$15 Million a Fair Price for Avoiding Arbitration

The Dodgers got a bargain Tuesday, signing Mike Piazza for a mere $15 million for the next two seasons.

I know that $7.5 million a year makes him the fifth-highest paid player in baseball--the third-highest everyday player--and the highest-paid catcher in history.

Still, the Dodgers made the kind of decision that has earned them the reputation as professional sports’ best-managed franchise.

For one thing, they might have saved themselves money. An impartial arbitrator could have awarded Piazza the $7.65 million he requested for 1997.

At the rate baseball salaries are escalating, who knows what he might have wanted for 1998? Ken Griffey Jr. numbers--$8.5 million a year--would not have been unreasonable.

But even if an arbitrator had decided the team’s offer of $6.1 million for next season was fair, the process would have created a public relations nightmare for the Dodgers.

Piazza: I’ve averaged .330, 32 home runs and 100 RBIs and been an All-Star the last four years.

Dodgers: You’re a so-so defensive catcher.

Piazza: I handle a Tower of Babel starting pitching staff that could be the best in the National League.

Dodgers: You fade down the stretch.

Piazza: I rarely take days off from one of the most physically demanding positions in the game and never turn down one of your public appearance requests.

Dodgers: Yes, but you frown too much.

You get the picture. A Dodger victory in arbitration would have come at the cost of bashing their most valuable asset.

It was best to settle now and turn over a content catcher to the new owners, who can determine in two years whether he’s worth the really big money.

*

Other than the Dodgers signing Piazza, the best decision by a Southern California company this week was the one by Carl’s Jr. of Anaheim to suspend Dennis Rodman’s commercials. Carl’s Sr. would be proud. . . .

L.A. Sports Council President David Simon is leading a delegation to New Orleans Thursday. The goal is to let the NFL know that the region still wants Super Bowls even if we don’t have a team. The next one available is 2001. . . .

Looking at his ticket from the last Super Bowl played in New Orleans in 1990, Simon reports that the face value was $125. Tickets to Sunday’s game have a face value of $275. . . .

In anticipation of the Super Bowl’s 3:15 p.m. kickoff, Santa Anita has moved its first post 90 minutes ahead to 11 a.m. The card will be completed by 3 p.m. . . .

In her column for USA Today, women’s basketball legend Nancy Lieberman-Cline lists USC’s 6-foot-3 Tina Thompson as one of the nation’s top 10 college players. . . .

Tina’s little sister, 5-10 Antoinette Thompson, isn’t bad, either. A freshman at Rancho Santiago College in Santa Ana, she averages 18.9 points and 15.9 rebounds. . . .

Gloria Williams of Oceanside, a former official with the U.S. Figure Skating Assn., says it’s hypocritical for figure skating officials to fret over Oksana Baiul’s recent arrest for driving under the influence. Williams notes that Korbel Champagne is a USFSA sponsor and that Bailey’s is an International Skating Union sponsor. . . .

Twenty-four years ago today, Lyndon Johnson died, the Supreme Court ruled on Roe vs. Wade and George Foreman sent Joe Frazier to the canvas seven times en route to a second-round TKO.

*

Six months after competing in the Summer Olympics, “the Magnificent Seven,” as the U.S. women gymnasts became known after winning the gold medal, have hardly left the gym.

Amid a nationwide tour, all but Kerri Strug will join the all-around gold medalist, Ukraine’s Lilia Podkopayeva, and others in the Reese’s International Cup on Saturday night at the Anaheim Convention Center, a competition organized by the L.A. Sports Council and USA Gymnastics.

In the near future, most will have to start the next phases of their lives.

None are without plans. Strug and Shannon Miller already are on their way, Strug having enrolled at UCLA and Miller at Oklahoma. Amanda Borden and Amy Chow will start college in the spring. Dominique Dawes is concentrating on acting and modeling.

Jaycie Phelps and Dominique Moceanu are looking ahead to the 2000 Summer Olympics. The latter’s family is opening its own gym, Moceanu Gymnastics, in Houston this winter.

*

While searching for Eric Piatkowski’s shot, I was thinking: Colorado will make it back to the Stanley Cup finals but not Florida, Kentucky won’t make the Final Four without Derek Anderson, Jim McMahon was more fun the last time he was in the Super Bowl.