Scorecard

THE MOST POWERFUL MAN IN SPORTS

Last Friday night, after arriving from Los Angeles aboard a Learjet 35, a man giving his name as Victor Schulz checked into the Hyatt Regency hotel in Tampa. The next morning, the man was elected baseball's sixth commissioner by unanimous vote of the game's 26 owners. In actuality, "Victor Schulz" was Peter Victor Ueberroth, the president of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, and he'd assumed the alias to elude reporters.

That wasn't the only slick move pulled off by Ueberroth in becoming baseball's next czar. In order to wrap up Olympics-related business after the L.A. Games end on Aug. 12, Ueberroth specified that he wouldn't take over as baseball commissioner until Oct. 1. The owners acceded to that and other conditions set by Ueberroth, most of which were suggested to him by his predecessor, Bowie Kuhn. In fact, Kuhn emerged as Ueberroth's mentor, a role rich in irony for a man whose influence in the game has grown by leaps and bounds since he supposedly was given the boot as commissioner on Nov. 1, 1982.

At Kuhn's urging, Ueberroth got the owners to agree to streamline the game's chain of command and greatly increase the commissioner's power. The commissioner's term will be reduced from seven years to five, but his reelection will require only a majority vote of the owners, with a minimum of five in each league, instead of the present three-quarters of the votes in each league. The commissioner will be recognized as the chief executive officer of baseball, with the league presidents reporting to him on all matters relating to the overall administration of the game. His authority to impose fines on clubs will be increased from a $5,000 to a $250,000 maximum. And finally, Ueberroth said he would take the job only if Kuhn were allowed to stay on as commissioner until the Oct. 1 changing of the guard. The fact that Kuhn will have served as commissioner for 23 months after his firing seems only fitting; under the reelection procedures the owners were forced to swallow, he never would have been sacked in the first place.

To win acceptance of his demands, Ueberroth employed maximum leverage by waiting until the eve of his election before making them. After looking silly in ousting Kuhn when only five of them favored doing so and then taking so long to find a successor, the owners couldn't risk letting Ueberroth get away. Whether Ueberroth can be as masterful as commissioner, however, is by no means certain. Although he is a brilliant and innovative manager, his confrontational style could backfire in dealing with the Edward Bennett Williamses and Gussie Busches who will be his bosses in baseball. And since the baseball commissionership is in large part a public-relations job, he may need to become more straightforward and less defensive with reporters than he has been as the LAOOC president.

Ueberroth's new position makes him, unquestionably, the most powerful man in sports, a fellow who's putting on the Olympics at the same time that he's getting ready to run the national pastime. As busy as he'll be with the L.A Games, Ueberroth insists that during his seven months in the on-deck circle he'll have ample time to get "educated" about baseball, a game he knows only as a Dodger season-ticket holder and from his days as a strong-armed but slow-footed sandlot third baseman—and sometimes, catcher and pitcher. "For pure sanity purposes, from time to time I have to get away from my present position," Ueberroth said in Tampa. Imagine looking to baseball as a place to find more "sanity." The next commissioner is nothing if not a positive thinker.

CLOSED-CIRCUIT FANTASY
Not only do the Portland Trail Blazers routinely sell out the 12,666-capacity Coliseum, but for the past seven seasons the team has accommodated fans who couldn't get tickets by also beaming closed-circuit telecasts of some of its home games into downtown theaters. To judge by the enthusiasm of the theater spectators, watching on the screen is as good as being at the game. One sign of their involvement: When opposing players go to the free-throw line, fans at the closed-circuit telecast often stand, scream and wave their arms in an effort to distract them.

A SUPREMELY NARROW DECISION

The U.S. Supreme Court gave administrators of women's sports a big case of the jitters last week by adopting a narrow interpretation of Title IX, the 12-year-old federal law that has greatly spurred the growth of women's sports by prohibiting sex discrimination in colleges and school systems receiving federal aid. The case involved Grove City College, a coeducational private institution in Pennsylvania that refused to sign a federal form promising compliance with Title IX even though some of its students receive federal scholarship assistance. The court unanimously ruled that Grove City was a recipient of federal aid and thus had to complete the paperwork. However, it also ruled, by a 6-3 vote, in favor of the Reagan Administration position that Title IX banned sex discrimination only in specific programs receiving federal funding, and not necessarily throughout the whole school, the interpretation that had been followed by the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations. The implication is that discrimination is legal in activities that don't receive federal funding.

But exactly which activities are now covered by Title IX and which aren't? Because the Grove City case was limited in scope—it dealt with scholarship assistance at a small school that received no other form of federal aid—it's impossible to say for sure. Sports programs, in particular, now appear to be fraught with uncertainty. One can argue, for example, that the awarding of athletic scholarships is still subject to the anti-discrimination provisions of Title IX; such scholarships are usually administered by university financial aid departments that rely partly on federal funds. Athletic departments sometimes also use federally funded remedial or tutorial programs, occupy buildings constructed with federal grants and feed athletes at training tables in cafeterias that are federally funded. In many cases, it can be demonstrated that federal funds received by other programs indirectly benefit athletics by freeing money for them. Any of these considerations, or several of them taken together, could be construed as meaning that a particular athletic department is still barred under Title IX from practicing sex discrimination.