BASEBALL : Here They Come, the Dunedin Blue Jays

The warning track is made of seashells, the fences are too short and the lights aren’t too bright. No matter, major league baseball is set to move into tiny Dunedin Stadium.

The Toronto Blue Jays, forced out of their space-age SkyDome by a local law banning replacement players, received permission Friday from the American League to play this season in their quaint spring-training ballpark in Florida.

With only 6,218 seats, Dunedin Stadium would be the smallest park any big league team has called home since the Brooklyn Bridegrooms played at 3,000-seat Washington Park in 1890. Dunedin, a city of 36,000, is about 20 miles west of Tampa.

“We are making the best of a difficult situation,” AL President Gene Budig said. “American League staff members visited the Dunedin facility and believe it can be used for official games with some modification. The Blue Jays have agreed to make the needed changes.”

The Blue Jays, still officially baseball’s two-time champions because last year’s World Series was wiped out by the strike, are scheduled to open the regular season on April 3 against Seattle at 1:05 p.m. Tickets, scaled down from a top of nearly $20 last season to $9 for reserved seats and $5 for general admission, go on sale today.

Toronto’s following five home dates, including two night games, have been switched to 1:05 p.m. starts. The Blue Jays are not putting up portable lights to bolster the brightness, hence the earlier times in April and possibly all day games through May.

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WABC radio sued the New York Yankees for $10 million Friday, charging the team has caused the station to lose millions of advertising dollars by offering “sham competitions” for broadcast.

WABC said it paid millions to air games using genuine major leaguers, but the Yankees breached their contract with the station by offering games that use replacements.

The strikebreaker games are worthless to WABC, the station said in papers filed in State Supreme Court, “because virtually no advertisers” will buy time on broadcasts of the games.