A CAPITAL IDEA

In a season in which Rupert Murdoch is baseball’s favorite dartboard, Michael Eisner is more than happy to grab a dart.

Murdoch’s Dodgers signed pitcher Kevin Brown to a record $105-million contract last December, and many rival owners wasted little time or breath vilifying Murdoch and his Fox Group for shoving baseball one great step closer to economic apocalypse. Eisner didn’t praise Murdoch, but neither did the Disney chairman condemn him, at least on that score.

Disney owns the Angels, but the Southern California baseball rivalry is almost a pleasant little diversion to two companies that spend billions of dollars, pounds, francs and yen in the hope of entertaining you on broadcast television, cable television, at the movies and, yes, at the ballpark.

“We’re in competition with Fox everywhere,” Eisner said on a visit to the Angels’ spring home in Tempe, Ariz. “Luckily, their baseball team doesn’t compare to our baseball team. So, in that area, we don’t have to worry about the competition.”

Doesn’t compare? The Dodgers and Angels do not play in the same division, so maybe Eisner meant to say “doesn’t compete with.” Compare, or compete?

“Compare,” he said. “It’s the quality of players, and the quality of how we’re going to win. They’re the lesser team in the market. They’re just going to have to deal with that.”

The Disney executive standing next to Eisner grimaced, imagining those statements in print. Eisner, who had turned to walk away, turned back and told the reporter he could play the quotes straight or tongue in cheek.

“Frankly,” Eisner said, “I don’t care.”

As the Angels open the season tonight against the Cleveland Indians, they’re the good guys. Murdoch’s Dodgers incurred wrath by breaking the $100-million barrier, signing a perceived mercenary working in his fourth uniform in five seasons and guaranteeing a seven-year contract to a pitcher who would have to defy probability to stay healthy and productive through age 40.

Eisner’s Angels guaranteed first baseman Mo Vaughn $80 million for six years, a contract hailed as a stroke of genius--an expensive stroke, yes, but a necessary one. With that one move, the Angels added an imposing presence in the clubhouse and the community, a superstar to dispel doubts among players and fans that Disney played to win.

Eisner was so pleased he saluted Vaughn in Disney’s annual report, citing him even before Mickey Mouse in a letter to shareholders. After paying tribute to the late Gene Autry, the Angels’ founding owner, Eisner wrote: “I am sure Gene is somewhere smiling at the Angels’ acquisition of Mo Vaughn, a quality star who completely fits into Gene’s Cowboy Code, especially Code #6: ‘He must help people in distress.’ ”

To Disney, red ink is cause for distress. Disney never would have bought into professional sports if Tony Tavares had not shown Eisner there was money to be made in the NHL. But Tavares, the man Eisner appointed to run the Mighty Ducks and the Angels, persuaded his boss last year that the dizzying salary escalation in baseball forced the Angels to choose between trying to make money and trying to field a championship team.

In any other division of the Walt Disney Co., a division head unable to chart a course toward profitability would soon be unemployed.

“The Angels are the one thing in our series of assets that does not turn a profit and that I don’t think has the potential to turn a profit,” Eisner said. “That’s discouraging. But that’s OK.”

As a very minor part of a very profitable company, the Angels’ financial plight inspires more skepticism than sympathy. At a recent seminar in Maryland, players’ union chief Donald Fehr responded this way when asked about a management report that claimed 23 of 30 teams lost money last year: “That includes the Angels. Is anybody here worried about Disney?”

No Disney shareholders, Eisner said, have contacted him to complain about the Angels draining revenue from the company. Why should they? The company reported a $2-billion profit last year.

The Angels claim operating losses of more than $42 million in three seasons under Disney management. Disney also spent $100 million to renovate Edison Field and more than $130 million to buy the team from the Autry family, a purchase officially completed last week.

Disney may have escaped some of the arrows slung at Fox in part because the Angels at least tried a strategy of cost containment before spending Mo money. No player on the major league roster earned more than $5 million last year, and Disney invested heavily in player development, particularly international scouting.

The Angels also are the only team with two representatives on the task force assembled by Commissioner Bud Selig and charged with proposing economic reforms for the sport. If Eisner did not consider the matter important, he would not have allowed Sanford Litvack, chief of corporate operations, to join Tavares on the panel. There are other matters in the Disney empire, after all: television and movies, restaurants and records, cruise ships, theme park expansions in Anaheim and Japan, Disney Channel expansions in Italy and Spain, ESPN Taiwan. . .

But there are the Angels, and the Mighty Ducks too. The sports franchises represent a tiny financial part of the company, but in no other arena does Disney subject itself to constant public critiques.

What are the financial and political risks of developing a Disney theme park in Hong Kong? Who knows? Should the Angels have traded for Mark McGwire when they had the chance two years ago? Any fan can answer that.

Eisner acknowledges he was stung by the boos he heard during the Ducks’ 1997 contract stalemate with superstar Paul Kariya.

“It was not pleasant for me to go down to the Pond,” Eisner said.

So for the Angels and Ducks, Disney promises to pay up and shut up. In the absence of economic reform, the Angels will play to win and pay to win--and, Eisner suggests, not imitate other owners who whine about how much money they are losing.

“The solution has always been to sell the team and make the money on the flip,” Eisner said. “That’s not what our business is about. The Disney Co. doesn’t do that.

“For us, we have no alternative. We have to be competitive. Our own pride demands it, and I don’t think our fans in Orange County would accept the Disney Co. not being competitive. They don’t care if this might not be the greatest financial thing for the Disney Co. They see other things we do doing well.

“And I kind of agree with that. If we’re going to be on the field, we’re going to be on the field in a successful way.”

TONIGHT’S HOME OPENER

ANGELS vs. CLEVELAND, Edison Field, 7, Channel 9

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