Senior Baseball Season Ended by Squabble

The second season of the Senior Professional Baseball Assn. took early retirement today after an apparent ownership rift in the Fort Myers franchise forced cancellation of all remaining games.

The other teams voted to suspend the season when Fort Myers General Manager Kip Ingle called his players and told them not to report to Thursday’s game with Daytona Beach.

Jim Morley, the league’s founder and co-owner of the St. Petersburg franchise, said the league will be back next year. He hopes in the meantime to establish a formal tie with major league baseball and/or Japanese baseball.

“Now we’re regrouping for next year,” Morley said by telephone from Phoenix. The six teams hadn’t quite reached the halfway point in a planned 56-game schedule.

A meeting has been tentatively set in January with the office of baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent, Morley said. Morley would like major-league teams to contract with his league as a place to rehabilitate injured players or develop players during the winter months.

Morley said his brainchild probably was rushed into existence, but the sudden suspension can provide time to build a solid foundation. Envisioned as baseball’s equivalent to the popular seniors golf tour, the senior league opened in 1989 as a winter-month league for former major-leaguers age 35 and over.

Unlike the seniors golf tour, which has top stars such as Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino and Jack Nicklaus, baseball superstars were not attracted to the league.

It began with eight Florida franchises. The league returned this year with six teams, including one in San Bernardino, one in Sun City, Ariz., and one traveling team without a home, the Florida Tropics.

The league dropped its minimum age to 34, with catchers allowed to play at 32.

Sluggers Jim Rice, formerly of Boston, and George Foster, formerly of Cincinnati and the New York Mets, and Hall of Fame candidates pitchers Rollie Fingers and Ferguson Jenkins were playing this season, and Morley said the league had been doing better.

“Most of the time in this situation, the reason is financial,” Morley said. “This isn’t financial. Fort Myers is far and away the wealthiest franchise. They have an internal partnership problem.”

Morley said the other franchises were disappointed, but didn’t see any way to salvage the season.

“The Explorers deeply regret that the untimely action of the Fort Myers franchise has made it impossible to complete the 1990-91 season,” the Daytona Beach franchise said in a statement. “We still believe in the senior league concept and look forward to a successful 1991-92 season.”

Morley said Fort Myers owner Michael Graham and two Delaware investors--J. Simpson Dean and William Curry--had been squabbling over money, and the sides wouldn’t give in.

Other teams contacted their players with the news on today, Morley said. The league’s average salary, according to Morley, is $5,700 per month.

He said his team and some of the others are stuck with nonrefundable plane tickets.