NEW YORK - After opposing a labor agreement he said wouldn't hold down salaries enough, Jerry Reinsdorf agreed to a deal that will make Albert Belle baseball's highest-paid player.
''It is perfectly fiscally responsible for us to give him this money because we can afford to give him this money,'' the Chicago White Sox owner said Tuesday after giving Belle a contract said to be worth $55 million for five years.
''We have to compete under the system that exists. We have an obligation to our fans to try to win. We're trying to win. It doesn't mean I have to like the system.''
Union head Donald Fehr assumed the proposed new deal ''is dead, dead as a doornail.''
Acting commissioner Bud Selig, however, told the executive council he will call an owners meeting for next Tuesday in Chicago, several sources said on the condition they not be identified.
When they voted Nov. 6, owners rejected the deal 18-12 - leaving the agreement 11 votes short of the three-quarters majority needed for ratification.
''If they decide to do a 180, they'll tell me and I'll deal with it,'' said Fehr, who hasn't spoken with Selig in a week. ''But I don't consider that likely.''
Reinsdorf was among the owners who successfully opposed the proposed labor deal, which would have imposed a luxury tax next season on payrolls above $51 million, including benefits. In this method of counting, the White Sox had a $48 million payroll this year, and Belle would have put them over the threshold.
''It would be healthy if every team could do this,'' Reinsdorf said.
Reinsdorf said White Sox attendance still hasn't recovered from the 1994 strike. Chicago averaged 21,220 this season, 19th among the 28 teams.
''It was incumbent on us not to say, 'We're sorry,' but to show them (fans) how much we regret what happened,'' Reinsdorf said. ''The person who has to say he's sorry is Don Fehr.''
Fehr says Reinsdorf and other hard-liners caused the walkout with their attempt to impose a salary cap and their failure to make a $7.5 million benefits payment following the 1994 All-Star game.
''Mr. Reinsdorf is extraordinarily good at deflecting attention to his own behavior,'' Fehr said ''Who, Mr. Reinsdorf, made the decision not to make the All-Star payment? Who made the decision to demand salary caps? Who committed the unfair labor practices? That's a game he can't win.''
Indians general manager John Hart also criticized Reinsdorf.
''For Jerry Reinsdorf, who's been a proponent of all the things he's been a proponent of, to walk up to the podium and bust the market, I think that says something there,'' Hart said. ''But they have Albert Belle, and I'm sure he feels good about it. What this means to the industry, that's for Jerry to live with.''
Reinsdorf said he still favored a system that would control salaries more.
''I want the people in Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Milwaukee, all these small towns, to have a chance for their team to compete,'' he said. ''I'm fighting this fight because I love the game. I want competitive balance and I want the people in every city in America that has a baseball team to have a chance to see a winner.
''Look at Montreal, competing in the hunt. Gets into August, what does everybody do who's in the hunt? They go out and get somebody. Poor Montreal, they couldn't go out and get anybody. We have a very, very bad system.''
Published Nov. 20, 1996.
