MLB Commissioner Bud Selig "sent out an urgent message"
to all teams Friday that he is organizing an "emergency"
owners meeting for December 3 in Chicago "to address the
widening gulf" in MLB payrolls, according to Peter Gammons
of the BOSTON GLOBE. Selig "has called" for GMs and other
club officials to attend the meeting in addition to the
owners. At the beginning of this decade, Gammons noted that
the highest and lowest MLB payrolls were separated by less
than $15M: the A's topped the league at $22.8M, while the
Orioles were at the bottom with $8M. In '99, the A's $17M
payroll will be $65M less than the Yankees or Dodgers.
(BOSTON GLOBE, 11/22). In N.Y., Murray Chass wrote on
payroll disparity and noted that "as the price of winning
escalates, the reality of losing sends payrolls plummeting."
MLB Exec VP/Operations Sandy Alderson said that MLB payrolls
are not just increasing, but some are going down as some
teams are "giving up." Alderson: "There are those [teams]
at $20 million [who] say to themselves going to $30 million
doesn't appreciably change their chances, and there are
those at $30 million who say we're no better off at 30 than
at 20, so they go down." More Alderson: "If [the union]
find[s] that 80 percent of their players feel they're out of
the pennant race even before the season starts, then it's an
issue that is common to both of us" (N.Y. TIMES, 11/21).
