Sens. Orrin Hatch and Daniel Patrick Moynihan will introduce the latest baseball bill in Congress today: a partial repeal of the owners' antitrust exemption.
With no talks scheduled, acting commissioner Bud Selig and union head Donald Fehr will testify Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on antitrust, business and competition.Moynihan, D-N.Y., Nancy Kassebaum, R-Kan., and Bob Graham, D-Fla., will testify on the first group of witnesses, followed by Selig, management negotiator John Harrington and James Rill, an assistant attorney general for antitrust in the Bush administration.
The final group will have Fehr, players David Cone and Eddie Murray, and former Federal Trade Commission general counsel Kevin Arquit. Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., chairs the subcommittee and Hatch, a Utah Republican who heads the full Judiciary Committee, hopes to have a markup within a month.
Players and owners still blame each other for the failure to reach a deal last Tuesday at the White House. Management's negotiating committee criticized Fehr for not telling the truth to his own side in a Feb. 8 memo.
"It is our view that Mr. Fehr's memorandum to his agents is affirmatively misleading," the negotiating committee wrote Feb. 10.