BASEBALL DAILY REPORT : AROUND THE MAJOR LEAGUES : Vincent Won’t Make Steinbrenner Wait

Commissioner Fay Vincent said Wednesday he will inform New York Yankee principal owner George Steinbrenner “reasonably soon” whether he will lift or modify the lifetime ban Steinbrenner accepted in July of 1990 for his dealings with admitted gambler Howard Spira.

Vincent, deputy commissioner Steve Greenberg, Steinbrenner and attorney Arnold Burns met for an hour Tuesday at a Manhattan hotel, fulfilling Vincent’s promise to hear Steinbrenner’s arguments if Steinbrenner’s associates dropped lawsuits against him. Leonard Kleinman, formerly chief executive officer of the Yankees, recently dropped a $22-million suit against Vincent instituted on Steinbrenner’s behalf.

“We’re not negotiating,” Vincent said. “I have two choices, either to say we’re not going to modify the agreement, or we’ll modify it. . . . I told them I would think about it and they could expect to hear from us and they will.”

Vincent gave no indication which way he is leaning. While he originally intended to impose a two-year suspension because Steinbrenner’s transgression “was not a capital crime,” he said the conduct of Steinbrenner and other Yankee executives hasn’t been “totally consistent with my expectations of what our agreement called for.” He added: “It’s not a question of forgiving. I have a duty to be fair and do what’s right for baseball.”

Outfielder Dale Murphy of the Philadelphia Phillies will undergo arthroscopic surgery today to determine the cause of continual fluid buildup in his left knee.

Murphy was put on the 15-day disabled list Tuesday and sent home to Atlanta to visit physician Joseph Chandler. Knee problems also put him on the disabled list April 14 through May 7.