BASEBALL / ROSS NEWHAN : O’Malley on Outside Looking in, Thanks to Selig

Ask Peter O’Malley, the Dodger owner, to describe his relationship with acting Commissioner Bud Selig and he chooses his words as if negotiating a minefield.

Ask him--as keeper of the family legacy and the only owner whose income has been and continues to be derived solely from baseball--if he thinks he has been properly and respectfully included in the planning and orchestration of management’s course through this bargaining stalemate and work stoppage, and he says of the fading season:

“It will be very sad if the season is canceled, but I’m not going to blame (negotiators) Don Fehr or Dick Ravitch.”

If that points a damning finger in the direction of Selig, there is always more to what O’Malley doesn’t say than what he does.

There is always more between the lines.

O’Malley cautiously works the minefield, saying:

“Bud has a very difficult job. He’s trying very hard, but he’s in an impossible position as a stockholder of the Brewers, chairman of the Player Relations Committee and acting commissioner.

“He knows that for two years I have been pushing for the election of a full-time, outside, independent commissioner, but Bud has surrounded himself with owners he’s very comfortable with.

“If he were to ask me to join the (negotiating) committee, I’d be happy to help. All 28 owners cannot be on the committee, and I agree that a small, representative group (Selig chose 12) is the best way to identify a long-term agreement enthusiastically embraced by both sides.”

With the season about to go down, the perception is that O’Malley, with more to lose, perhaps, than any other owner because of his economic reliance on baseball, has been forced to the outside looking in--and deserves better.

The perception is that the mystique of National League superiority and the power once wielded by his father, Walter--still in place under Bowie Kuhn--has slowly eroded under Peter Ueberroth, Fay Vincent and now Selig, the Milwaukee Brewers’ owner.

O’Malley addresses the perceptions obliquely. What he says and what he does not say is:

--Selig has other owners with whom he is more comfortable.

--Their relationship--seconded by Selig, who also left it at that--is professional, or in other words: distant, detached, dispassionate.

--Yes, he is on the outside and thinking Selig might be wearing too many hats and is too closely tied--this comes from others--to Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, the power broker Walter O’Malley once was, and a small-market clique comprising Tom Werner of the San Diego Padres, Carl Pohlad of the Minnesota Twins and Doug Danforth of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

O’Malley was an ally of Selig and Reinsdorf in the push that led to Vincent’s resignation as commissioner in September of 1992. But it is a measure of his disenchantment with the current leadership that he apologized to Vincent for that at the recent Three Tenors concert at Dodger Stadium, saying, in effect, that if he knew then what he knows now, he wouldn’t have joined that effort.

“I don’t remember exactly what I said, but it was probably words to that effect,” O’Malley said. “As I’ve been saying for two years, baseball has needed a strong, outside, independent commissioner.”

Where does all of that leave O’Malley now?

He was co-chairman of the committee that restructured the still vacant commissioner’s office. He was chairman of the committee that selected Leonard Coleman as National League president. He is not on the Player Relations Committee, was not one of the 12 owners and club executives selected by Selig to meet with the union in New York and is not on Selig’s executive council, which includes Werner and Pohlad, who are in the process of leaving the game but first attempting to increase the value of the clubs they are selling by supporting a new compensation system. Nice conflict.

O’Malley supports that system. At least publicly.

Behind the scenes, it’s a little hazy. Behind the scenes, he seems to be part of a high-revenue group attempting to shake up last-ditch support for a bargaining compromise and resumption of the season before the Sept. 9 deadline.

Peter Angelos of the Baltimore Orioles is part of that movement. The New York Yankees and Mets, Toronto Blue Jays and Colorado Rockies are definitely in on it, but it might be too late.

There is widespread anger among the 28 owners regarding the union’s refusal to respond to the salary-cap proposal. The chance to unilaterally implement may be the closest they ever get to total victory over the union. Cancellation of the World Series is suddenly a small price to pay for some.

What’s shaking?

“I don’t know,” O’Malley said. “I’m not on the committee. Bud has conference calls that are nice and polite, but I have no knowledge of what’s going on.”

It’s a sad state complicated by the voting rule that awards power to the small and middle markets and has further frustrated the bigs.

Twenty-one of the 28 clubs have to approve a settlement. This was another coup for consensus builder Selig on the lines of 1) delaying election of a commissioner so that there would be no interference in the negotiations, 2) influencing the big markets to share revenue with the small, 3) maintaining owner unanimity in support of the salary-cap proposal that might cancel the World Series for the first time, and 4) canceling this week’s owners meeting in Detroit to thwart the possibility of dissent and a full-scale high-revenue attack on the unanimity.

Selig insists that the voting rule was changed from majority approval of a settlement to three fourths because “the clubs unanimously felt there was merit to what we were doing” through the salary-cap proposal.

The change was first discussed at a January owners meeting in Florida that O’Malley couldn’t attend because of the Northridge earthquake.

It was a done deal, he said, by the time he reached Cincinnati for the June 8 vote.

“It was announced as unanimous, and we’ll leave it at that,” O’Malley said.

But he added he did not think the voting requirement will be an impediment to an agreement.

“If we get close to a deal, the overwhelming number of clubs will support it,” he said.

There is no indication a deal is close. As the clock ticks away the remaining hours of the 1994 season, a disconsolate club executive said the owners and players appear to be “jumping off the bridge hand in hand.”

Will O’Malley and Selig be holding hands as they jump? Doubtful. They’ll keep polite distance as always. Professional to the end.

BUILDING BRIDGES

The informal effort by Jerry McMorris, owner of the Colorado Rockies, to establish ongoing communication with the players’ union will not produce a settlement in itself, but it could be a small first step toward the partnership the owners have talked about but never really pursued--if, in fact, the owners and players ever achieve peace.

‘The most appalling and discouraging thing I’ve encountered in my two years in baseball is that I never fathomed that the level of mistrust (between owners and players) was so deep,” McMorris said. “I mean, it’s kind of a mystery to me. The players turn over more frequently than the owners, but the seeds of distrust keep growing.”

There is continuity to the union leadership, of course, and if it’s not Fehr reminding the players what they’ve accomplished through unanimity, it’s Marvin Miller returning from retirement. It’s also the owners continually attempting to abridge player rights or withholding a pension payment or colluding against free agents, stiffening the players resolve and deepening the mistrust.

It’s all new to McMorris, who runs the nation’s largest privately owned trucking firm and has never been shut down by a strike or had a union sanction filed against him in 30 years.

Trust, confidence and mutual respect are the keys to that record, he said.

“The players and owners have to get on the same page economically so that they have a selfish reason to pull together,” he said. “Of course, if my freight handlers threaten a strike, I can walk down the street and find replacements. I can’t do that with major league ballplayers, and the players know it.”

The Rockies, of course, were headed for another attendance record, and McMorris was firmly against revenue sharing if it meant the small markets were simply treating it as welfare and not putting it back in the game.

He ultimately decided that increased sharing linked to both a cap and payroll floor that forces the small markets to reinvest in players is in the industry’s best interest, although the Rockies and Florida Marlins, as the new kids, will be excused from revenue sharing for three years.

“We can probably survive under any system,” McMorris said of the Rockies. “But from a competitive standpoint, we’re only as strong as the teams we’re playing are, and six to eight truly consider themselves to be on a death watch.”

With all of that, McMorris remains a moderate loosely tied to a high-revenue coalition that favors compromise and resumption of the season. If the World Series goes down, he said, it will be an “embarrassment to everybody in the game.” He spent four hours with Fehr on Wednesday night looking for a conceptual approach that could keep the process alive but came away thinking that the union has “stonewalled every attempt” to sustain dialogue on the issue of cost certainty.

His attitude, according to sources, was exemplified by an incident during a recent owners’ meeting in New York. McMorris was greeted by noted hawk Reinsdorf, who said: “Don’t you just love all this politics and behind the scenes stuff, Jerry?”

Replied McMorris: “No, Jerry, I’d rather be watching baseball.”

FREE AGENTS

There are 192 players who approach the end of the season eligible for free agency and no longer sure what that means.

Among them: Jack McDowell, Larry Walker, Gregg Jefferies, Paul O’Neill, Jay Buhner, Jim Abbott, Kevin Brown, John Franco, Danny Jackson, John Kruk, Jeff Blauser, Bill Swift and 10 Dodgers: Brett Butler, Jim Gott, Kevin Gross, Chris Gwynn, Orel Hershiser, Roger McDowell, Cory Snyder, Jeff Treadway, Tim Wallach and Mitch Webster.

“I think the very best players will still be OK, but there’s a lot to be worried about because no one knows what system will be in place,” veteran agent Tom Reich said.

Players eligible for free agency usually start filing on the day after the World Series, but there may not be a World Series.

If the owners unilaterally implement their new system, salary arbitration would be eliminated, directly affecting players who hold free-agent repeater rights. If not offered arbitration within five days after the end of the World Series, those players become unrestricted free agents.

Unilateral implementation would also change the free-agency rules. Fourth- and fifth-year players would become eligible for free agency, but their current clubs would have the right of first refusal. A sixth-year player would remain an unrestricted free agent.