Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 15, 1994 TAG: 9402150175
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From Associated Press reports
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Howard Metzenbaum, chairman of the Senate subcommittee on antitrust, monopolies and business rights, called the owners' actions "totally absurd."
The owners announced Friday they had eliminated the commissioner's power to act "in the best interests of baseball" from most business areas, leaving them intact only in issues dealing with integrity of the game. Baseball has been without a commissioner since the forced resignation of Fay Vincent nearly 1 1/2 years ago.
"It makes the commissioner's position a nullity," Metzenbaum, an Ohio Democrat, said Monday. "It flies in the face of the promises the owners made to Congress to preserve the office of the commissioner. It undermines their own argument about why baseball is different from the other sports and is proof positive that baseball is a business and should be treated like any business and should be stripped of their antitrust exemption."
Nancy Coffey, an aide to Metzenbaum, said Monday the full Senate Judiciary Committee will hold hearings on baseball's antitrust exemption this session, and the date of the hearings will be announced in about a week.
"He intends to press forward with his bill," Coffey said.
Baseball's antitrust exemption was granted in a 1922 U.S. Supreme Court decision that was reaffirmed in 1972. Metzenbaum's subcommittee held hearings in December 1992, but Sen. Joseph Biden, the Judiciary Committee chairman, last September postponed action until this session.
"Baseball better get the message," Biden said then. "Unless baseball gets its act together in a way that is monumentally different from where they are now, this committee will be back with the votes that will change the status of baseball."
by CNB