BASEBALL / ROSS NEWHAN : White Sox Appear to Be in the Pink

Kirk McCaskill, the former Angel, and Steve Sax, the former Dodger and New York Yankee, reflected on a future with the Chicago White Sox and figured it had a ring to it. Maybe a World Series ring.

McCaskill decided to give up his Corona del Mar home and reject a higher offer from the Angels when he signed a three-year, $7-million contract with the White Sox as a free agent.

Sax waived his veto rights and approved the trade to Chicago for pitcher Melido Perez.

“I’m more optimistic about this team than any I’ve played on,” said Sax, who played on four division winners and two pennant winners as a Dodger.

“I played on good teams in L.A., but this team probably has more talent. I want to play in a World Series again. That’s why I approved the trade. This team can do it. I don’t see the Yankees doing it any time soon.”

Said McCaskill: “When the Angels didn’t get (Bobby) Bonilla, and then Wally (Joyner) left, I didn’t see them being much better than last year (when they were last in the American League West), and I decided to take a hard look at my other options. I’m not saying they can’t win the division, but this team definitely can.”

There are some in Nevada endorsing that view. The White Sox finished eight games behind the eventual World Series champion Minnesota Twins in the American League West last year. The Twins have since lost pitching ace Jack Morris, whereas the White Sox have since:

--Solidified the rotation. McCaskill joins Jack McDowell, Alex Fernandez, Charlie Hough and either Greg Hibbard or Wilson Alvarez. In an era of diluted pitching, few teams go that deep.

--Added second baseman Sax to an already outstanding infield of Frank Thomas, Ozzie Guillen and Robin Ventura and acquired a bona fide No. 2 hitter behind Tim Raines and ahead of Ventura and Thomas.

Last year, Raines and Sax stole a total of 82 bases. Said Sax, of what could be a fearsome foursome at the top of the lineup: “I’m excited. I have a chance to use my full potential.”

Said Raines: “Getting Steve will do wonders for me. We’re similar players. We have that offensive aggressiveness you find in the National League. Maybe that can be the difference in the White Sox winning.”

Sax thought he was joining a winner after the 1988 season, when he charged Executive Vice President Fred Claire of the Dodgers with an aloof approach to negotiations and left for New York as a free agent.

But Jack Clark, Rickey Henderson, Dave Winfield and Dave Righetti were soon gone, and the Yankees went 212-273 during the three years Sax was there.

Eventually, with the Yankees looking to play the promising and inexpensive Pat Kelly at second and Sax carrying a four-year, $12.4-million extension that runs through 1995, a trade to a team looking for that one more player seemed inevitable.

“They didn’t bring Pat up to sit him down or keep him at third,” Sax said. “Pat and I talked about the possibility of a trade all the time. We knew it would happen.”

It finally happened with the White Sox because the Yankees agreed to pay a reported $1.2 million of Sax’s annual salary.

“New York was the most enjoyable place I’ve played, and I was treated better there than any place I’ve played,” said Sax, in an obvious shot at the Dodgers.

“It was good for my career in that it was something of a fresh start, and I received acclaim for my glove as well as my bat, which would never have happened in L.A.”

And Sax coped, he said, because he has confidence in his ability, laughed at everything that went on in the Bronx Zoo and found New York a snap “after having been disciplined by my dad.”

“I mean, I certainly didn’t argue being traded to a team of this caliber, but I didn’t ask to be traded either,” Sax said.

For McCaskill, staying with the Angels “would have been the easier decision, but I think you reach a point when you know in your heart it’s time to move on.”

A 10-19 record in his seventh season with the Angels played a part in his decision. The Angels scored only 35 runs in his 19 defeats. McCaskill said it was frustrating.

“I wasn’t strong enough to overcome it,” he added. “I allowed the team’s frustration to affect me. I lost focus. I think my record was misleading, but I’m not going to make excuses, being as inconsistent as I was.

“I’m lucky in that I have a short-term, selective memory, and I’ve put a lot of it behind me. All I want to do now is go back to focusing on one pitch at a time.”

With their fresh focus, McCaskill and Sax can see all the way to October.

Sandberg fallout: Ryne Sandberg’s $30.5-million contract--an astounding deal for a second baseman who doesn’t run and has lost range, according to many scouts--is just the tip of the 1992 free-agent iceberg. What now for Cal Ripken Jr., Kirby Puckett, Barry Bonds, Ruben Sierra, Wade Boggs, Eric Davis and Wally Joyner, all among those eligible for free agency when the ’92 season ends?

Club owners have spent the last two years expressing concern over what they believe will be the imminent decline of TV revenues, but the Sandberg contract hardly suggests that baseball’s inflated salary structure is on the verge of collapse.

Touring Florida camps to update players on various issues, Donald Fehr, executive director of the Major League Players Assn., said the cause-and-effect relationship between revenues and salaries does not yet point to a salary drop-off.

“Salaries are related to revenues, and regardless of what you hear from the owners, revenues still are increasing at a rapid rate,” Fehr said. “That’s a fact that always gets lost. I mean, when revenues level off, salaries will level off. When revenues fall, salaries will fall.

“We’re in the midst of a phenomenon that hasn’t run its course yet.”

Even Fehr, however, voiced surprise at the swift climb to the $7-million-a-year level.

“I wouldn’t have predicted it this soon, but it was a long time ago that I gave up trying to figure out how free markets work, especially baseball’s,” he said.

Labor update: In forging the collective bargaining agreement that ended the spring lockout of 1990, management and union officials included a covenant giving either side the right to reopen negotiations in December of ‘92, one year before the four-year contract expires.

The owners, increasingly alarmed over their inability to control their own spending and certain to again pursue a change in the economic system during the next negotiations, confess that they are giving thought to reopening, which could put the ’93 season in jeopardy.

However, there are reasons to think they will resist. Among them:

There is more than $350 million in TV revenue at stake in ‘93, the last year of CBS and ESPN contracts; they have no lockout fund or insurance policy as they have had in the past; they are hesitant to threaten the ’93 debut of the Florida Marlins and Denver Rockies; they will not undermine work of the joint economic study committee, formed by the last negotiations and due to report later this year.

Said Fehr, on the possibility of the owners calling for a December reopening: “You hope it doesn’t happen, and I’m not predicting it’s going to happen, but there is enough scuttlebutt that you can’t assume it’s not going to happen.

“I have to take it as an operating assumption that the owners will reopen, and if they do, we probably won’t be sitting here at this time next year.”