BASEBALL WATCH : Presidential Hardball

Now that the Super Bowl is over, it’s time to get ready for the other national pastime--baseball. President Clinton says he wants the baseball strike settled by next week, or else.

Concern over the long labor dispute between team owners and the players union is bipartisan. Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) has offered his Capitol Hill office as a place where compromise might occur when negotiations resume Wednesday, the first time the two sides will have met since last year.

Dole has some real leverage. The Senate has scheduled a hearing on baseball’s antitrust exemption for Feb. 15--in the same week that pitchers and catchers are supposed to report for spring training. That exemption from national labor laws allows owners to do just about whatever they want, a luxury no other business enjoys. It has been in place since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in 1922, that organized baseball was a sport, not a business.

But now baseball is big business, and Congress should make that clear by repealing the antitrust exemption before the season opens in April.

Clinton has instructed federal mediator William J. Usery to come up with proposed solutions if the owners and players fail to meet the presidential deadline. It’s hard to imagine that Usery could find a more effective means of breaking baseball’s labor impasse than calling for an end to the antitrust exemption. That is where Congress and the White House should focus their energies. Otherwise, 1995’s spring might feature the usual complement of flowers but no shouts of “Play ball!”