THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 8, 1995 TAG: 9501080186
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C10 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TOM ROBINSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
A removal by Congress of baseball's antitrust exemption would devastate the minor leagues, turning out the lights on many of the nearly 200 minor league franchises affiliated with big-league teams.
That's the doomsday prediction of Stan Brand, vice president of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues - the minors' governing body.
Brand, a Washington lawyer and the minor leagues' main lobbyist, says losing the exemption would mean a club's right to control minor leaguers for seven years, or long enough to develop major leaguers, could be removed under restraint of trade.
A club then would have no incentive to invest its annual $130 million, including all player salaries, in player development. Fewer players would be signed so fewer minor league teams would be necessary, Brand said.
Clubs as successful at the gate as the Norfolk Tides probably would survive. But the lower rungs of the minor leagues could face extinction, Brand said.
``A lot of cities with darkened stadiums, unhappy fans and jilted taxpayers - that's my vision,'' Brand said.
``We would see the constriction of our industry in a substantial way. . . . Without that (major-league) investment, we don't exist in a lot of small and medium-sized markets.''
Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., introduced a bill in the Senate last Wednesday to repeal baseball's long-standing exemption from antitrust laws. To Brand, Moynihan and other lawmakers are acting under the incorrect presumption that that removal would get striking major leaguers back on the field and encourage expansion.
Brand said no one has shown how it would prompt the players to return, nor would it mean any city that wants a major league team would get one.
``If you repeal the exemption tomorrow, that doesn't give anybody the right to sue under antitrust or force expansion,'' Brand said. ``It's not a violation to say you're not going to expand.''
However, it definitely would mean the minors would shrivel because they would be forced to operate independently. Clubs would have to find and pay their own players, with the hope of selling them to major league teams.
``That's the absolute worst-case scenario,'' Tides general manager Dave Rosenfield said. ``I don't think that, no matter what they remove, it would do away with all the minor leagues. But I think it would be a much-abridged minor league structure. Instead of 170 teams, there would be 60.''
That's why Rosenfield believes that, if any part of the exemption is repealed, lawmakers will find some way to do it without damaging the minors as we know them.
Just how they would write that legislation, however, is a big question. Brand doesn't know, but he's taking no chances.
He is in constant touch with lawmakers and has planned a day-long blitz on Washington in the next few weeks by minor league officials and club operators.
Independent leagues already exist: the six-team Northern League has been a noted success. But Brand said the Northern League operates in towns of at least 100,000 people, and that independent baseball can exist only on a limited scale.
``People have to understand that the major leagues spend $130 million on these clubs,'' Brand said. ``That's a lot of money to come up with in the private sector.'' by CNB