Owners Can’t Own Up To Failure

“It’s you who bungled it… . You imbecile. You bloated idiot.” - Peter Lorre to Sidney Greenstreet in “The Maltese Falcon.”

In the eyes of many baseball owners, they again have done nothing wrong. This time, the lawyers bungled it.

In their view of history, Fay Vincent sold them out in 1990 and Peter Ueberroth did them in during the 1985 labor talks.

“I don’t subscribe to that theory,” Colorado Rockies chairman Jerry McMorris said Friday. “Lawyers are hired professionals. It’s easy to look around and blame someone else for something that didn’t come about exactly the way you wanted.”

Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s injunction forced teams to play this season under the rules of the expired contract. It brought to some minds the words of Atlanta Braves president Stan Kasten last Nov. 28:

“Last year’s system is a historical artifact and we cannot operate under it anymore,” he said.

Owners are angry and small-market owners are the angriest. Montreal and Kansas City are selling off players, claiming they can’t afford more than a few highsalaried players.

“I know some people have been saying we should have kept all our players from last year and rolled the dice, and if that didn’t work, move the franchise,” Expos president Claude Brochu said Friday. “That’s not a reasonable way to do business, because we want to ensure the long-term health of the franchise. Rolling the dice is exactly that. If you don’t like the numbers you see, you’re gone, finished.”

Large-market clubs, which had been set to give up more money this year under the owners’ Fort Lauderdale revenue-sharing agreement, now won’t have to share so much. The New York Yankees had been set to pay the most at $2.3 million, and the San Diego Padres and Pittsburgh were to have received the most at $3.8 million. Montreal was in line for $3.5 million.

Big teams are gobbling up the available players, confident their post-strike revenues will be high enough to support large payrolls.

“We know with the new ballpark and the tremendous fan support we’ve had, we’re going to draw and draw well,” said McMorris, whose team is moving into Coors Field this season and could emerge as a contender.

The economics could change again if players and owners finally agree to a labor deal to replace the one that expired on Dec. 31, 1993. A deal, presumably, would bring with it increased revenue sharing. The revenue sharing deal was to be at a 40 percent level in 1995.

“The selloff of these star players by small-market teams is a further demonstration of the need for the relief that both sides agreed to - a phase-in of revenue sharing even faster than the Fort Lauderdale agreement calls for,” agent Tom Reich said.

It’s unclear when negotiations will resume. The owners’ ruling executive council is to meet Tuesday night and Wednesday in Milwaukee, the hometown of acting commissioner Bud Selig. It probably will be the beginning of management’s reassessment.

“My own personal opinion is we should go back to the drawing boards,” Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf said Saturday. “They’ve rejected everything we’ve thrown at them. Sometimes you have to step back - you know the old saying: ‘You can’t tell the forest from the trees.’

“Maybe we ought to step back and look at the forest and think if there’s something we haven’t thought of that will work for everybody. We’re not under time pressure now. We ought to look for new ideas, new approaches.”

In their last proposals, owners asked for a 50-percent luxury tax on the portions of payrolls over $44 million. Players offered a 25-percent tax on the portions over $49 million.

But some owners want to retreat from their last proposal and try for greater change, perhaps a return to their salary cap plan of last summer and fall.

“I haven’t been talking to a lot of people, but I would imagine so,” Reinsdorf said. “The salary cap, I thought, was a better deal for the players than the tax system. The tax system doesn’t have any guarantees.

“If we could only stop calling it a salary cap. If we would only stop saying that evil word ‘cap.’ If we could call it sharing - all it does is say we get this and you get that.”

A new cap would cause players to think about another walkout.

“All war is going to get is an apocalypse that will swallow everybody - including the very owners who are trying to break the union,” Reich said. “I don’t see the players or owners surrendering at any time.”

Selig doesn’t know when owners will be ready to resume negotiations. While they reopened the old labor agreement on Dec. 7, 1992, they didn’t make their first proposal until June 14, 1994.

Both sides are frustrated that they’re in the same position they were when the strike began Aug. 12. While owners need the approval of Sotomayor to declare another impasse, they could attempt it again after this season. That leaves the postseason and next season open to disruption.

The question is whether the doves can prevail on each side in their attempt to compromise.

“The players’ side obviously knows the situation cries out for a new labor agreement in spite of the legal victories,” Reich said. “That’s a defensive victory and solves no long-term problems. I liken the legal successes that the union just gained as a goalline stand where they prevent a touchdown. The game still has to be played.”