Contraction Will Be Put on Hold

Lawyers for baseball and the players union, negotiating in New York, closed in on an agreement Monday that would shelve contraction until at least 2003, sources said. The negotiations could be finalized today.

Although details were unclear, the union will apparently acknowledge that owners have the right to fold teams. The owners in turn will agree to make contraction and the effects of contraction subject to collective bargaining.

The negotiations had been hot and cold for several days. The seriousness of Monday’s talks was reflected in the cancellation of an arbitration hearing on the union grievance that claimed owners violated the bargaining agreement by voting to contract two teams for the 2002 season on Nov. 6.

The teams, never named, were presumed to be the Minnesota Twins and Montreal Expos.

An agreement would keep both teams where they are for the 2002 season and create the possibility that contraction could be put off indefinitely. Minnesota politicians might come up with a stadium financing plan before the 2003 season that would enable the Twins to remain in business. The Expos could be relocated to the Northern Virginia area for the 2003 season, with competing groups bidding to buy the team.

In addition, with an agreement on contraction, baseball is expected to announce that current Montreal owner Jeffrey Loria has bought the Florida Marlins from John Henry for $150 million.

Henry is now part of a group bidding for the Boston Red Sox. If that groups fails to win the Boston auction, Henry could resume negotiations to buy the Angels.

The Expos, in the meantime, would be operated in 2002 by a trustee appointed by baseball, possibly former Texas Ranger general manager Doug Melvin, a Canadian, who acknowledged that he has been approached about the assignment. It would not be a first. Baseball created a dummy company called Teams, Inc., to operate the Milwaukee Braves in 1965 after a judge’s ruling delayed the team being relocated in Atlanta

The agreement would also clear the way for negotiations on a new labor agreement, although it is uncertain if the contraction agreement would also include labor concessions by either side.

It has been suspected all along that contraction was simply a negotiating ploy to put bargaining pressure on the union. If so, it is unclear how that will play out.

For the time being, the union would preserve the 50 major league playing jobs that would have been eliminated by contraction.

In addition, the end of the immediate contraction threat would likely restore a more active free agent and trade market that has been slowed by the possibility of a dispersal draft and other ramifications of contraction. A weakened market may have been one of the benefits owners were looking for when they initiated the controversial scheme.

Otherwise, announced only two days after the end of a spectacular World Series, contraction has served to cloud the memory of that Series, inflame the union after the two sides had spent six years rebuilding their relationship after the 1994-95 work stoppage, prompted Congress to threaten elimination of baseball’s antitrust exemption, forced Commissioner Bud Selig to make an embarrassing appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, delayed 2002 scheduling and marketing, and created unsettled work conditions for employees of the four teams possibly facing contraction--the Twins, Expos, Marlins and Tampa Bay Devil Rays.