Owners vote to share the wealth

DRAFT IMPACT
Teams that would have lost and added players if the draft had been in place after last season:
LOST A PLAYER
• Atlanta (.626)
• NY Yankees (.616)
• NY Mets (.573)
• Cleveland (.568)
• San Francisco (.559)
• Houston (.558)
• Boston (.558)
• Cincinnati (.530)
DRAFTED A PLAYER
• Florida (.406)
• Montreal (.412)
• Tampa Bay (.414)
• Minnesota (.417)
• Detroit (.439)
• Kansas City (.440)
• Pittsburgh (.445)
• Philadelphia (.447)
Owners voted Wednesday to seek the union's approval for a draft in which teams with the eight worst records during the previous three years would be able to choose one player left unprotected by the teams with the eight best winning percentages.

If the draft were in effect now, the Reds would have been among the teams losing a player.

At least one owner said he has problems with baseball's latest economic plan, much of which needs the union's endorsement. But commissioner Bud Selig promised the vote was the start of an overhaul of the sport's economics.

“We need to change the landscape,” he said. “If we're going to change this system, it has to be changed at every level.”

The most notable of the changes is a draft that would shift players from the best teams to the worst.

“I personally think it's an outrage. It's a sham,” New York Mets co-owner Nelson Doubleday said. “It's everything baseball shouldn't be for.

“What you're saying is you don't have to scout. We'll do that for you. Why spend money on scouting when you can take eight of our best players, or four of them or two of them?”

New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, who did not attend the meeting, also is said to oppose the draft, in which each of the top teams could protect 25 players in their organizations.

Selig would not disclose the vote. But the proposal does have some support among high-revenue teams.

“We would do it to achieve that balance,” Baltimore owner Peter Angelos said. “I think that's a goal to strive for.”

In other moves:

• Owners extended through 2007 Turner Broadcasting's agreement to televise Atlanta Braves' games nationally on superstation TBS.

• Teams extended Major League Baseball Properties' deal to sell teams' licensed goods through May 31.

Owners also will seek to make all players around the world subject to the annual June draft, rather than just those in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Other changes would eliminate the draft eligibility of college juniors, force all draft picks to sign by July 15 and allow teams to trade draft picks.

Union head Donald Fehr said “virtually all” of the proposed changes would need approval from the players. The collective bargaining agreement expires Oct. 31, and these proposals will be lumped into the labor talks.

“You can't evaluate it in isolation,” he said when reached in Los Angeles. “You have to look at it as part of the overall bargaining.”

Owners could start a lockout the day after the labor contract expires, which would put a freeze on free-agent contract negotiations.

A work stoppage would be baseball's ninth since 1972. The last one, in 1994-95, lasted 232 days and wiped out the World Series for the first time in 90 years. It's unclear if that experience has made the sides more cautious about another shutdown.

“The last one was distasteful enough that I think everyone remembers,” Kansas City owner David Glass said.

Selig promised labor talks will be kept out of public view. In the past 30 years, that has been impossible because of the union's insistence that players be at negotiations whenever possible.

“It's been a circus-like affair in the past, and it will not be in the future,” Selig said.

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