Yankees’ Williams Requests Record $9-Million Contract

Bernie Williams, looking at perhaps his final season with the New York Yankees, asked for a record $9 million in salary arbitration Monday.

New York countered at $7.5 million, the highest figure offered by a team and a raise of $2.2 million.

Williams’ agent, Scott Boras, said last month that negotiations for a long-term contract would cease once arbitration figures were exchanged and the outfielder would then file for free agency after the season.

Williams’ request topped the $7.65 million Dodger catcher Mike Piazza submitted last year. Piazza’s figure became moot later that day when he agreed to a $15-million, two-year contract.

Mike Mussina had received the highest offer from a team, $6.65 million from the Baltimore Orioles last year. He settled at $6,825,000, then agreed to a three-year contract worth $20,475,000.

If Williams wins his arbitration hearing, he will have the largest one-year contract in baseball history, topping the $8.5 million Toronto pitcher Pat Hentgen will receive in 1999.

Boston second baseman John Valentin submitted the second-highest figure, $7 million. Boston offered $5.5 million, matching Williams and the Yankees for the highest spread among the 60 players who exchanged figures with their teams.

Four other players asked for more than $4 million, among them Colorado pitcher Pedro Astacio, who already has agreed to a $23.3-million, four-year deal. Because the deal won’t be completed until after his physical, Astacio asked for $4,995,000. The Rockies offered $4 million.

Yankee pitcher Andy Pettitte, eligible for arbitration for the first time, asked for a six-fold increase from $700,000 to $4.39 million and was offered $3.25 million.

Atlanta catcher Javy Lopez asked for a raise from $2.05 million to $4.3 million and was offered $3.5 million. New York Met pitcher Bobby Jones asked for $4.15 million and was offered $3.1 million.

Players and teams unable to reach agreements will have hearings during the first three weeks of February, and for the first time half the cases will be heard by three-man panels rather than individual arbitrators.

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Ted Williams and Bob Feller have petitioned the commissioner’s office to clear the late “Shoeless” Joe Jackson’s name and make him eligible to join them in baseball’s Hall of Fame.

“I want baseball to right an injustice,” Williams said in a statement supporting a petition he and Feller have submitted to baseball’s acting commissioner, Bud Selig, and the National Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, N.Y. “That’s wrong . . . and baseball shouldn’t tolerate injustice.”

Jackson and seven Chicago White Sox teammates were accused of trying to throw the 1919 World Series. They were acquitted in court but banned from baseball.

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Former Angel manager Buck Rodgers will return as manager of the Mission Viejo Vigilantes in the independent Western Baseball League, he said.

Miscellany

Ed Orgeron, defensive line coach at Syracuse, said he has accepted an offer from USC football Coach Paul Hackett to be a Trojan assistant. Orgeron previously coached at Miami.

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Michigan athletic director Tom Goss says he would have stopped the Wolverines’ wrestling program if the NCAA had not implemented restrictions on radical weight loss.

“I was ready to drop the sport until they made the changes,” Goss told the Detroit News.

The NCAA last week banned rubber suits, saunas, diuretics and other rapid weight-loss methods at all schools.

Three deaths since November, one of a Michigan wrestler, raised fears about weight-loss techniques used by wrestlers desperate to make their weight classes.

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Two environmentalists reportedly plan to quit a watchdog group for the Nagano Olympics because they oppose the adjustments made to the men’s downhill course.

Washin Machida, head of the Nature Conservation Union of Nagano, and Zenichiro Koshiba, the secretary general, will leave the Nagano Prefecture Nature Conservation Study Council, the Kyodo News reported, to protest the decision to change the starting point of the men’s downhill.

Last October, the council voted against such a move, fearing it would infringe on protected national park land.

The International Ski Federation criticized the decision, saying the course fell short of international standards.

The council agreed Dec. 1 to raise the starting altitude to 5,791 feet.

A men’s World Cup slalom at Veysonnaz, Switzerland, was postponed indefinitely because of heavy overnight snow and poor visibility.