HAAS FAMILY LOOKS TO "PASS THE BATON" WITH SALE OF THE A'S

     "In an industry of butchered promises and renegotiated
contracts and pitchers flipping fingers at fans, the Haases, like
Ripken, seem to represent the last noble vestiges of a game gone
bad.  They used sports the way it should be used: as a tool for
empowering and enriching," writes Joan Ryan in today's SAN
FRANCISCO CHRONICLE column.  Ryan notes that in a recent
conversation with A's President Wally Haas, he said his father's
illness was "weighing" on him and the family was ready to "pass
the baton" with the A's.  Haas: "I don't want to make more of it
than it is, because baseball is not curing anything.  It's not
stopping crime.  But, right or wrong, it's a powerful presence,
and I feel there is no ceiling to what you can do within a
community with a sports franchise" (SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE,
9/8).