National League Delays Expansion Vote : Baseball: Denver and Miami still thought to be front-runners. O’Malley says postponement is not significant.

A vote by major league owners on the two recommendations of the National League expansion committee was postponed by the NL Wednesday, one week before owners were scheduled to meet in Santa Monica and cast ballots.

The owners will still meet next Wednesday and Thursday, but the vote has not been rescheduled. Dodger President Peter O’Malley, a member of the major league ownership committee, said Wednesday the vote will be held before the original deadline of Sept. 30.

O’Malley and other members of the ownership committee met in New York Tuesday. They were given partnership agreements and financial statements on the ownership groups and/or individuals in the six competing cities and were briefed on the expansion committee’s progress by chairman Douglas Danforth of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

“The information to be reviewed by the ownership committee is extensive and will take more time than anticipated,” Danforth said of the decision to delay the vote.

He also denied printed reports that Denver and Miami have been officially recommended by his committee as the 1993 expansion choices. “No formal recommendation has been made,” he said.

Sources, however, confirm that Denver and Miami are the definite front-runners over Tampa-St. Petersburg, Fla.; Washington; Orlando, Fla., and Buffalo, N.Y., in a still evolving situation.

The decision to postpone a vote led to speculation in several areas:

--It is believed that the ownership committee wants to re-evaluate the financial structure of the Denver, Miami and Tampa-St. Petersburg bids, in particular taking a harder look at Miami’s Wayne Huizenga, owner of Blockbuster Entertainment Corp. The stock of that video chain has dipped recently from $15 to $7 a share despite reported revenue of $1.1 billion in 1990.

--Several owners, including Bud Selig of the Milwaukee Brewers and Jerry Reinsdorf of the Chicago White Sox, are said to be strongly opposed to snubbing Tampa-St. Petersburg, which built a domed stadium without guarantee of a team and has deposits on 25,000 season tickets. Neither Selig nor Reinsdorf returned calls Wednesday.

--The American League, which has demanded a share of the $190 million in expansion revenue--the NL doesn’t want to give up any of it--and could withhold its required majority approval of the expansion choices, is said to be still lobbying Commissioner Fay Vincent for a larger percentage than he has proposed in his no-win role as arbitrator of the dispute between the leagues.

An American League owner denied that scenario, however, saying it is strictly in Vincent’s hands and no longer in negotiation. The commissioner spent Wednesday working with attorneys for the leagues on a final draft of his decision. He is expected to give the AL about 25% of the $190 million in return for the AL supplying a comparable percentage of players for the expansion pool.

“I wouldn’t read anything into it,” O’Malley said of the postponement and the speculation it created. “It doesn’t have any significant bearing on any particular city or owner.

“We received a volume of new material yesterday, and it will take more than a week to get through it. We should still have a decision within the original framework (by Sept. 30).”