Alternate League Is a Possibility : Baseball: Ongoing labor dispute has made the feasibility even greater because of disenchantment among the players with current ownership.

Nearly 80 years after the Federal League offered a brief challenge to the American and National leagues, baseball’s continuing labor dispute has created new interest in a rival or alternative major league.

Richard Moss, former general counsel of the players union and a longtime agent representing Nolan Ryan, Jack Morris and Andre Dawson, among others, has revived plans he brought to near fruition five years ago, only to have them collapse on the eve of his official announcement regarding creation of what he was calling “the Baseball League.”

Moss says the window of opportunity is larger than it was five years ago, the viability even greater because of disenchantment among the players with the current ownership and the possibility that existing clubs will ask major league prices for a minor league brand of baseball in 1995.

“The owners had not declared war on the players as they now have,” Moss said of his 1989 plans. “In my 25 years in the game, I’ve never seen it this bad, never seen the players this united.

“If my sampling of the players is representative, 98% are enthusiastic about a new league. They are very open to it. They want it very much.”

The players, of course, see it for what it potentially represents: an alternative paycheck if the owners implement their salary-cap proposal.

Investors?

“We hope to have something more specific to say in three to four weeks, but I can tell you there is a substantial group of well established and highly motivated people actively exploring the feasibility of having an alternative league ready to play by next April,” Moss said.

“I’m receiving inquiries all the time, and I’m convinced there are a lot of capable people who would love to be part of a baseball league that is operated correctly and representative of a true partnership with the players.

“I’m optimistic it can be done and done very well, and it would be easy enough if we had two or three years. The question is, can it be done quickly enough to be playing in April? It’s a challenge under the circumstances, but I still think it’s feasible.

“A lot has to be done in the next few months, of course, and we’ll be governed by the practicalities as we go along.”

Practicalities?

“It’s silly and unrealistic,” owners’ negotiator Richard Ravitch said of an alternative league. “It’s all smoke. I mean, nobody is going to put revenue up without control over compensation, and that’s just one of (many hurdles).

“If it’s just meant to be leverage (in the labor negotiations), it has no leverage whatsoever because it’s unbelievable.”

Said Donald Fehr, the union’s executive director, “We’ll look at any and all options (if the owners implement their proposal, as expected, before Nov. 1), but we haven’t looked at any yet.”

Moss said that the union isn’t involved in planning because it would represent a conflict of interest.

“The union’s No. 1 goal is to negotiate an acceptable (bargaining) agreement,” he said.

“If the union chooses to use the threat of a rival league to achieve that, it’s quite legitimate. I’ve had many talks with Don, and he understands what we’re doing and I understand what he has to do.”

Should the union reach a bargaining agreement, Moss said, it might delay the arrival of his league.

“But I still think a rival league is viable because the old structure cannot provide major league baseball as it should be,” he said.

He also said that he does not know what role the union would play in the new league since players might be offered 50% equity, a 50% share of the profits and a 50% role in decision making as inducements.

“We’re not going to be able to pay $5-million and $6-million salaries to start with,” he said. “In many cases we may not be able to match what they make now in salaries. But we can offer the type of partnership their current owners only give lip service to, and under those circumstances everyone is working toward the same goal.”

With all of that, of course, the union has an inherent interest in any proposition that expands the job market and has a competitive impact on salaries, making it impossible to separate what Moss is doing from the union’s objectives.

A union lawyer, in fact, suggested that it might be possible to use all or part of the $200-million licensing pool to help underwrite a new league, and it is obvious that the concept has been discussed with players, who are talking about it either as a wedge or the real thing.

During the recent meetings in New York, Brett Butler of the Dodgers said most players would rather jump to a new league than operate under a salary cap, and teammate Orel Hershiser said, “I don’t think it’s just an outside possibility. The players may even own the league. There may be bankers just to back a 100% player ownership. Then there’s no argument about cutting up the piece of pie.”

Players have jumped before over issues of salary, freedom and proposed caps, but the 1890 Players League, created in competition with the National League, lasted only one season, and the Federal League, challenging the National and American, quit after its second season, in 1915, although it made one significant contribution.

Owners of the Baltimore team sued the established owners over their monopolistic practices, and the Supreme Court ultimately ruled in 1922 that baseball was more sport than business and not a commonly accepted form of interstate commerce, creating the antitrust exemption that later courts have twice upheld. The union claims the exemption has been responsible for baseball’s eight work stoppages.

Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio), a leader in the Congressional attempt to remove the exemption, was quoted in a story appearing in Thursday’s editions of The Times as saying no investor “in his right mind would put up money to compete against an unregulated monopoly which has an antitrust exemption.”

Moss, however, thinks otherwise and sees the exemption as an additional inducement.

“Even if Congress doesn’t change it, if the established owners try to block the new league, I’m confident this Supreme Court would uphold a large damage claim for violating antitrust laws,” Moss said. “In my opinion, the attitude in both Congress and the courts is changing.”

The exemption did not stop prospective owners from forming the eight team Continental League in the late ‘50s, which was so close to taking off that nervous owners warded off the threat by allowing the Dodgers and Giants to move West in 1958, and expanding the American and National leagues in 1961 and ’62.

Neither did the exemption stop Moss from organizing his eight team Baseball League in association with New York lawyer David LeFevre in the mid-’80s. After a promising planning stage, the league became a victim of circumstances in 1989 after delaying it’s planned 1990 opening to 1991.

“There were two factors,” Moss said. “Collusion ended, and the clubs began to sign players to long-term contracts. And the economy went into serious decline. A lot of real estate people suffered significant losses, and many of our investors were in the real estate business.”

The withdrawal of two in particular, Donald Trump and Meshulam Riklis, a friend of Trump, occurred on the eve of a New York meeting at which the new owners planned to announce creation of the new league.

Moss would not say which cities he planned to go into then or which cities he hopes to go into now.

He said that in some cases he will take on existing franchises head to head, including New York and Los Angeles, where he sees the San Bernardino area “as another Orange County.”

Stadiums, of course, represent a serious problem, Moss acknowledged. There are exclusivity clauses and priority commitments to current tenants in existing cities, and inadequate facilities in many potential new cities.

Nevertheless, Moss said that current leases could be jeopardized if existing teams attempted to play with replacement players at a sub-major league level; that the building of new stadiums can be stimulated by offering communities equity in the teams, and that former Dodger owner Walter O’Malley proved a team can survive for the short term in a football facility, when the Dodgers played in the Coliseum after moving to Los Angeles.

“You’d like to have an ideal stadium in every city to start with, but I don’t think that’s possible,” Moss said. “I also think it’s a situation that can be corrected in a few years. The building of stadiums has become an art. It doesn’t take nearly the time that it once did.”

That leaves the broader question of who pays for the building, as well as several others. Among them:

How does a new league establish minor league affiliations? Can it obtain the mandatory exposure and financing of a national TV contract considering ABC, NBC, ESPN, TBS and WGN have ties to the existing clubs and that CBS lost about $500 million in the four years of its baseball contract? Will enough players give up their existing pay level, service time and pension benefits?

“It may take some litigation, but the bottom line is that I think they would all be available,” Moss said, referring to more than 700 players. “My view is that the reserve system is an internal system, holding them to a club so they can’t go to another in the system. It has nothing to do with another system.”

Can it fly?

At various times, Harry Ornest of Beverly Hills has owned the St. Louis Blues of the NHL, the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League and the Vancouver Canadians of the Pacific Coast League.

“I just don’t think it’s practical or logical, unless you had a ballpark available in every major city.” Ornest said.

Gary Davidson, co-founder and first president of the American Basketball Assn. and the World Hockey Assn., and the founder of the World Football League, said, “There are legitimate opportunities throughout the country,” and that a new baseball league can survive if it has:

Good management; a lot of capital (the WFL lost $20 million in its first 20 weeks, he said); corporate ownership that can offset the initial costs and losses through advertising and merchandising; TV exposure to establish legitimacy; international franchises in Mexico City, Havana and other Caribbean locales; one or two all-stars per team (“You can’t fill every roster with 25 all-stars or you’ll go under in the first year”), and an understanding that it may take four or five years to turn around financially.

Davidson said there is nothing wrong with players sharing in the equity, as long as the players are active.

“You can’t let that arrangement go on with a player forever, or sooner or later the equity becomes so diluted that it has no value,” he said.

Moss is convinced that between the receptiveness of the players and the sub-major league product that existing clubs may field next year, a new league would get off to a running start. He said it would be irresponsible not to expect losses, but the potential profit would be greater if it’s done correctly.

“It’s a wonderful project, something I’ve always dreamed of,” he said.