Baseball: Double Play

Baseball players who balk at signing contracts are as much a sign of spring as the first shoot of onion grass. Dealing from grand isolation, the holdouts usu ally settle, after a few ritual parries, for quite a bit less than they want. Some thing new has come along that could forever upset that balance. For the first time in baseball history, two players have teamed up to hold out as a unit.

The players are about the hottest numbers in the business: Los Angeles Dodgers Pitchers Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. They are negotiating as an inseparable matched pair...