Dodgers No Closer to Leaving Chavez Ravine

What have the Dodgers learned about a possible move to a new stadium in Exposition Park?

Nothing that would lead them to believe it may become reality, Dodger President Bob Graziano said in an interview.

“My sense is that it’s going nowhere at this point,” he said.

“It was an idea born of the NFL’s interest in the Coliseum, and we said at the time that we didn’t know enough about it. Subsequently, we haven’t seen anything that would warrant further consideration.

“On the surface, it didn’t seem to make sense [at the time]. Digging below the surface, it made no more sense.”

The Dodgers are proceeding with plans to renovate Dodger Stadium at the end of the year, Graziano said, adding luxury boxes on the club and dugout levels and expanded seating down the foul lines.

Those improvements, he said, “answer the next several years” and enable the Dodgers to make “significant [economic] strides.”

However, he added, “we’ll still be behind” those markets with newer stadiums and, on a long-term basis, the stadium issue is one with which “we’ll continue to grapple.”

The Dodgers also continue to grapple with a decision on their spring training site, although Graziano said he was pleased by the aggressive new financial commitments in Florida and “the strong push to keep us.” That’s an obvious bargaining chip for the Dodgers in their Arizona negotiations, but there is feeling now that the Dodgers, sensitive to the perception that they have trampled on tradition in some areas, will choose to remain in Vero Beach if they get the required improvements.

UMPIRE BAITING?

From the Feb. 19 directive in which Sandy Alderson, baseball’s executive vice president, told umpires to raise the top of the strike zone to two inches above the belt (still below the rule book parameter), to the release by the players’ union of a membership poll as to the best and worst umpires in various categories, to a new Alderson directive ordering clubs to have an official chart pitches and file a report on the strike zone after each homestand, it is not surprising that the umpires feel under attack and, as counsel Richie Phillips put it, that “Big Brother is watching over us.”

The bottom line is that an industry that can’t seem to avoid contention between umpires, players and management is probably headed toward another labor spat when the bargaining agreement with the umpires’ union expires at the end of the season and baseball attempts to dissolve the American and National league groupings--and the perceived differences in the AL and NL strike zones--by putting all umpires under Alderson’s command in the commissioner’s office.

As to the latest directive regarding the charting of pitches by every club, Angel General Manager Bill Bavasi refused comment other than to say he has implemented it. Said one American League general manager: “I know the spirit in which this was done, and Richie Phillips has it wrong. The intent is to see if we can help and send a message that we care. We chart pitches every day anyway and nobody gets upset. I mean, the only thing we’re looking for is consistency. The only thing we’re asking is that the umpires do the best possible job while not carrying a chip. I really thought the situation in our league got a lot better last year and that it has continued to improve.”

A measure of that may be found in the distance AL crew chief Joe Brinkman sets up behind the catcher. Brinkman normally hasn’t been within shouting distance of the plate. He was the center of controversy in last October’s playoff opener between the Cleveland Indians and Boston Red Sox, but Brinkman had moved significantly closer while working the plate in Anaheim on Tuesday night, a step applauded by many of those counting on accurate calls.

EXPO EXIT?

The appearance of Mark McGwire in Montreal this weekend was greeted by ongoing apathy. The advance sale for the three games was less than 40,000, which is what McGwire normally attracts for one game. The Expos, with an uncertain future in Montreal and only modest competitive hopes, have been drawing fewer than 6,000 a game--and once on the current homestand fewer than 5,000.

A group headed by Jacques Menard, deputy chairman of one of Canada’s largest investment banks, is trying to buy the club from a group headed by Claude Brochu while arranging government and private financing for a downtown stadium, but Commissioner Bud Selig said he has seen no “tangible evidence” of progress in any area and that the small crowds are “merely exacerbating” a complicated situation with legal overtones.

Baseball has given the Expos and Montreal until the end of May to show proof of a stadium and financing plan, another deadline in what has been a series of deadlines that has seemingly inched the Expos, with their industry-low revenue of $35 million, closer to a move to Northern Virginia.

“I’m proud of the fact that baseball hasn’t moved a team in 28 years, but I have said before that I do not have the moral or legal authority to consign a team to bankruptcy,” Selig said. “My level of concern with the Montreal situation is greater than any franchise trauma of the last 10 years.

“I am more sure than ever that we are going to have to move one or two franchises in the near future.”

Montreal’s deterioration is seen in many ways. The San Francisco Giants completed a three-game sweep there Thursday despite making six errors. Said J.T. Snow, the Giants’ Gold Glove first baseman: “That field is like trying to catch a superball on asphalt. The ball never stops bouncing. That’s simply not a major league field with all the seams running through it.”

Patience. Baseball finally may be close to pulling the carpet out from under the Expos.