More than eight months after negotiations began,...

More than eight months after negotiations began, negotiators in major league baseball’s labor talks said they finally are ready to move on to the major issues, a week before the strike deadline.

“Subject to working out the final contract language, I think that what we have done today is to reach agreement on the overwhelming majority of the less significant issues,” the player union’s chief negotiator, Donald Fehr, said after a two--hour meeting with management in New York.

“We will try over the next 12 to 18 hours to get them down on paper, and beginning tomorrow afternoon, we’ll go back to the remaining issues,” said Fehr, acting executive director of the Major League Players Assn.