Owners’ Group Approves Denver, Miami : Baseball: Final hurdle is vote by all owners. AL executives still angry with Vincent’s solution on expansion money.

Still angered by Commissioner Fay Vincent’s division of expansion revenue, the American League became a paper tiger Wednesday.

Meeting independently on the first day of the owners quarterly sessions in Santa Monica, the AL threw up a procedural roadblock that may delay approval of Denver and Miami as the National League’s 1993 expansion cities for as long as 30 days.

After the joint ownership committee approved the two cities unanimously, the NL followed suit with a straw vote, but the AL refused to vote because of what league President Bobby Brown described as internal issues. Vincent later said those issues were primarily technical questions pertaining to the expansion draft.

“There’s a lot of angry people in there,” Eddie Einhorn, the Chicago White Sox co-owner, said during a break in the AL meeting.

“We’re prisoners of the system, and the only way to express our displeasure is with our vote.”

The AL decision to withhold that vote was construed by some as an act of petulance in response to the Vincent decision that gave each NL club $12.8 million of the $190 million in expansion revenue and each AL club $3 million.

Vincent acknowledged that there is a lingering anger in the AL, but said issues raised by the league Wednesday are legitimate, entitling the AL to more time.

“I still think Denver and Miami will be approved in short order,” he said. “I don’t see the recommendation being derailed or postponed indefinitely.”

Brown agreed, saying the AL had no problem with the cities or owners, and that Denver and Miami will definitely get their teams.

It just won’t happen when the leagues conduct a joint meeting today, he said, and it may take as long as a month before his league is ready to cast votes by phone.

Brown described the AL concerns as mild, but they may be more than that.

One deals with territorial rights in the Florida TV market and how a Miami franchise would be indemnified if the AL moved a team, presumably the Seattle Mariners or Cleveland Indians, into the St. Petersburg-Tampa area.

What may be the larger concern stems from Vincent’s ruling that each AL club, in return for the $3 million, must sacrifice three players in the expansion draft or, put simply, three of their top 24 players.

The AL thinks that’s too high of a price and would like the numbers amended so that they can protect more of their best players.

In fact, Sandy Alderson, the Oakland Athletics’ general manager, said he would rather have the three players than the $3 million and that the AL should reject the money, a choice it does not have.

“It’s not worth it,” he said. “You get $3 million and look what you’re giving up. It takes $2 million to develop the average major league player today.”

Richard Brown, the Angels president, agreed. “I’d rather forgo the money and keep the players, but we forced the decision on Fay (by the leagues failures to reach a compromise on the expansion money) and we have to accept it, respect it and go forward,” Brown said.

This was before the AL meeting in which the league demanded answers to the procedural questions and there was a general “venting of spleens” in regard to Vincent’s failure to split the $190 million evenly, according to the Texas Rangers’ owner, George Bush.

At a news conference, Vincent said he had no apology for his decision, that he wasn’t going to amend it, and that it was one the leagues should have made.

His deputy, Steve Greenberg, sat in on the AL meeting and said the primary issue deals with the AL’s desire to know how the draft process will be amended now that the AL is participating in it.

“It’s a legitimate question that we don’t have an answer for,” Greenberg said. “The process was written into the collective bargaining agreement (with the players association) when only the National League was participating and it will now have to be rewritten.”

Greenberg said he was confident that AL concerns can be resolved in less than 30 days.

Asked why the AL couldn’t vote if those concerns didn’t stem from an opposition to the cities or the owners or the financial split, as Brown, the AL president, insisted, Vincent said AL owners had not had time to study material mailed by the NL’s expansion committee last weekend “and there is no sense forcing them to vote until they get their answers.”

Douglas Danforth of the Pittsburgh Pirates, chairman of the expansion committee, said he was disappointed but not surprised and that he “would have raised some of the same questions (if on the other side.”

It has been speculated that the AL would delay approval of Denver and Miami until assured that baseball would not block transfer of an existing franchise to the St. Petersburg-Tampa dome, but both Brown and Vincent again denied that scenario.

Vincent remains opposed to franchise relocation and stressed that to Houston Astro owner John McMullen at breakfast Wednesday.

McMullen later told the eight man ownership committee that he has been unable to find a buyer for the Astros in the Houston area and requested permission to look elsewhere, but was rejected.

The National League also approved Charles Bronfman’s $100 million sale of the Montreal Expos.