Soon, a place might be found for some missing baseball games.
A decision is likely on the regular season, and it is expected the schedule will be restored to 162 games. Because opening day was delayed a week by the lockout, teams were assured of just 158."The issue is not totally resolved," Commissioner Fay Vincent said Tuesday. "They're still working on it."
Baseball would prefer to add games at the end of the season. Other choices include playing doubleheaders or filling open dates.
"I guess that would be ideal," Vincent said of extending the season. "It would be so much easier to transpose the week. It would be crisp and clean."
If games were added in October, it would push back the playoffs and World Series. CBS holds the rights for the postseason and must give its approval before that change can be made.
"Baseball initiated discussions with us yesterday on giving consideration to moving the postseason back," Jeremy Handelman, vice president of program planning at CBS Sports, said. "We have not established a position, we're examining it.
"We're in a business partnership with baseball, we have a collective interest here," Handelman said. "I can appreciate from a fan's standpoint that what happens in October is not an immediate concern. But there are numerous things that are affected within CBS."
Meanwhile, the exhibition schedule has been revised. The spring season had been set the go through April 1 - the day before the original Opening Day - but was changed when openers were delayed until April 9.
Spring training began Tuesday and exhibition games start March 26. All teams will play at least 13 times and the Chicago Cubs will play the most, 16. Some split-squad and "B" games are being added daily.
But Memphis, Des Moines and some other cities that were to play host to big-league exhibition games lost them. Teams that had been scheduled to play on the road on their way to opening day now will stay longer in Florida and Arizona.
Las Vegas, Jacksonville, Fla., Oklahoma City, Columbus and Greenville, S.C., also were among cities that lost exhibitions.
Seattle and San Diego were to play March 30 in Las Vegas, home of the Padres' Triple-A team. Instead, the clubs will meet that day at the Padres' spring training home in Yuma, Ariz. Tickets never went on sale in Las Vegas for that game as officials waited to see whether it would be played.
Louisville and Washington, D.C., will retain the exhibition games that had been scheduled. Baltimore and St. Louis will play at RFK Stadium, home of the old Washington Senators, on April 7 rather than March 31, and on April 8 at Louisville, home of the Cardinals' Triple-A team. A Kansas City-Baltimore exhibition set for April 1 in Washington was canceled. The teams had been scheduled to open the season in Baltimore on April 2.
Also, baseball clarified a scoring rules decision, saying that for the first two weeks of the season, starting pitchers will need to work just three innings to get credit for a victory. After that, starters will need to pitch the usual five to be the winner.