They Sign on a Line That Blurs

Someday, someone is going to have to explain to me why an oral commitment in the film industry (see Kim Basinger for details) is more binding than a signed contract in the sports industry.

Why can you take to court, and get compensation for, a head nod in one business while the other gets a signed and sealed and notarized document thrown out as not binding? One racket says: “Wait a minute! You shook your head yes! I saw you!” While the other winks and says: “Oh, well, boys will be boys! He didn’t know what he was signing. He didn’t mean it.”

I give you the case of the New York Rangers’ former hockey coach, Mike Keenan. As I get it, Mike had a perfectly valid document, signed and sworn, in which he agreed to coach the Rangers for five years. Then, he won the Stanley Cup--or rather they won the Stanley Cup--for the first time in 54 years, and suddenly Keenan felt he was underpaid and underappreciated.

To the best of everyone’s knowledge, he began opening up negotiations with other clubs. He took the position that his bonus check for winning was 24 hours late and thus abrogated his contract. His bonus check, by the way, was for $608,000.

Keenan wanted out. Keenan always wants out. He makes Larry Brown look like a stay-at-home. Keenan had wanted out at Philadelphia and Chicago before coming to New York.

New York had lent him $975,000 to buy a home there. After all, he had signed a five-year contract. He would be there till the year 2000 or so.

Now, if you or I sign a five-year contract, we expect to honor it, right?

We’re in the wrong business. They get out of contracts all the time in the sports business. Maybe you’re too young to remember the basketball wars between the ABA (American Basketball Assn.) and the NBA (National Basketball Assn.). A federal judge in one state, Virginia, given the same set of facts, would rule oppositely from a federal judge in Washington, if the two jurisdictions were fighting for the same jump-shooter. It was laughable. It ate away at your respect for the legal profession--if you had any to begin with.

The Rangers apparently have very little faith in the law. They’re not going to contest Keenan’s departure. Probably, they’re afraid the courts will award him the Stanley Cup to take with him. Ownership rights are not politically correct.

Unlike baseball, hockey has a commissioner. His name is Gary Bettman, and he did what commissioners always do: equivocated.

First of all, he announced that there was “no room in this league for personnel under contract to make unilateral determinations of their contractual status.”

Then, he showed there was lots of room for it.

First, Bettman fined Keenan $100,000 and suspended him for 60 days. Because the suspension takes effect immediately, it is meaningless. It will be over on Sept. 24, well in time for the opening of hockey season.

Then, Bettman fined the St. Louis Blues $250,000 for tampering, i.e. talking to Keenan while he was still the property of a competitor. Since they had doled out $5 million to hire Keenan, what’s another couple hundred grand? Chump change.

Then, Bettman fined Detroit’s Red Wings $25,000. For nothing. Oh, they solicited Keenan but he ignored them.

Then, Bettman ruled Keenan also had to return $400,000 of his bonus money from the Rangers.

It was here the deal got complicated. Presumably as compensation for the fact they got snookered in the Keenan transaction, the Rangers were permitted to trade for a promising center from St. Louis, Petr Nedved. They gave up two journeymen skaters, Esa Tikkanen and Doug Lidster, for him. On the surface, it was a trade. Under the surface, it was a payoff.

Then, the commissioner fined the Rangers $25,000. You heard me. The Rangers! For going to court in the first place.

Go figure. Tell me hockey doesn’t belong in Alice’s Wonderland? The sentence first, the verdict afterward.

Coach Keenan gets to play the Mad Hatter. First, he hails the Bettman decision as Solomonesque. “Mr. Bettman did a fabulous job bringing the parties together,” he announces. “I have a great deal of respect for him and what he accomplished.”

The next day, a radio station and several newspapers report the whole thing has been a conspiracy between Keenan and the Rangers. The late payment was a rigged-up story to pull the wool over the eyes of the hockey establishment.

Tell me Lewis Carroll wouldn’t have loved Mike Keenan. Maybe that’s why contracts are never enforced in sports. They don’t want us to know what nut cases we’re dealing with. Sports don’t need commissioners. They need keepers.