Nov. 17

The Truth is out there. Donald Fehr has tried to read Bud Selig's lips, search the caves and scour the Internet, but after he addressed agents in Chicago on Thursday and called members of the Players Association executive board on Friday and sat down in Kansas City Friday night for a family reunion he admitted, "I don't know what's going on."

Which puts Fehr in company with all but a small circle of Selig's friends.

Even if the baseball business does have too many teams, even if the notion of a contraction draft would spark an offseason fire of interest and PR, the way this has been approached has been ill-advised.

When it came time to negotiate an arbitrator's hearing on the subject of contraction -- the owners' favorite idea since a salary cap, pay-for-performance, collusion or free agent compensation -- Fehr learned that rather than attempting to expedite it, the owners threw out a series of dates that seemingly stalled such a decision into December. Lawyers in the New York office read accounts of the Minnesota injunction, which seemed to be a strong case based on Carl Pohlad's late September exercise of the lease option on the Metrodome. But Fehr again added, "I really don't know."

Which means that four weeks from MLB attorney Frank Coonelly's Dec. 15 Contraction Draft deadline and less than 90 days from spring training reporting date for pitchers and catchers, the Players Association, more than half the owners and all 29 general managers have absolutely no idea what's going on. "What we think is that Bud is hell bent on contracting two teams no matter what," said one general manager Friday, even though all GMs are being threatened with million-dollar fines discussing the issue (a far greater penalty than an owner illegally hiring other teams' personnel). Several general managers Friday suggested that the Marlins still could be the second team contracted -- much to Carl Pohlad's disgust -- and that if Florida owner John Henry's purchase of the Angels runs into a snag, he might join Tom Werner's bid to purchase the Red Sox.

Whatever. With Jason Giambi, Barry Bonds, John Smoltz, Jason Schmidt and others about to hit the market on Tuesday, baseball has gone from an unforgettable World Series to paralysis in a tilt of Bud Selig's eye. "It's as if no one wants to do anything until this mess is cleared up, because no one knows what's going on, whether we're going to be able to help ourselves through contraction or whether there's even going to be a spring training," says one general manager, who described himself as "depressed."

Several general managers have tried dealing with Florida, but Scott Reid and other Marlins officials have told GMs they cannot do anything until this situation is cleared up. Ditto anyone calling Terry Ryan in Minnesota and Larry Beinfest in Montreal. "They're all essentially frozen," says one GM. "We tried to talk about Clifford Floyd, but until the ownership issues are cleared up, they cannot do anything."

"Maybe this is Bud's plan all along," says another GM. "Maybe all this stagnation will effectively slow down the free-agent market."

Or, as the Players Association guesses -- and, talking to player leaders, they are as confused as you are -- perhaps Selig is trying to force two teams out this winter, two more next winter and thus scaring the players into accepting a radical change in the Collective Bargaining Agreement. MLB chief operating officer Paul Beeston did tell Fehr that the owners would accept nothing short of the recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Commission. However, most observers feel Beeston is too balanced, too acquainted with the business ramifications (how does Fox feel, having the game maced after a season that broke even for rightsholders, something the NFL, NBA or NASCAR cannot claim) and thus does not meet with the Association armed with the power to speak for Selig.

Even if the baseball business does have too many teams, even if the notion of a contraction draft would spark an offseason fire of interest and PR, the way this has been approached has been ill-advised. Start with this fact: the Expos and Twins both made money last season, the Twins each of the last five seasons. Then move on to Selig's ill-advised "look in the mirror" slap at Minnesota taxpayers. In the middle of a war, at a time when the economy is strained and the costs of security and other concerns are skyrocketing and state and local economies are strained, the commissioner of baseball chastised taxpayers for caring more about the quality of schools, health care and the environment than further lining the pockets of the richest man in the state. Where is Carl Pohlad's commitment to his neighbors?

People on every level of the game, from owners to GMs, have said for more than a year that a lot of owners would like the Giants to fail because Peter Magowan put the time, blood, sweat, tears and portfolio on the line to build a stadium -- one of the best ever built, in fact -- at his own expense, without taxpayer money, and where once it seemed impossible to believe, now it seems completely believable. Next season's Mastercard moment: an empty school, a full luxury box.

Naturally, neither the cadre of owners who run the game by remote control nor the Players Association seems to care one hoot about all the people who would get paid off by contraction. Front-office workers. Minor-league managers and coaches, many of whom work for close to nothing because of their love of the game. Minor-league franchise workers. And on and on and on. Players should remember all those people who worked 16 hours a day to try to help them get to The Show or the folks around the minor-league ballparks who took them in and made them feel at home, and put together a contingency fund to help. One general manager Friday suggested, "Major League Baseball should immediately guarantee two years' severance pay (for every minor-league employee who loses his job because of contraction). What's that, really? They get paid nothing. ... I'd love to lead that fight, but if my name is attached to that idea, I'll get fined. Really."

Instead, this is the way people are treated: the Expos threatened their minor-league personnel with fines if they talked to other teams or to the media. Of course, they guarantee those same people nothing if the team is disbanded. If you've got three kids and are making the usual $22,500, when your Expos bosses remind you that they expect "loyalty," what do you think? Maybe you think that as much as you love the game, you're in a business run by people whose idea of the real world is to foreclose on farmers or build megastores designed to run every family business on the horizon out of town, then beg for government handouts for a new ballpark.

"You're getting way too worked up about this," said one general manager Friday night. "Think back. What have these guys accomplished? If I were going to Vegas, I'd lay 100,000 to one that none of this will ever come off."

What's sad here is that there would be no economic problems in the game if they'd kept all the money paid out to lawyers because the owners never understood the business reality of labor and product being one in the same and kept trying to break the Association. And with restraining orders, arbitration cases, politics, antitrust exemptions and litigation promising to be more widespread than the Northern Alliance, money that would have gone to support the families of those minor-league, scouting and bucket-carrying human beings they want to contract will instead go to thousand-dollar-an-hour lawyers. Warren Zevon for commissioner.

Free-agent rumblings
There are some general managers out there trying to trade, including Cincinnati's Jim Bowden, Baltimore's Syd Thrift, Toronto's J.P. Ricciardi and others. But for now, most curiosity concerns the free agents, who after two weeks of not being allowed to discuss money (wink, wink) can begin exchanging figures and signing on Tuesday.