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Text File | 1993-04-08 | 5.8 KB | 120 lines

                                                                                SPORT, Page 61

Fay Vincent Gets Beaned


Baseball's owners call for the beheading of an unpopular
commissioner. But whether their coup succeeds or fails, the sport
will still be in trouble.

BY RICHARD CORLISS -- With reporting by David E. Thigpen/New York


    Baseball stories in September should be about matters
that matter. Pennant races! Like, is this the year Montreal and
Toronto finally subject us to an all-Canadian World Series? And,
will the Cincinnati Reds snap out of their current swoon in
time to give the Atlanta Braves a run for Ted Turner's money?
Oh, and how come the Oakland A's, riven with disabled players,
traded stud slugger Jose Canseco to the Texas Rangers for a guy
with chicken pox?

    These debates will have to wait, for the baseball
hierarchy is engaged in the ugly spectacle of sliding outside
the foul lines and getting its uniform soiled. The combatants
are Fay Vincent, the eighth commissioner of baseball, and the
majority of team owners, who have chafed under his three-year
reign. In Chicago last week, the dissidents convened an
extraordinary meeting -- an Apalachin summit of every capo di
tutti baseball capi -- and told Vincent, 54, to clean out his
locker. By a vote of 18 to 9 (with one abstention), the owners
declared that "the major league clubs do not have confidence"
in Vincent's ability "to carry out the responsibilities of the
office of the commissioner." They further resolved that he "be
requested to resign effective immediately." Vincent said he
would not resign, and the owners scheduled another meeting, this
week in St. Louis, to plot their next move.

    Vincent was "requested to resign" because, according to
his contract, the commissioner cannot have his powers diluted,
his salary cut or his position terminated. Every employee
should have such job security. To be sure, Vincent -- who
succeeded his friend, the late Bartlett Giamatti, as the sport's
chief arbiter, lobbyist and cheerleader -- does work for the
owners. They hired him; they pay his $650,000 a year. But under
the Major League Agreement, he has the authority to act "in the
best interests of baseball." Which, if you have a high opinion
of the sport, the office and yourself, can mean almost any
power this side of martial law. This annoyed the barons of
baseball; many of them have felt like Vincent's serfs, so
reluctant has he been to bend to their pleasure. "He's supposed
to be a CEO," said ESPN analyst Peter Gammons. "He's not a
pope."

    And Vincent is not especially popular either, with owners
or fans. This year, infuriated that three New York Yankees had
testified to an arbitrator on behalf of their suspended
teammate Steve Howe, Vincent huffily chastised the Yankee brass
for disloyalty (though he later apologized). He peremptorily
ordained that the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals would
shift to the National League's Western Division, while the Reds
and Atlanta Braves would move east. When the Cubs took their
protest to court, the commissioner's office dithered in devising
the 1993 schedule. (Early last week Vincent relented, saying
that the teams would stay put for at least another season.)

    None of these are capital crimes, exactly. Neither are
Vincent's purported sins against the owners: that he refused to
cede the role of mediator in future labor disputes, or that he
disapproves of the right of TV superstations like those run by
the Braves' and Cubs' ownerships to cut into other teams'
viewership by airing their games in the same cities. Perhaps the
dispute is a matter of style. It could be that Vincent's
policies don't bug the owners so much as his firm and frosty
belief that he has the power to make policy. He also is cursed,
as Lyndon Johnson was, because he succeeded a beloved chief
executive who died too young and in office.

    But the more likely explanation is that the owners are
scared. After a decade that saw revenues (from the gate and TV)
rise at least as quickly as labor costs, money may soon get
tight. TV contracts are lapsing, with no expectation that the
next deal will be as palmy as the current one, and players'
salaries now average $1 million a year, a 25% increase over
1991. Teams in small markets resent the big money made and spent
by teams in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Half the clubs
are supposedly losing money. It's enough to make 28 plutocrats
wonder: When did owner become synonymous with donor?

    The picture isn't that simple. Yes, the big-city
franchises spend more, but it doesn't get them where they want
to go: only twice in the past decade has a team from one of the
three largest markets made it to the World Series. Yes, the
national TV fee will drop next year, but the last contract was,
for CBS and ESPN, ruinously high. Yes, some players' salaries
are too fat, but no one forced the Baltimore Orioles to pay Cal
Ripken $30.5 million for the next five years. For these woes,
the owners have only themselves to blame. Which doesn't mean
they can't blame somebody else. Somebody who could be requested
to resign.

    "Baseball's other difficulties are too serious," says
former Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, "for the owners to linger over
this for long." Through the expected litigation -- in which
Vincent will be represented by Brendan Sullivan, Oliver North's
attorney in the Iran-contra hearings -- the owners will keep
pressing for Vincent's resignation, because they want a stronger
advocate with a weaker mandate. Probably there is no white
knight for the owners, but it's sweet to daydream about the
perfect candidate. A man of stature and compromise. A man whose
son is an owner of the Texas Rangers. If George Bush becomes
available early next year, he could throw out the ball on
opening day.