Ueberroth Goes to Bat Against the Strike : Commissioner, Declaring Independence From Owners, Makes Proposals

Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth moved to center stage of the deadlocked baseball contract talks Thursday, advancing one proposal that leaned toward the union’s position and promising to submit others early today.

“By 8 o’clock tomorrow morning, I’m going to submit a series of solutions and proposals to both sides,” Ueberroth said at a New York news conference. “I am, in effect, going to put bread on the table and hope they break bread.”

Five days short of the player union’s strike deadline, the commissioner said that he is appealing for a delay in the strike while negotiations proceed.

His one proposal Thursday would raise the owners’ annual contribution to the players’ pension fund from the current $15.5 million to between $23 million and $31 million, while dropping all the owners’ proposed moves toward a salary cap.

In return, the union would have to accept changes in current salary arbitration procedures, such as requiring three years of service rather than two before arbitration could be used. Arbitration awards would also be limited to 100% more than previous salary, except in the case of a few superstars. But all these changes would affect only new players, not present ones.

Union leader Donald Fehr said that he wants to see whether the owners’ side is prepared to follow Ueberroth’s suggestions and drop their proposal for a salary cap.

The reaction from the owners’ side seemed cool. Chief negotiator Lee MacPhail said that he would withhold comment on Ueberroth’s proposals until he sees them in writing. In the meantime, he summoned the four owners on his side’s negotiating council to New York for consultation.

The head of that group, Bud Selig, owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, said that he plans to remain in New York for the next several days and may join the talks directly.

It appeared that Ueberroth is putting more pressure on the owners than on the players, even though he has stopped well short of meeting the union demand for an increase in annual pension contributions to $60 million.

At one point in the news conference, Ueberroth said of the owners: “They must immediately stop asking for the players to solve (the owners’) financial problems.”

He said that the players, the owners and the umpires should all share in the financial growth of baseball, but especially the players “because they are the game.”

Later, on NBC television, Ueberroth said: “Maybe I’m more on the players’ side on some of the issues.” But he added that his main goal is to get the sides talking, and that if it would speed the process, he would sit down at the table with them.

“I’ll do anything I need to do in order to be sure we don’t have a strike,” he said.

At the press conference, Ueberroth also vowed not to accept the post of commissioner again when his five-year term is up unless umpires and players, as well as the owners, are allowed a voice in the selection. Declaring his independence of the owners who elected him commissioner last year, he reiterated that in the present dispute he will “represent the fan.”

Asked if he might resign if the owners do not go along with any of his proposals, Ueberroth said: “I don’t intend to resign. The rules are simple. The commissioner is elected, and there’s not a mechanism to remove me.”

Despite everything Ueberroth said, however, the union and owner negotiators were privately saying that it would be wise for them to remain cautious. Neither side professed to know exactly what the commissioner is up to.

Both sides noted that perhaps Ueberroth’s most serious proposals have not yet been made public.

Ueberroth made two proposals at his news conference, the one described above and another one that was highly unusual and struck both sides as somewhat frivolous.

That second proposal was to put the $45 million, representing the difference between the owner and player positions on pensions, into escrow and then start negotiations on how it should be split.

The money would come out of the $180 million national television contract. For every day that the negotiations did not succeed, $1 million of the fund would be given to charities, such as amateur baseball. If at the end of the 45 days, there was no resolution, the charities would have everything and the players and owners nothing.

Labor experts said Thursday that they had never heard of such a thing being done and that they didn’t think it would be done now.

Ueberroth said in an interview Thursday evening that he had made his proposals because “there’s nobody at the table right now, and there’s nothing on the table. . . . What we want to do is to get them back and talking. That was my effort.”

The talks were suspended indefinitely Wednesday because the parties had come to an impasse, but Ueberroth’s remark about nothing being on the table puzzled both the owner and union negotiators, since there are proposals on the table.

Ueberroth also said in the interview: “I think I’ve created some movement.”

That also puzzled both sides, since neither had even seen most of the commissioner’s proposals.

What was clear, however, was that Ueberroth, who for months proclaimed publicly that he would not get involved directly in the negotiations, is now very much in them.