Selig Calls Confidential Meeting

Amid ongoing legal hurdles to his plan to eliminate the Minnesota Twins and Montreal Expos before the 2002 season, Commissioner Bud Selig summoned baseball owners to a meeting in Chicago next Tuesday, urging in a memo faxed to clubs that it be kept “extremely confidential.”

Selig would not discuss the purpose of the meeting when reached at his Milwaukee office Tuesday, but with the clock ticking on contraction and the owners still needing to negotiate a new labor agreement, he acknowledged that there is more than one issue that needs to be discussed.

In other developments Tuesday:

* Lawyers for baseball and the Twins asked the Minnesota Supreme Court for an accelerated hearing on the ruling by a county judge in Minneapolis that would require the Twins to honor the last year of their lease and play the 2002 season in the Metrodome. The baseball lawyers asked that oral arguments be heard Dec. 7, which means that the contraction process could be delayed at least three more weeks if the Supreme Court decides to hear the appeal rather than sending it back to the Court of Appeals.

* The Expos, amid uncertainty regarding their future and with their lease having expired at Olympic Stadium, opened negotiations on a 2002 lease.

“We have to make sure we have a place to play next year,” club Vice President Claude Delorme said.

* Lawyers for baseball and the players’ union continued to discuss a date for the arbitration hearing on the union grievance that owners violated the bargaining agreement and other rules in voting for contraction, but failed to reach a conclusion.