Baseball Council Removes Steinbrenner Sources Say Yankees’ Owner Working On Dropping Suit That Angered Owners

In what has all the earmarks of a prelude to a third suspension from baseball, the sport’s ruling lords Tuesday kicked George Steinbrenner off the executive council and banned the Yankees from participating on any working committees within the game as retribution for Steinbrenner’s lawsuit against baseball.

Before announcing its unanimous decision in Chicago, the executive council cited a provision from the order issued by former commissioner Fay Vincent in reinstating Steinbrenner from baseball’s permanent ineligible list in 1993. It stated that any violation of the rules on Steinbrenner’s part would be grounds for immediate suspension.

Acting commissioner Bud Selig, whose Milwaukee Brewers were a specific target in the lawsuit filed jointly by Steinbrenner and Adidas against baseball, made it clear the owners are prepared to fight an all-out war.

“We consider this (lawsuit) to be a blatant violation of the Major League Agreement to which every club is a party,” Selig said. “We will vigorously defend this claim.”

According to high-placed Yankee sources, Steinbrenner already had begun preliminary talks for dropping the suit he filed last week in response to baseball’s objections to his $95 million marketing deal with Adidas.

While baseball lawyers concluded there was nothing specific in the deal that violated the sport’s national licensing agreements, they asked the Yankees and Adidas to clear all joint projects in advance. After baseball ordered the team to stop selling T-shirts with Adidas logos at Yankee Stadium and told the Yankees to stop outfitting their grounds crew in Adidas gear, the team and the sportswear company sued in federal court in Tampa, Fla.

Steinbrenner, who was neither at Tuesday’s meeting nor represented there by any of his attorneys, had second thoughts about the lawsuit even before it was learned his attorney David Boies’ firm, Cravath, Swaine and Moore, already represented Time Warner, which owns the Atlanta Braves, one of the defendants. The firm since has withdrawn its representation of Steinbrenner.

But even if Steinbrenner does drop his legal action, it may not be enough to mollify his fellow owners, especially Selig, who was specifically cited in the suit for mismanagement of his ballclub. Under terms of the Major League Agreement, clubs and club officials are prohibited from suing baseball. The basis of Steinbrenner’s suit was that other clubs, particularly those in small markets like Selig’s Brewers, were jealous of the Yankees’ success and prosperity.

Yet it was Selig who brought Steinbrenner back into baseball’s inner power structure after his second suspension was lifted in March 1993.

“You can understand why Bud feels he’s been stabbed in the back by George,” a source close to Selig said Tuesday. “I don’t think Bud’s ever been madder with an owner like he is now with George. The other owners feel the same way. They’re fed up.”

Besides the lawsuit, the owners are looking into possible tampering on Steinbrenner’s part with Japanese pitcher Hideki Irabu. Steinbrenner is trying to sign Irabu after acquiring his rights from the Padres. San Diego agreed to trade those rights only after Irabu’s agent, Don Nomura, insisted his client would pitch only for the Yankees.

Now that Nomura is playing negotiating hardball with the Yankees, it is the owners’ belief that Steinbrenner conducted illegal negotiations with Nomura last year.

In other business, the council gave Dodgers owner Peter O’Malley the go-ahead to sell the team to Rupert Murdoch.

Murdoch, who owns Fox TV, is negotiating a reported $450 million deal for the Dodgers, Dodger Stadium, real estate around the stadium - presumably for a pro football stadium - and the Dodgers’ Vero Beach spring training complex.

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