipal Stadium

If alcohol and cigarettes make for vile habits, voters in Cleveland have approved an excise tax on both that will help rid the city of another vile habit:

Baseball in Municipal Stadium.

Approval Tuesday of the Gateway Project, financed in part by the 15-year excise tax, will allow the Indians to move into a new downtown stadium for the start of the 1994 season, escaping the biggest Mistake by the Lake, the cold, cavernous stadium that relief pitcher Doug Jones calls “the museum of unnatural history.”

Construction is scheduled to begin either in November or early spring, extending what has become a sweeping refurbishing of the American League.

The Indians’ new stadium will be the American League’s fifth since 1982, when the Metrodome opened in Minnesota.

Next was the Toronto SkyDome, which opened last summer. Still to come:

--The 1991 opening of Chicago’s new Comiskey Park.

--The 1992 opening of a harborstadium in Baltimore.

--The 1994 opening in Cleveland.

And the building boom isn’t likely to stop there.

New stadiums are considered inevitable in Detroit, Texas and Milwaukee, where Brewer owner Bud Selig is commited to the first privately financed stadium since Dodger Stadium opened in 1962.

“We’ve been a tenant (at County Stadium) for 21 years and have four more years on our lease,” Selig said. “We feel it’s time to control our own destiny.

“It’s a gamble, but the O’Malley’s pulled it off, and they’re our model in this.

“I mean, we know Milwaukee is not Los Angeles, but we’re convinced it’s economically feasible and a necessity for the survival of baseball here.”

The Brewers operate in one of the sport’s smallest markets.

Selig believes that to compete with his big city brethren, he must retain as much revenue as possible, rather than sharing it with a political landlord.

He believes that the sale of luxury boxes would help underwrite the $120-million project and assure the Brewers financial stability.

The stadium, to be shared by the Green Bay Packers, who play three of their home games and an exhibition in Milwaukee, will seat 50,000 to 55,000.

Selig said he expects a site to be selected by the end of the year. The access roads and other aspects of the infrastructure will require public financing at between $40 million and $80 million, Selig said.

The $350-million Gateway Project in Cleveland includes a major hotel and shopping complex, as well as a 20,000-seat arena for the pro basketball Cavaliers and the 50,000-seat, open air baseball stadium. The pro football Browns will remain at Municipal Stadium, where the conditions are reminiscent of a pound and perfect for the end zone Dawgs.

The Cleveland project passed by only 52% to 48% and might not have if the Indians’ owners, brothers Richard and David Jacobs, had not promised to pay a significant slice of the construction costs from the sale of luxury boxes--an estimated commitment of $47 million.

Meanwhile, relief pitcher Jones talked about the ghosts of Municipal Stadium.

“I hate to see old stadiums go as much as anyone,” he said.

“When you talk about Municipal Stadium you’re talking about Bob Feller and Lou Boudreau and all the greats who have come and gone. But the key word is gone.

“I mean, I feel for people who can’t let a stadium go, but that’s why we have museums and libraries . . . so people won’t forget.”

In Cleveland, where the Indians have not won a pennant since 1954 and have finished at .500 or better only twice in the last 10 years, it is probably best to forget.

How excited was Tom Brunansky by the recent trade that sent him from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Boston Red Sox?

Consider only the numbers:

--In 159 games in the Cardinals’ spacious Busch Stadium, Brunansky had hit only 11 home runs.

--In 32 games at Boston’s Fenway Park before he was traded out of the American League in 1988, Brunansky hit 10 home runs, drove in 21 runs, batted .302 and compiled a .603 slugging percentage.

“Fenway is built for a pull-hitting fly ball hitter like myself,” Brunansky said. “Plus, it’s a grass field and I’ve been on (synthetic) turf for eight years, fighting back stiffness and sore legs late in the year. I found that the best way to stretch my hamstrings was to go out and lay on the turf. It was the same as a sauna.”

Busch, however, was more damaging because of the dimensions. Pitchers work pull hitters away, getting them to hit fly outs in the alleys.

With the Cardinals desperate for a bullpen closer, Brunansky knew he would be traded. Boston had the pitcher, Lee Smith, and was one of 12 clubs listed as acceptable in Brunansky’s contract.

That contract expires at the end of the season, when Brunansky becomes eligible for free agency. The Red Sox have already offered to negotiate an extension, but Brunansky said he would prefer to wait until he can bring his family to Boston so that they can get a feel for the city.

“If we enjoy it, there’s no reason why we wouldn’t stay,” he said.

No reason except that he’s a Southern California product who recently bought a home in Rancho Bernardo and would probably be coveted as a free agent by the two closest teams--the San Diego Padres and California Angels.

Brunansky originally signed with the Angels out of West Covina Edgewood High. Then, when on the verge of stardom, he was traded to Minnesota for relief pitcher Doug Corbett in a miserable move of the type that has scarred the club’s history.

Back in Anaheim this weekend with the Red Sox and commuting from his new home, Brunansky reflected on free agency and said, “This will be the first time in 13 years I’ve had leverage, and my first consideration is the family’s happiness.

“It’s a nice situation, and whether it ends up San Diego, Anaheim or Boston, I’m not going to do anything that’s not right for the family and for myself.”

The New York Mets’ rotation?

Ron Darling calls it: “The What Have You Done For Me Lately Rotation?”

Frank Viola, Dwight Gooden and Sid Fernandez work every fifth day.

David Cone, Bob Ojeda and Darling work when the schedule calls for it and their most recent performance justifies it.

Ojeda started against the San Francisco Giants Wednesday night, for the first time this season, pitched commendably after a four-run first and said of the uncertain schedule: “I think I confused them even more.”

Darling, 1-3 with a 5.37 earned-run average as he rides a shuttle between the rotation and bullpen, said he is being driven to seek a trade.

“I don’t really want to be traded, but I don’t see how I can help this team, pitching only 50 innings this year,” he said.

A trade? Met Vice President Joe McIlvaine said he doesn’t foresee one, dismissing the problems that come with six starters.

“Those are problems I like,” he said. “It’s the exception when one or more of your five starters don’t miss a start the whole year.

“It happened for us in ’88. But you don’t count on it. Invariably, these things have a way of working themselves out.”

Ojeda and the Angels’ Mike Witt are among pitchers being mentioned as trade possibilities for the injury riddled Giants, who put a third starting pitcher, Mike LaCoss, on the disabled list, sent veteran pitchers Randy O’Neal and Ernie Camacho to the minors and filled their spots by calling up the 16th and 17th pitchers to wear varsity uniforms this year, rookies Ed Vosberg and Randy McCament.

LaCoss, who has torn knee cartilage, is the 31st San Francisco pitcher to be put on the disabled list in the last four years and 13th to require surgery.

Said trainer Mark Letendre: “You’d think after four years we’d get a break, but it never gets any better.”

Said Manager Roger Craig: “This is the toughest month I’ve ever had as a manager, but I still feel it’s going to turn around.”

One possible reason is that five regulars were hitting .296 or more before a weekend series at Philadelphia, and Kevin Mitchell was on a pace that would put him in the 47-homer neighborhood of last year, despite chronic pain in his wrist.

Always hard to tell whether Jose Canseco makes more noise with his bat--he was on a pace to hit 42 homers, drive in 120 runs and steal 54 bases going into a weekend series with the Baltimore Orioles--or his mouth.

The other day in Oakland he told the Yankee media corps that after the 1991 season he might be tempted to see if George Steinbrenner is interested in his free-agent services.

He said that New York or Los Angeles would offer far greater endorsement potential than Oakland and that in either park he would have an easier chance to duplicate his 40-home run, 40-steal season, qualifying him for baseball’s first $5-million salary.

Then, a day later, he declared the race in the American League West over.

“If you’re Kansas City or California and you’re 10 games out, when you get that far back it’s over early,” he said. “I’m very surprised to see they’re that far back. Even if we play .500 the rest of the way it would be extremely difficult for them to come back, and we’re not a .500 team.”

Dave Winfield’s was not the only marquee name left off the All-Star ballot. Winfield, sensing Steinbrenner’s involvement again, said it was a slight, rather than an oversight, and that the responsible party--Yankee executive Harding Peterson--should be fired. He reportedly had a shouting match with Peterson when Peterson tried to explain why Mel Hall, rather than Winfield, was the third Yankee outfielder on the ballot.

There was no such stir in Arlington, Tex., even though Harold Baines, the Rangers’ designated hitter, is not on the ballot and outfielder Gary Pettis, with only 26 RBI in his last 640 at-bats through Thursday, is.

“If Baines has the type season worthy of All-Star consideration, he can be named to the team like he was last year,” said General Manager Tom Grieve.

Baines, perhaps, chose not to debate the issue because he has only 11 hits in 61 at-bats with runners in scoring position since his acquisition last July 27.