Ueberroth Says He Disagrees With Owners

Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth--staking out an independent position in the lagging baseball contract negotiations--publicly disassociated himself Saturday from the owners’ proposal for a cap on players’ salaries.

Ueberroth responded to a veiled suggestion by players union leader Donald Fehr that he enter the contract talks as the owners’ spokesman by saying in a telephone interview: “It is not possible for me as commissioner to represent the owners. I don’t subscribe to that position. I’m not in favor of it as presently constituted.”

The union last week set an Aug. 6 strike date in the dispute.

Ueberroth’s statement went a long way toward confirming reports of what the commissioner has been saying in recent private clubhouse speeches to 15 of the 26 major league teams.

A union source who declined to be identified had paraphrased Ueberroth as saying in these talks that the owners’ salary cap proposal was inappropriate because it couldn’t possibly be accepted by the players. Besides, the commissioner was quoted as saying, he would never be in favor of a salary cap because, “I’m a free enterprise man.”

Ueberroth’s public statement of this position Saturday came about 2 1/2 weeks before the strike deadline, and there appeared to be an implication in his remarks that he would like to get involved in the negotiations as an independent force.

This would be a far more dynamic position than the one assumed by then-commissioner Bowie Kuhn in the contract dispute that led to a 50-day players’ strike four years ago. Indeed, it would be unprecedented that a baseball commissioner--hired and paid by the owners--would take a position clearly different from theirs in a labor negotiation.

Since the 1981 strike, the average annual salary of the 650 major league baseball players has nearly doubled, from $185,000 to $363,000. If the owners were to drop their request for a salary cap, they would undoubtedly seek to cut back the one-third share of baseball’s national television contract, which the players have been receiving for their pension fund.

Keeping to the one-third formula would mean, with the current larger television contract, an increase in the pension contribution from $15.5 million a year to $60 million. Ueberroth has not said anything about that issue. But he could propose a players’ contract that would leave the way open toward bargaining for higher salaries while cutting back the one-third share of the contribution to the pensions. That could well become the focal point of negotiations in the remaining 16 days before the strike deadline.

The question is how the union and the owners will respond to the commissioner’s overture. Fehr said Friday that he had welcomed Ueberroth’s input.

While Fehr indicated that, in such an event, the union would view the commissioner as the owners’ spokesman, he also hinted that he did not think Ueberroth would play a different role.

Fehr added: “He can’t make things much worse, and if he can make them better, I can’t tell him how to do it yet, publicly at least.”

Fehr said that if Ueberroth does have another role in mind “then he ought to talk straight with me.” He said Ueberroth has been “talking to four different people and saying four different things.

“He wants somebody to request, ask or beg for him to become involved, and I’m not going to do that--not yet, anyway,” Fehr said.

The owners’ negotiator, Lee MacPhail, when asked about Ueberroth involving himself in the talks, said: “What the commissioner does is up to the commissioner. I’ve got a job to do. The Player Relations Committee (the owners’ negotiating group) has a job to do.”

Ueberroth said Saturday that he thinks MacPhail should remain in any talks as the owners’ negotiator.

The union source was familiar with several of the team meetings and also from a meeting Ueberroth held with a dozen or more players’ agents in Los Angeles at the end of June. According to this source, Ueberroth’s message has not been varying much from one of these encounters to the next.

The source said Ueberroth had been making these basic points:

--If there are financial problems in baseball, they are in no way related to player salaries or anything related to players. They are related to mismanagement at the club level and to the lack of appropriate revenue-sharing in the industry.

--As for collective bargaining, he has no idea why the owners put their salary-cap proposal on the table. It was a bad move because it couldn’t possibly be acceptable to the players. And while he has to be neutral in the matter, he identifies more with the players’ proposals than with management’s.

--He would never be in favor of a salary cap because it would violate his commitment to the free enterprise system.

The source added that at the agents’ meeting, Ueberroth said that if there were a vote right now, a majority of the owners would vote to get rid of him, and that specifically, Bud Selig, owner of the Milwaukee Brewers and head of the owners’ negotiating committee, would fire him now if he could.

Ueberroth said Saturday that not all of the reports were accurate, but the only statement he denied was the one concerning Selig. Ueberroth said he did believe, however, that the majority of the owners would vote to fire him now if they had the chance.

Ueberroth said he had been trying “to do things quietly” in his talks with the players, but since there were between 30 and 35 persons at the clubhouse meetings, he was not surprised that word had leaked out.

“If you don’t meet all the sides, you have no chance of being helpful,” Ueberroth said.

Ueberroth, who is spending a weekend in Southern California, said he will fly back to New York today and remain at baseball headquarters “for the duration of this thing.”

Among the agents present at the meeting in late June with Ueberroth at the Sheraton La Reina Hotel were Dick Moss, Tom Reich, Jim Bronner, Bob Cohen, Barry Axelrod and Alan Hendricks.

The meeting was ostensibly called to discuss Ueberroth’s drug-testing program for all baseball employees except the major league players. Accompanying Ueberroth to the meeting was Dr. Anthony Daly, medical director at last year’s Olympics and a champion of drug testing.

But the discussion turned to the baseball talks, and Moss reportedly told Ueberroth that he could play a significant role in the talks because there is a lack of leadership on the owners’ side.

To this, Ueberroth reportedly replied that he could not come in as the owners’ representative because he is independent of them and will determine for himself what his positions will be.