Invoking the "best interests of baseball" clause for the first time, Bud Selig and the major league executive council have told the Yankees they may take no steps to interfere with the assignment of the three players they lost in the expansion draft, including their starting third baseman, Charlie Hayes.
Selig, the council chairman, who is in charge of the major leagues in the absence of a commissioner, sent that message to the Yankees on Monday in a letter to Joseph Molloy, the club's managing partner, after the council had discussed the Yankees' position in a conference call last Friday.
It was the first time since they ousted Commissioner Fay Vincent that Selig and the eight-member council had issued an order based on the best-interests provision in the Major League Agreement. One of the owners' major complaints against Vincent was his abuse, in their estimation, of the best-interest powers. Draft Considered Illegal
In a letter to Selig and Bill White, the National League president, last Thursday, Molloy wrote that the Yankees were revoking the assignment of Hayes and Brad Ausmus to the Colorado Rockies and Carl Everett to the Florida Marlins because the Yankees thought the draft was illegal.
The draft should not have been held, the Yankees contended, because the Marlins had not compensated them for the Fort Lauderdale territory, where the Yankees had a minor league team. The owners of another minor league team sued the Marlins and the National League over compensation last month, but their effort to enjoin the draft failed.
In his three-sentence letter to Molloy, Selig said the council had considered his letter and as a result, "has ordered in the best interests of baseball that the New York Yankees are prohibited from taking any action intended to revoke the assignment of the contracts of the New York Yankees players selected in the Nov. 17, 1992, expansion draft."
Although Selig didn't specifically mention litigation, some people who read the letter said "any action" and another phrase, "or in any other way interfering with the transfer" of the players, could include a lawsuit the Yankees have considered filing to block the expansion teams from getting the players.