Baseball set to go, but feels crunch

More than 70 free agents remained unsigned with pitchers and catchers set to report Saturday.

NEW YORK (AP) — Randy Wolf was offered a $27 million, three-year contract by the Houston Astros in mid-November. A week later, Astros executives realized they couldn’t afford him.

They called Wolf’s agent the following day and withdrew the offer. Last week the pitcher agreed to a $5 million, one-year deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers that allows him to earn $3 million more in bonuses.

It’s been a most unusual offseason for a sport coming off a record $6.5 billion in revenues last year. The economic downturn is just hitting baseball, where uncertainty has replaced anticipation as pitcher and catchers prepare for the start of workouts on Saturday.

More than 70 players remain unsigned from the group of 171 that filed for free agency after the World Series, about a dozen more than at this point last year.

Other jobseekers include some players from the pool of 42 cut loose in mid-December, when teams failed to offer 2009 contracts.

Manny Ramirez, Ken Griffey Jr., Adam Dunn, Bobby Abreu, Garret Anderson, Orlando Hudson and Orlando Cabrera are looking for work. The players’ association is considering whether to open its own spring training camp, as it did in Homestead, Fla., following the end of the 1994-95 strike.

“We’re living in very tough economic times, obviously — the toughest economic environment I think since the Great Depression,” commissioner Bud Selig said.

Sluggers already have shrunken, thanks to drug testing. Will attendance and revenue be next?

Management executives think the impact soon will be felt at the gate and in their sales offices — ads and sponsorships are bound to be off when current contract expire.

“I don’t think Lehman Brothers is buying anything, because they don’t exist anymore,” Astros president of baseball operations Tal Smith said.

Several teams say season ticket sales are at or above 2008 levels.

However, executives are worried that the impact of the recession will be felt more with individual tickets, which some haven’t put on sale yet.

“I started last October at the playoffs — I said owners should not get cocky,” Selig said.

“Look, whatever anybody else says or thinks, baseball is related to the environment we live in. And, therefore, I don’t sense anything but the same concern that I hear everywhere I go from people in every business, including the other sports.”

Clubs also are just beginning to gauge whether there will be cutbacks on spending for ballpark signage, yearbook and program advertisements, and individual-game luxury suite rentals.

“We won’t see the full impact — no club will — until at least 2010,” Boston owner John Henry said. “There is no doubt that the fear and uncertainty within the global financial system found its way into MLB board rooms. None of us know to what extent we will be impacted by this continuing crisis. But we all know that we will. Clubs had good reasons to be cautious this year.”

In Milwaukee, where the outlook in his office is sunny no matter the weather, Selig is cautiously optimistic.

“There’s something about spring training, and I think maybe even more so this year with all the things that have gone on,” he said. “People really look forward to it. It’s sort of a beginning again of hope.”

Four teams have new training bases this year, with the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago White Sox moving to a shared facility in Glendale, Ariz.; the Cleveland Indians shifting to Goodyear, Ariz., where the Cincinnati Reds will join them in 2010; and the Tampa Bay Rays shifted from St. Petersburg to Port Charlotte.

Los Angeles created a stir by boosting its top spring training ticket price to $90 from $20 last year at Vero Beach, Fla., which had been the team’s spring home since 1948.

Many other teams, however, have kept ticket prices level — both for spring training and the regular season.

The Boston Red Sox had intended to boost their ticket prices, then announced in early November that after 14 consecutive years of increases they would leave prices the same at $12 to $125 for single-game tickets — and give discounts for any season tickets purchased before Dec. 17.

At the new, $1.5 billion Yankee Stadium, where a steak house and martini bar are among 13 restaurants, lounges and food courts for the public, tickets are priced at up to $2,500 per game. At the Mets’ $800 million Citi Field, top tickets average $495.

After missing the playoffs for the first time since 1993, the Yankees committed $423.5 million to add pitchers CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, and first baseman Mark Teixeira.

The spending spree sparked Milwaukee owner Mark Attanasio to say baseball should push for a salary cap when the current labor deal expires after the 2011 season.

“If you’ve got some owners that are upset, I’m just not going to let it worry me. I’m not going to lose sleep over it,” Yankees co-chairman Hal Steinbrenner said.