Fay Vincent Gets Beaned

By RICHARD CORLISS

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.

With reporting by David E. Thigpen/New York