BASEBALL / ROSS NEWHAN : Will Owners, Union Play Ball on 3 Major Problems?

Baseball’s owners have begun the new year burdened with many of the problems of the old--and the year before that:

No commissioner. No revenue-sharing formula to take to the players’ union. No agreement with the union on how the players will be paid during the proposed extended playoffs, leaving realignment and the 1994 schedule in limbo.

The next negotiating session on playoff pay is Jan. 10.

In the meantime, the owners will meet again in Chicago on Thursday for what might be the showdown debate on revenue sharing, and will meet again Jan. 17-19 in Florida, where the agenda might finally include the unveiling of a commissioner nominee.

Two names still on a list that might now include only two: Harvey Schiller, executive director of the U.S. Olympic Committee, and Arnold Weber, a noted economist who recently resigned as president of Northwestern University and is a director of the Chicago Tribune Co.

A closer look:

REVENUE SHARING

The owners voted in December of 1992 to reopen collective bargaining with the players’ union a year before the contract expired. That would have given them an extra year of negotiating time in an attempt to avoid the 11th-hour sessions that had led to bitter relations and work stoppages.

But the owners have wasted that extra year, having failed to make even one proposal to the union because they can’t agree on a revenue-sharing formula among themselves. That formula figures to be the foundation for a salary-cap system they eventually hope to sell to the players.

Since the collective agreement expired on Dec. 31, the industry is now operating without a labor contract, although the owners have pledged in writing neither to unilaterally change the terms of the old contract nor to call a lockout before or during the 1994 season. The union, in turn, has pledged not to strike.

Those promises leave some breathing room, but it is still not clear when collective talks will start, since it is still not clear when the owners will agree on a formula for sharing revenue. Could it happen in Chicago this week?

Could, said one owner. “But as far as I know, we’re still about three votes short.”

The reference was to the 21 votes needed to approve a formula and the 18-10 stalemate during an August meeting in Wisconsin, the 10 being smaller-revenue clubs that have since threatened their more lucrative brethren by suggesting they will not allow those clubs to make non-network telecasts from their parks unless they get a satisfactory cut of a revenue-sharing formula.

Dodger President Peter O’Malley said there has been progress since the Wisconsin meeting.

“The major-market clubs are willing to double the amount of money they now share, which is a pretty good sign,” he said. “However, if the small-market clubs want it tripled, we may not get there.”

The amount to be shared is the bottom line on a possible agreement, but O’Malley said he would not support any plan that did not also provide a timetable for ending revenue sharing, was not based on the sharing of all revenue from all sources and failed to ensure that all clubs would be managed properly.

O’Malley, critical previously of the San Diego Padres’ management, said it would be crazy to support a system that was tantamount to a dole, with the smaller-revenue clubs simply living off the money they received from the bigger clubs without trying to be aggressive and competitive on their own.

“We’ve all got to be disappointed that more progress hasn’t been made, but it’s the most complicated agenda item we’ve ever faced,” he said.

Richard Ravitch, president of the owners’ Player Relations Committee, has been rumored to be so frustrated with his inability to get the owners to agree on a formula that he has considered resigning. Ravitch has not returned recent phone messages, but both O’Malley and interim commissioner Bud Selig said they have received no indication from Ravitch that he will quit.

Ravitch participated in two conference calls with the 28 clubs Monday in a continuing effort to iron out differences and prepare for a possible vote in Chicago.

“I think we’re close to a time where we have to embrace the new concept or look for alternatives,” O’Malley said.

COMMISSIONER

Fay Vincent has been out of office since September of 1992. Both Schiller and Weber, sources say, have support among the owners, but whether it is enough to get the required 21 votes is uncertain. Schiller is a close friend of New York Yankee owner George Steinbrenner, and there is a theory that Steinbrenner will throw his big-market support behind revenue sharing if the other owners support Schiller.

A small coalition also continues to believe that Selig should remain in an interim role until a new collective bargaining agreement is negotiated, but the Milwaukee Brewers’ owner has been firm in his opposition and spent part of the holidays interviewing candidates Schiller and Weber.

Under pressure from a Congress motivated by Vincent’s forced resignation and considering possible withdrawal of baseball’s antitrust exemption, the industry might finally feel compelled to select a successor. “Florida is the target,” an owner said of the mid-January meeting, aware that more than one target has been missed during the protracted process.

EXTENDED PLAYOFFS

The owners gave late-season approval to 1994 realignment of the American and National leagues into three divisions each, with a five-game playoff preceding the league championship series and World Series.

The union, whose approval is required, agreed to negotiate it apart from other collective bargaining issues.

“I thought we’d have a deal by now, but I’ve become much less optimistic,” said Eugene Orza, the union’s associate general counsel.

The problem: The union contends that since the new television contract provides for baseball to be compensated on a per-game basis in postseason play, the players should be paid on that basis as well. The clubs, however, have offered the same terms as in the past: 60% of the first three games of the new playoff and 60% of the first four games of each the league championship series and World Series.

The owners also contend that to pay the players on a per-game basis raises an integrity issue, suggesting the players might choose to stretch out a postseason series for a bigger pay day. This, of course, has infuriated the union.

If the union does not approve the package, it would kill realignment and the extended playoff in ’94.

“Well,” Orza said, “the leagues have gotten along nicely with two divisions and a two-tiered playoff.”

Happy New Year.