Doubts Growing On Baseball Realignment San Francisco Latest Team To Rise Up And Protest Selig’s Packaging Plan

Prospects dimmed for major league realignment at this week’s meetings in Atlanta, with some baseball executives predicting Monday there will not be enough support for any plan.

Acting commissioner Bud Selig had hoped to call for a vote Thursday, final day of the owners’ three-day quarterly meeting. Selig is in favor of radical realignment, in which 15 teams would switch leagues.

Less radical plans have been formulated, with most including the shift of the three A.L. West Coast teams to the N.L. But the San Francisco Giants have threatened to sue, arguing they can’t be forced to accept the Oakland Athletics in their market.

Ranking officials on two other N.L. teams, speaking on the condition they not be identified, said they will support the Giants.

“When you buy a team, you buy assets, which include exclusive monopoly rights to promoting games within your own league in your area on an exclusive basis,” Giants owner Peter Magowan said Monday. “We would be asked to give that up. That’s exactly why the Mets and Cubs resisted.”

The radical plan that Selig and realignment committee chairman John Harrington have advocated would put all Western teams in the N.L. and all Eastern teams in the A.L. It would put the Mets and Yankees in the same division, pair the Cubs and White Sox, the Dodgers and Angels, and the Giants and A’s.

Since no team can be forced to switch leagues or divisions without its approval, the Mets threatened to veto the plan, as did the Pirates, Reds and Braves. Harrington’s group then formulated a less radical plan, but it still would have the six Pacific Coast teams in the N.L. along with the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies.

“Bud Selig mollified the Mets and Cubs by allowing them to stay in their separate divisions. What is the logic behind not allowing us the same thing?” Magowan said.

Baseball’s lawyers have said the Giants do not have veto power because they are not being asked to change divisions. Some teams have argued the resolution approved in January, which created the realignment committee, overrides the provision in the N.L. constitution that protects a team from having its territory encroached.

“Each member shall have the exclusive right … to play baseball games as the home club within the limits of the city in which the member’s club is located and an area within 10 miles in all directions from the city limits of such city,” the N.L. constitution says.

San Francisco’s city limits adjoin Oakland’s, and the Athletics’ ballpark falls within the 10-mile limit.Selig did not want to respond to Magowan’s threat, and wouldn’t predict when a vote would be taken.

“I’m trying to be sensitive to every club’s needs,” Selig said. “I expect ongoing discussions. Everybody understands we need to do something. The schedule is our No. 1 marketing tool. We cannot live with the status quo.”

The realignment debate began in January, when the expansion teams were assigned - Tampa Bay to the A.L., Arizona to the N.L.

While Arizona was a natural fit in the N.L. West, putting Tampa Bay in the A.L. East required shifting. The original plan was to move Detroit from the East to the Central and Kansas City from the Central to the West, but the Royals balked, claiming they didn’t want additional West Coast games that would result in late television back home.

With no realignment, Tampa Bay would be forced to play in the A.L. West. Also, January’s meeting left each league with 15 teams, necessitating an interleague game nearly every day. Plans to have 16 teams in one league and 14 in the other appear to have gained support since January.

In the only other major business, owners are expected to approve a rules change that would allow teams to become publicly listed companies on stock exchanges.

Currently, each team is a private partnership or corporation, although four teams have parent companies that are public: Anaheim (The Walt Disney Co.), Atlanta (Time Warner Inc.), the Chicago Cubs (Tribune Co.) and Toronto (Interbrew SA).

In addition, the Los Angeles Dodgers have reached an agreement to be sold to a division of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.