The plan to put Arizona in the National League and Tampa Bay in the American hit a bump when AL owners failed to approve it during a straw vote last night in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Owners split 7-7 during the AL meeting, one owner said on the condition he not be identified. However, baseball officials still expected the proposal to be approved during today's major league meeting.
``I'm disappointed,'' Arizona Diamondbacks CEO Jerry Colangelo said. ``I was a little taken aback.''
Under the proposal advocated by the ruling executive council, one expansion team would be assigned to each league in 1998, creating two 15-team circuits. However, the AL's first preference would be to get both teams and its second preference would be to get Arizona rather than Tampa Bay.
Because Tampa Bay would probably be assigned to the AL East, one team would have to shift from East to Central, and one from Central to West. Kansas City, the team most likely to join the West, objected to the plan, as did Texas, which doesn't like being in a division whose three other teams are in the Pacific time zone: Anaheim, Oakland and Seattle.
The other main item for today was the appointment of the search committee for a new commissioner. The 10-man executive council decided it will be the search committee, and Colorado Rockies chairman Jerry McMorris is likely to head the search, according to another management source.
Because of expansion teams, owners will have to come up with a new schedule formula. Boston Red Sox CEO John Harrington, head of the schedule format committee, said he would develop a 1998 schedule that calls for 15 interleague games per team (three against each team in one division of the other league), 50 intradivision games (12 or 13 against each rival) and 97 interdivision games (nine or 10 against each rival).
He also will investigate a schedule calling for 30 interleague games per team and a reduction of interdivision games to 82.
DODGERS: PUBLIC SALE SUGGESTED In an effort to keep the Los Angeles Dodgers under local ownership, the City Council decided to recommend owner Peter O'Malley consider taking the team public. Public ownership is unprecedented in baseball, but the NFL's Green Bay Packers are an example of such an arrangement.
