Major Leagues Ready With Disaster Plans

Major league baseball has been prepared since the 1960s with a disaster plan in case a team is involved in a plane crash or other accident.

The plan has never been used. Despite the extraordinary mileage teams log during a season--the Oakland Athletics will travel about 45,000 air miles this year--baseball officials could not recall a serious accident before the crash of the Angels’ team bus early Thursday morning in New Jersey.

The injuries resulting from that crash appear neither numerous nor extensive enough to trigger the American League’s Rehabilitation Act, which was initiated in 1962 and revised in 1978.

Under that plan, if a team were to lose six or more players for at least 30 days each because of an accident, the league’s other teams would each contribute players to a draft pool from which the team would choose replacements.

The number of players each team would contribute would be determined by a formula based on the number of players killed or injured in the accident. There would be no compensation to the teams that gave up players, nor would those players be returned after the crisis passed.

“Basically, it’s designed to keep the league going, and it’s for the good of each team, just in case it happened to them,” said John Ricco, assistant director of public relations for the American League.

The AL plan also would give the league president power to change schedules in whatever way he saw fit.

The National League plan, adopted in 1965, is known as the Emergency Crisis Rule. It also would allow for a draft pool of two or three players per teams in a worst-case scenario, and is similar to that of the American League.