Baseball War Heats Up Over Giants

Five days before major league owners conduct a possibly heated meeting to decide where the San Francisco Giants will be based in 1993, controversy and contradiction cloud the picture.

Wednesday, for instance, Steve Greenberg, baseball’s deputy commissioner, disagreed with a major league owner who told The Times that the real issue is a belief by some National League owners that Bob Lurie did not have approval to sell his Giants to a group that would move the team to Florida and did not follow league guidelines in agreeing to the sale.

That belief, the owner said, could provide the basis for the league rejecting that agreement and voting to approve the sale to a group that would keep the team in San Francisco.

“The Tampa Bay group could offer $500 million and it wouldn’t matter,” the owner said, insisting on anonymity. “This is not a matter of the difference in price (between the Tampa-St. Petersburg and San Francisco offers). The question is whether Bob put the cart before the horse in signing the agreement. Did he follow the guidelines on ownership transfer? Did he actually have approval to transfer the team? I think this could come back to haunt him.”

It would come back to haunt him if his $115-million sale to a Tampa-St. Petersburg group headed by Vincent J. Naimoli is rejected and he is forced to accept the $100-million offer from a San Francisco group headed by Peter Magowan, president and CEO of the Safeway market chain.

Greenberg said the only issue is “the merit of the two offers, the stability of the two groups and the legal implications in moving or not moving the Giants--not what Bob Lurie was told by (then commissioner) Fay Vincent (before making the deal with the Florida group).

“That may be an interesting sidelight to some owners,” Greenberg said, “but it’s not critical. We’re beyond the point where procedure is the issue.”

The owners are expected to vote Tuesday in Scottsdale, Ariz., after the executive council first meets with the ownership committee on Monday to formulate a possible recommendation.

Lurie, who is prohibited from voting on the Florida transfer, needs 10 of 13 National League votes and a majority of the 14 American League votes.

Dodger owner Peter O’Malley, who heads the opposition, is believed to have enough votes to block the Tampa move, with the San Diego Padres, Colorado Rockies, Pittsburgh Pirates, New York Mets and Florida Marlins among the clubs that may join him, sources indicated.

While insisting they would welcome the Giants to Florida, the Marlins privately oppose sharing the new market with an established team. Wednesday, in a breach of the club’s public posture on the subject, club President Carl Barger said he felt Lurie “did not follow” the rules of transfer in his agreement with the Tampa Bay group, substantiating the aforementioned claim. Barger said there are aspects of it the league has problems with and that Lurie is “aware of those problems.”

Lurie has refused comment since reaching an agreement of sale with the Naimoli group on Aug. 6, claiming he received permission from Vincent to explore options outside of the Bay Area after a Bay Area stadium proposal was rejected for the fourth time by voters in San Jose in early June.

On Sept. 9, National League President Bill White said the league would accept offers from any Bay Area group interested in keeping the club in San Francisco.

Now there are rumors that the $100-million offer from the Magowan group is not that at all, that the group will make a final offer only if the Tampa offer is first rejected and that the San Francisco offer will hinge on the group’s ability to secure a loan at an agreeable rate within 15 days of the Tampa rejection.

It has become difficult to separate fact from folly amid the disinformation coming from both sides.

Did Lurie have permission to reach a transfer agreement that fellow owners learned about in their morning papers? The owner who called that the real issue and said it could come back to haunt Lurie also said Vincent opened a Pandora’s box, and added:

“My understanding is that he told Bob that he could explore all opportunities available to him, but what did he mean by that?”

Greenberg said the procedure was not the issue but added that after the San Jose vote Vincent had told Lurie “he could explore his options in other cities. However, he couldn’t give a club permission to move because he didn’t have that authority.”