TV Schedule Deadlines May Finally Prompt Action by Baseball Owners

Tough baseball decisions, long discussed and long delayed by owners whose eye for public image too often is blackened, are finally close to being settled.

Circle Tuesday. That’s when the owners begin meetings in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and they will emerge (yes, we’ve heard all this before) with realignment and an extra round of playoffs, a revenue-sharing plan and possibly a new commissioner.

This may sound like more propaganda, but if there’s no realignment deal with the players’ association within a couple of weeks the fall TV schedules have to go to bed without making room for the extra playoffs. And if there’s no revenue-sharing plan pretty soon, then talks with the players’ association will not have started by the time the players report to spring training.

And if the owners don’t hurry and name a commissioner soon, they could end up with Marge Schott--heaven forbid.

There are two leading candidates for commissioner. One is Harvey Schiller, head of the U.S. Olympic Committee and the focus of various controversies. He is a friend of New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and widely believed to be a form of bargaining chip used in exchange for revenue-sharing support from teams such as the Yankees and Atlanta Braves.

The other is Arnold Weber, retiring president of Northwestern University and former adviser to former President Nixon. He is believed to be a finalist because powerful Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf is a member of the Northwestern Board of Trustees and because Weber himself is a board member of Tribune Co., which owns the Chicago Cubs and the broadcast rights to eight teams.

So much for trying to find the best and the brightest, a powerful, new commissioner without excess baggage and not beholden to any constituencies. If the owners really cared about heading into the second half of this uncertain decade with dynamic and healing leadership, are these really the best choices they can find?

Schiller is an abrasive sort who was nearly touched by the USOC scandal. He is supposedly detested by most of those with whom he dealt at the Southeastern Conference (of which he was once commissioner) and the TV networks that were bidding on the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.

And the semi-sedentary Weber is at an age and interest level where he would be a caretaker who would warm the empty chair through the next few years until the owners could start looking for someone to replace him.

Unfortunately, there were actually good people interested in this job, who viewed being commissioner as a matter of public service for helping a game so intertwined in the fabric of our society.

Paul Kirk, the respected attorney and politician, was one. So was NBC sports chief Dick Ebersol. There are also a number of in-house possibilities who would have also been interested if the owners had ever been willing to look to someone within baseball who actually knows what he would be getting into.

But it is glaringly obvious that the search committee treaded water in hopes that Bud Selig, Milwaukee Brewers president and interim commissioner, would agree to sell his team and remove the “interim” from his title. And when Selig finally convinced them he was not interested, the search committee rushed to judgment on a couple of candidates with powerful in-house sponsors.

So barring a public outcry that could force them to reassess this process, the owners are hell bent to make an uninspired choice as their next “leader,” someone who will be in trouble with the owners by the time paint dries on the nameplate to his office door.

A COMPROMISE revenue-sharing plan formulated by Richard Ravitch, the owners chief labor executive, fell one vote short last week of the 21 votes needed for approval. The eight nays came from the so-called big-market group: both New York teams, the Los Angeles Dodgers, Toronto Blue Jays, Boston Red Sox, Baltimore Orioles, St. Louis Cardinals and Colorado Rockies, who if not demographically big-market certainly is financially with its 4 million in attendance and ongoing free-agent shopping (shortstop Walt Weiss being the latest acquisition).

However, there will be enough votes for approval by the time the owners meet in Florida. St. Louis is close to changing its vote if a few more financial tweaks are made in the plan. Red Sox club President John Harrington has been an active and effective part of revenue sharing since the start and would be an unlikely party to killing the whole process so near to its completion. And some of the other opposition clubs have held out approval only because of various particulars, not to the concept as a whole.

It’s obvious that revenue sharing would help small-market clubs with whatever added income it could provide. And it’s obvious that giving up a few million would not hurt some of those rich, big-market operations.

But Oakland Athletics President Sandy Alderson correctly points out that revenue sharing would indirectly benefit a large majority of clubs.

“What revenue sharing would do is narrow the range of competition, even if a middle-market club like us doesn’t pay or receive appreciably,” Alderson says. “It would narrow the range of payrolls and, in the process, it would allow all clubs to be more competitive.

“There is no question that right now for most clubs, money considerations are more important than talent considerations when you make personnel decisions. Economics are always going to be part of your personnel decisions, but right now they are considerably more in that direction than they should be.”

And in the process, pennant races could be changed. For example, with revenue sharing, maybe a team such as San Diego last season would not have been selling off players. And a team such as Atlanta would not have been in position to scoop up Fred McGriff.

And maybe at least franchises such as Pittsburgh and San Diego won’t have to be totally decimated like they have been the last few years.

AFTER BIGGER NAMES such as Will Clark and Rafael Palmeiro signed, it has been a fairly low-key free-agent season, and there remain some interesting unsigned players. Chris Sabo appears to be headed to either the Dodgers or New York Mets. . . . Tim Belcher, a proven pitcher who has gotten surprisingly little mention, is being semi-pursued by the Seattle Mariners and Toronto. . . . The Mariners are also talking to veteran starting pitchers Frank Tanana and Charlie Leibrandt. . . . A handful of clubs continue to weigh the medical risk of giving a multiyear guarantee to reliever Gregg Olson, whom the Baltimore Orioles still say they can retain.