If baseball clubs are found guilty of collusion again, triple damages will be assessed against the clubs specifically at fault.
That was one of the items contained in a 104-page agreement signed at 5:54 a.m. Monday that ended the spring training lockout and cleared the way for the 1990 season to begin.The agreement also specifies that the projected expansion of the National League will follow the same rules as American League expansion, with each team able to protect 15 players in the first round of an expansion draft.
Also included were provisions to lower the loser's shares in the playoffs and World Series, and to require that each team have two fulltime trainers.
And in a sport that's filled with arbitration, negotiators found a new issue to arbitrate: whether rooms at the Pittsburgh Pirates' training camp are first class.
The union claims rooms at the Pirates' facility in Bradenton, Fla., are not "the equivalent of a first-class hotel accomodation." If the parties cannot resolve this by April 17, the issue will be submitted to arbitrator George Nicolau.
The commissioner's office will announce by June 18 a timetable for adding two NL teams. After the new clubs draft six players each, all the current teams may increase their protected lists to 18. After each round, teams may protect three additional players.
The old agreement did not specify how many trainers each team was required to have. The new contract says there must be two, and that both must travel with the clubs unless one is needed to stay home to treat disabled players.
The agreement lowers the World Series loser's share of the postseason pool from 27 percent to 24 percent and reduces the shares for playoff losers from 25 percent to 24 percent.
The shares for the second-place teams in each division rise from 91/2 percent to 12 percent and the shares for the third-place teams increase from 21/2 percent to 4 percent.
If five or more clubs are found guilty of collusion, the entire agreement may be reopened by the union within 60 days. In another change, only those clubs found guilty would pay instead of all clubs paying equal shares of the damages.
The clubs also agreed not to operate an information bank about free agent contract offers, which they did after the 1988 season.
The union and the clubs agreed to a study committee which will consider the projected impact of revenue sharing on baseball. The committee will issue its report by Sept. 1, 1991.