Contraction of Angels Appears Unlikely

What we have is the image of Robert Irsay at the head of a battalion of moving vans sweeping into Baltimore under the cover of darkness to relocate his Colts to Indianapolis.

OK, baseball isn’t being quite as clandestine. Industry executives aren’t talking about a night operation.

They have simply discussed pulling the plug on the Angels as part of ongoing talks regarding contraction, which is the elimination of two teams to help resolve competitive and financial disparities, creating more revenue for the remaining 28 to share. The players’ union, of course, doesn’t hold a patent on greed.

At various times in the two years since Colorado Rocky owner Jerry McMorris first suggested contraction and San Francisco Giant owner Peter Magowan became the leading lobbyist, the Montreal Expos have been paired with the Minnesota Twins or Florida Marlins or Tampa Bay Devil Rays as the teams most likely to be dissolved.

In recent months, however, there have been cursory conversations regarding a plan that would dissolve the Expos and Angels and result in the Oakland Athletics moving to Anaheim. Or the A’s would move to Anaheim in some form of hybrid combination with the Angels under A’s owners Steve Schott and Ken Hofmann or owners to whom they would sell.

The basic thinking on the part of proponents--who are unwilling to risk a $1-million fine by discussing labor issues publicly--is that the A’s/Angels half of the Montreal twin killing would solve two problems:

* The A’s stadium lease ends this year and there are no prospects for a new ballpark or new owners in the Bay Area--and no new thinking on the part of the Giants and Commissioner Bud Selig in regard to allowing the A’s to infringe on the Giants’ territorial rights without whopping indemnification. The A’s and their current owners would be given new life in Anaheim--and the Giants, alone by the bay, could conduct a millennium-caliber celebration.

* Disney, long willing to sell the Angels short of taking a loss or making a public sales pitch, would find a buyer in major league baseball that it has been unable to find otherwise. The sale would placate some stockholders and allow Disney to escape the media abuse and alleged losses it must shoulder as a baseball owner. It would also allow Anaheim to retain major league identity with the A’s, providing a taxpayer for remodeled Edison Field, where the Angel lease runs through 2016.

Complicated? That isn’t the word.

There are so many legal complexities to contraction that the feasibility is considered remote and the possibility of the A’s and Angels merging even more improbable.

Said a Bay Area source with ties to the A’s:

“I haven’t heard one person suggest it’s a legitimate option, and when I sit down and try to figure out the reality of how it would work, I tend to dismiss it entirely.”

Similarly, Anaheim officials said they have received no indication from Disney that they would consider dissolving a franchise with four decades of history and the still-fresh memories of former owner Gene Autry’s passion, a franchise that has illustrated, although not recently, it can draw close to three million fans with a winning team.

In fact, said one city official, the feel “we get from Disney is that they are more determined than ever to make it work here.”

Former Commissioner Peter Ueberroth, an Orange County resident who at times has made inquiries into the availability of the Angels, said from Scotland that if “Disney was really serious about selling they could find a buyer” and “I can’t imagine any circumstance where the franchise would be contracted. Disney basically did a good job with the stadium, the team can be competitive and the fan base figures to build.”

Ueberroth added that contraction generally makes “no sense,” that he would be surprised if the union ever agreed to a loss of jobs and that, while he would not have approved relocating teams during his tenure, he would now approve moving Montreal and, perhaps, one of the Florida teams, citing how other sports have extended the franchise landscape.

The bottom line is that contraction in any form is not imminent.

A 2002 schedule based on 30 teams is expected to go to the players’ union on July 1, suggesting another season of status quo.

Ultimately, owners may not feel they need union approval to contract and may believe that the threat of contraction and the resulting loss of jobs will somehow, someway move the union to make concessions in the economic system, but the one probability is that there will not be contraction before there’s a new labor agreement, and the sides have yet to bargain on the substantive issues, even though the current contract expires at the end of the season.

There is also no indication that baseball knows how it would negotiate with contracted owners--Expo owner Jeffrey Loria has said he will never be contracted--in establishing franchise values or how much it would cost to buy out stadium leases, along with marketing and media contracts. It is one thing to say there will be a dispersal draft, but how does baseball deal with multiyear player contracts and no-trade clauses?

Interestingly, baseball’s own blue-ribbon economic committee, in a report expected to be the blueprint for negotiations with the union, wrote that if there was increased revenue sharing and a stronger luxury tax, among other changes, “there should be no immediate need for contraction.”

“If” is the key word, of course, but either way contraction is at least a year away, and the Anaheim A’s are even beyond the scope of Disney’s imagineers.