Baseball’s Revamped Realignment Strategy Aims To Please
Baseball’s realignment strategists have devised a new plan that would move fewer teams, appease most of the National League teams opposed to the current radical proposal and have a better chance of acceptance.
The new plan, an owner said Tuesday night, would group the Mets, Atlanta, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati in one of the four four-team National League divisions. Those are four of the teams opposed to the radical plan, which would have moved them all to the American League.
Another team opposed to the radical format, the Chicago Cubs, would be in a Central division with St. Louis, Kansas City and Milwaukee.
The other two opponents of radical realignment, San Francisco and San Diego, would each be placed in one of two N.L. divisions encompassing all of baseball’s eight western teams: the Giants, Oakland, Seattle, Colorado, the Padres, Los Angeles, Anaheim and Arizona.
The A.L. alignment, the owner said, was not as settled as the proposed N.L. scenario, but would most likely have certain groupings: the Yankees, Baltimore and Boston in a division with two other teams; the Chicago White Sox, Minnesota, Texas and Houston in a four-team division or with one other team, and Toronto, Montreal, Detroit and Tampa Bay in a four-team division or with one other team.
The teams left unplaced are Cleveland, Florida and Philadelphia. Under one plan, Philadelphia and Cleveland would join the Yankees, Orioles and Red Sox, and Florida would join Tampa Bay and the others in that division.
Under this format, 10 teams would change leagues instead of the 15 teams that would switch under the radical plan: four N.L. teams would switch to the A.L. instead of seven, and six A.L. teams would move to the N.L. instead of eight.
The combination of reduced movement and N.L. opponents remaining in their league could very likely gain the votes needed to adopt the format. Most of the N.L. teams opposed to the radical plan are not necessarily opposed to realignment. The Mets and the Braves, one baseball official said, would accept the revised N.L. plan.
The Mets and the Cubs oppose the so-called radical plan primarily because they do not want to be in the same league with the other team in their city. The Mets do not want to have to compete in the same division as the free-spending Yankees; Tribune Co., the owner of the Cubs, does not want the Chicago teams in the same division because WGN, another subsidiary of the company, broadcasts games of both.
Under the radical plan - which is favored by Bud Selig, the acting commissioner, and John Harrington, the realignment committee chairman - the Mets and the Yankees would have been in the A.L. and the Cubs and the White Sox in the N.L. Planners have accepted the reality that they have to leave them in separate leagues.
xxxx WHAT’S NEXT The owners expect to act on realignment at a meeting in Atlanta in three weeks. Adoption of a plan requires a majority vote in each league.