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More baseball woes

As baseball prepared to resume labor negotiations following an All-Star break dominated by talk of strike, steroids, and stalemate, commissioner Bud Selig claimed a team may not be able to make payroll Monday.

Selig made the comment during an interview Wednesday in Milwaukee with the Houston Chronicle and other papers. He said during the session that a second team had so much debt that it might not finish the season.

Selig did not identify the teams he was referring to.

The Houston Chronicle reported in Thursday's editions that Selig might have arranged to keep the Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Devil Rays alive financially this past winter, according to its industry sources.

"Major League Baseball's credit lines are at the maximum," Selig was quoted as saying in the Chronicle. "We've done everything we can to help people by arranging credit lines. Frankly, at this point in time, we don't have that luxury anymore."