Umpires Hedging on Strike

Major league umpires are prepared to strike today’s playoff games in the ongoing dispute over the Roberto Alomar spitting incident, but Richie Phillips, head of their union, said the umpires would continue to work if a federal judge orders an injunction.

“If the court issues an injunction, umpires will work,” Phillips said. “If the court doesn’t order an injunction, umpires will be out as long as Roberto Alomar is playing in the playoffs.”

Acting Commissioner Bud Selig will join Phillips and lawyers for the American and National leagues in a Philadelphia federal court today, where baseball, citing the no-strike clause in the bargaining agreement with the umpires union, will ask Judge Edmund Ludwig for an injunction preventing the walkout.

Said American League umpire Rich Garcia: “We want to force them to make us work. We want to show the world we will fight for what is right.”

Attempts to reach a compromise solution in negotiations between Phillips and baseball officials have apparently failed.

Said Phillips: “There’s no room for compromise. They could offer us everything in the world, and they’ve offered us a lot, and there’s nothing that would change our stance.”

Despite Phillips rhetoric, however, baseball sources said they expected the umpires union to join the players union and leading baseball officials in a code of conduct summit after the World Series to discuss and possibly change the suspension and appeal process.

Alomar, the Baltimore Oriole second baseman, drew a five-day suspension from American League President Gene Budig, for spitting at umpire John Hirschbeck after being ejected for arguing a call.

The umpires union considers the suspension too lenient and believes Alomar should be forced to sit now (the Orioles have a 2-0 lead against the Cleveland Indians) rather than next season.

However, there is no precedent for forcing a player suspended during the regular season to serve that suspension during the postseason, and baseball officials insist that policy can’t be changed arbitrarily.

“My contention is that’s nonsense,” Phillips said. “The Basic Agreement gives them the right to modify the penalty once the appeal has been dismissed, denied or withdrawn. They should have modified it.”

On Monday, when baseball first asked Ludwig for an injunction, the judge instructed umpires to remain on the job through Thursday and ordered baseball to schedule a hearing on Alomar’s appeal this week rather than next spring.

That hearing was scheduled for Thursday, but Alomar, under instructions from the players union, dropped his appeal, and Budig canceled the hearing, clearing the way for today’s court date.

A baseball official said he is confident Ludwig will order the injunction, but an official of the umpires union said that if Ludwig didn’t do it Monday, he won’t do it today.

Baseball is prepared to play with or without the regular umpires, using amateur and minor league umpires as replacements.