Owners Vote to Expand the Playoffs : Baseball: They still can’t reach decision on who plays whom and where for best-of-five first round of postseason.

Surprise.

Baseball’s often divided major league owners failed Thursday to reach agreement on the format for a new playoff round.

They voted, 26-2, with the Texas Rangers and Detroit Tigers opposing the break with tradition, to approve a new playoff round for 1994.

But they did not vote or reach a consensus on who the participants will be, other than the four division champions, which teams will play which teams in the five-game series or how many games will be played in each park.

John Harrington, president of the Boston Red Sox and chairman of the format committee, said the team with the next-best record after the division champions will qualify in each league, but it is still to be determined whether:

--The other division’s second-place finisher or a third-place finisher with a better record, regardless of division, will qualify in each league.

--The division champions will play teams from their own divisions or the other divisions; a straw vote on the two concepts came up 14-14.

--The division champions will begin the first round of the playoffs in their own parks.

“The committee is divided and the full ownership is divided because there is nothing quantitative to guide us,” Harrington said of the issues still to be resolved.

He said there would be more talks among the owners, leading to a vote in September, and that the players’ union, which must approve the new round, will be brought into the discussions.

There is irony to the owners’ inability to reach a consensus, because the debate involves a system that could be in place for only one year--or not at all, if the 1994 season is erased by a work stoppage over a new bargaining agreement.

Optimistically, Harrington said, a resolution of the labor agreement would include a new playoff formula for 1995, based on three-division realignment.

Interleague play and expansion to 15 teams in each league may not happen in ‘95, but that, too, is on the horizon, with the next step being expansion to 32 teams.

Citing the complexities involved in current regular-season scheduling and attempts to devise a playoff format, owner Jerry McMorris of the Colorado Rockies said the solutions rest in expansion, and that baseball should even consider Mexico.

“We need to have another team in each league, which would give us three five-team divisions, and then expand to eight divisions with four teams each,” he said. “It’s inevitable, as is interleague play. What we are doing now are just steps along the way.”

Of the Rangers’ decision to oppose this first step, the added playoff round, George W. Bush, the managing partner, said: “I don’t like the thought of a team going through a 162-game season, finishing second and then having the chance to win a three-of-five playoff. You build a team to win a 162-game marathon, not to get lucky in a five-game playoff. This is what sets baseball apart (from other sports). We should continue rewarding our marathon runners, not our sprinters.”

Bud Selig, owner of the Milwaukee Brewers and chairman of the governing executive council, said that he, too, is a traditionalist but that baseball can’t keep “living in a vacuum,” that times have changed and that baseball has to change as well.

The new playoff round, he said, will stimulate fan interest--and revenue--during the final weeks of the race.

“I still contend that eight of 28 is not an outrageous percentage,” he said, compared to the number of teams qualifying for the playoffs in other pro sports.

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In other developments:

--Bill Bartholomay, chairman of the Atlanta Braves and the committee searching for a new commissioner, said the original list of 187 candidates from outside baseball has been whittled to about 20.

He said there is no timetable, but when the list is down to about five, the committee will begin considering candidates from within baseball “as a final piece in the puzzle.”

--Richard Ravitch, president of the owners’ Player Relations Committee, said he hoped to go to the players’ union with a new compensation system shortly after the All-Star break, leaving him five to six weeks to negotiate an agreement among the owners on enhanced revenue sharing among the clubs.

“I can’t give the union a plan until I know how a new redistribution system will be funded,” he said, referring to a system based on a salary cap and a designated percentage of revenue going to salaries.