Angelos Getting The Finley Treatment

The Finley-ization of maverick Baltimore owner Peter Angelos has begun.

If the 1995 season somehow goes off as scheduled with regular players, Baltimore shortstop Cal Ripken would - in Oakland - break the record of Hall of Famer Lou Gehrig for consecutive games played. The American League said it will try to move the game to Baltimore when the strike is settled.

Oakland will make the switch difficult. Athletics’ president and general manager Sandy Alderson said the club will not do “a hell of a lot to cooperate with Angelos and the Orioles.” Alderson also said Angelos can watch Ripken’s record-setting feat “from the third deck” of the Oakland Coliseum.

Alderson’s intransigence represents the first sign of payback to Angelos.

Angelos has irritated ownership forces with his oftstated vow not to put forth a replacement team. His promise breeds chaos and gives the striking Major League Players Association more reason to believe the owners will buckle.

Several owners, led by Colorado’s Jerry McMorris, met with Angelos before talks resumed in Washington, D.C., and tried to convince him that his words were counterproductive. Angelos kept talking.

With every word, he threatens to become the next Charles O. Finley. As owner of the Kansas City and later Oakland Athletics, Finley irritated peers with his antics. The backlash was that no matter how many good ideas Finley advanced, no one would listen to him.

Remember, Finley pleaded with his fellow owners to give players universal free agency rather than salary arbitration, which he said would ruin the game. No one listened, and 20 years later the owners’ desire to eliminate salary arbitration figured in the start of a 185-day strike.

“There are things much, much more important than being accepted,” said Angelos, who paid $173 million for the Orioles in 1993. “You can’t second-guess yourself. You have to cope with the circumstances. I can’t have any regrets. I remain committed to meeting the challenges the past few months have presented. That’s the only way you can approach it.”

Strike update

All the action in the baseball strike this week figures to be away from the bargaining table - not that there’s been much progress in that area over the past half-year.

Union head Donald Fehr has scheduled regional meetings with players and agents on Thursday in Orlando, Fla., and on Saturday in Phoenix. On Wednesday, Fehr and acting commissioner Bud Selig are scheduled to testify in Washington before a Senate subcommittee.

“Hopefully, we’ll get back to the table as soon as possible,” Selig said Sunday as the strike began its seventh month. “That’s all I can say.”

Paging Mr. Beeston

During last week’s negotiations, Kansas City’s David Cone was asked if there would be a settlement.

“There’s no deal, because Beeston isn’t here,” Cone said.

Toronto president Paul Beeston, considered baseball’s most knowledgeable executive, has been frozen out of the negotiations. Small-market mavens such as Selig want Beeston to stay away. He made the previous system work for the Blue Jays and does not follow the strike-causing party line that everything must be done to help poorly run teams from whatever marked size.

For that reason, the Blue Jays have sneered at the replacement-player process. The latest step is to play home replacement games at the spring-training base in Dunedin, Fla. Provincial law prevents the Blue Jays from using replacement players in Toronto.

“I don’t think we should be playing here,” Beeston said.