Efforts to end the labor dispute that has wiped out the World Series for the first time in 90 years moved further on Capitol Hill Wednesday than they have in months of negotiations between owners and players.
But a House of Representatives subcommittee that approved a bill dealing with baseball’s antitrust exemption and its labor problems altered the bill just enough to raise questions about its effectiveness.
The subcommittee on economic and commercial law, in an overwhelming voice vote, sent to the House Judiciary Committee a bill that would make unilaterally imposed rules, such as the owners’ salary-cap proposal, subject to antitrust laws.
“This is a historic day. For the first time in the history of Congress, a subcommittee-and tomorrow a committee-has voted to remove an exemption that has existed for over 50 years,” said Rep. Mike Synar, the Oklahoma Democrat who sponsored the bill.
Rep. Jack Brooks, the Texas Democrat who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said baseball was “on the verge of being destroyed or worse-written off by the American public.”
“It’s not surprising,” Bud Selig, the acting commissioner, said by telephone from Milwaukee. “Jack Brooks said he was going to do this.”
Baseball has been exempt from antitrust laws in all matters since a 1922 U.S. Supreme Court decision. The partial removal of the exemption would enable the players to challenge a salary cap in court if the owners decided to impose it during the off-season.
But before sending it on, the subcommittee amended the bill, eliminating the provision that said if the players’ union went to court to block a unilaterally imposed salary cap, the cap would be stayed automatically until a decision was rendered.
Donald Fehr, the head of the union, had said he would recommend that the players end their strike and return to work if the bill were passed as originally written with the stay provision. After hearing about Wednesday’s development, he said the bill “could still be a positive step,” but he said he didn’t know if he could make the same recommendation.
Synar said if the House didn’t act on the bill by the end of this session, which very likely will be next week, he would expect it to be one of the first items on the agenda in February or March. Synar, though, lost his primary race and will not be around to vote for his own bill.
Ohio Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, author of a similar bill in the Senate, said he would try to attach a floor amendment with similar implications to a District of Columbia appropriations bill set for debate on the Senate floor Thursday, although an aide said he may wait.
