New Lineup in the Future for Baseball? : Owners’ meeting: Preliminary approval given to expanding playoffs to eight teams and breaking leagues into three divisions.

Major league owners gave preliminary approval Thursday to expanding the playoffs from four teams to eight and realigning the American and National leagues into three geographic divisions each.

Any changes, which may include 10 to 20 games of interleague play for each of the 28 teams, are not likely before 1995.

The interleague games would put an emphasis on geographic rivalries such as the Dodgers and Angels, said John Harrington, Boston Red Sox president who is chairman of the format committee.

The approval, in two straw polls, of three divisions and expanded playoffs reflected a recent fan survey.

Bud Selig, president of the Milwaukee Brewers and chairman of the governing executive council, said the owners gave overwhelming approval to expanded playoffs and three divisions, with or without interleague play.

The format committee will draw up mock schedules, with and without interleague play, “and the one that makes the most sense will be the one they propose,” Selig said.

Those schedules will be based on 162 regular-season games, one owner said, with options on balanced and unbalanced approaches to a team playing more games within its division or without.

“I think there’s a great possibility that the landscape is changing,” said Selig, the implication being that the final proposal, expected this summer, will get the required 75% approval in each league.

Both Peter O’Malley of the Dodgers, who are expected to join the San Diego Padres, San Francisco Giants and Colorado Rockies in the National League West; and Jackie Autry of the Angels, who would probably join the American League West with the Oakland Athletics, Seattle Mariners and Texas Rangers, voted for realignment.

Autry said that geographic realignment made economic sense and that the three-division, expanded-playoff concept would keep more teams in the race, stimulating attendance during the final months of the season.

“I think the surveys showed that fans want a different concept in baseball,” she said. “The people in the 18-to-34-year bracket favor it by a major degree. TV tells us that our fans are getting older, so if we want to rejuvenate interest among our younger fans, we have to consider all options.”

Baseball is the only major sport restricting its playoffs to division winners. If the playoff-expansion plan goes through, the three division winners probably will be joined by the team with the league’s next-best record. Selig said that had yet to be decided and added:

“I think eight of 28 teams is not an excessive number (to make the playoffs) and is considerably less than other sports. Some people say we never move, we never change, but then when we do, they say we’re tampering with the game.

“Look, we’re in a very competitive business, and we’re trying to look at every phase. No industry should stand pat without considering its options.”

Although a vote on the restructuring of the commissioner’s office was delayed until an April meeting, the owners were active in other areas Thursday.

On the recommendation of Richard Ravitch, president of their Player Relations Committee, they voted to exchange financial records.

Ravitch called it an imperative step if the clubs are going to increase the amount of revenue they share with each other, which the players’ union has said must be done before it would consider a revenue partnership with the clubs.

Ravitch had an unprecedented meeting with many Arizona-based players Thursday night--he will have three others in Florida--in an attempt to explain his view of the need for a system that would include a salary cap and a designated percentage of revenue going to salaries.

He said he would try to convince the players that any system that allows only 10% of the players to earn 50% of all compensation--his projection for 1994--”does not augur well” for the union and that the clubs’ revenue losses with a new TV package next year will be “catastrophic.”

Selig also said that within two weeks, baseball would announce a “significant series” of minority initiatives and steps aimed at speeding up the game.

He said the goal is to knock at least 20 minutes off the average time of games, which was 2 hours 45 minutes in the National League and 2:53 in the American.

Selig said the program would be in place by the start of the season, although any changes in the official rules will have to be approved by the union.

The union also will have to approve the three-division, expanded-playoff concept, which it probably will use as a wedge in the new collective bargaining talks.

Selig said the composition of the three divisions hasn’t been decided and that it isn’t known if the added round of playoffs can be sold to the TV networks, which have expressed little interest in the idea because of problems they already have selling commercial time with the current structure.

Time zones will be an important consideration in the realignment, but under most plans only the Rangers would have to play in a division with more than an hour’s difference between the other members and the Rangers’ own zone.

Although a 15th team in each league would allow for three divisions of five teams each, Selig said there is no plan to expand again soon and doubted that baseball could be forced into it by the filing Thursday of a second Congressional bill that would revoke the sport’s antitrust exemption.

A New Look

Ross Newhan outlines one strong possibility for realignment:

AMERICAN LEAGUE

WEST--Angels, Oakland, Seattle and Texas.

CENTRAL--Chicago White Sox, Minnesota, Detroit, Milwaukee and Kansas City.

EAST--Boston, Baltimore, New York Yankees, Toronto and Cleveland. NATIONAL LEAGUE

WEST--Dodgers, San Diego, San Francisco, Colorado.

CENTRAL--Houston, St. Louis, Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh.

EAST--New York Mets, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Florida and Montreal.

* DODGERS

Tom Candiotti works on his power knuckleball. C4

* ANGELS

Chad Curtis prepares to answer his critics. C4