Baseball Talks Sound Like a ‘Rerun’ of ’81

Don Fehr, the head of the baseball players’ union, said today that negotiations turned into “a rerun of 1981” just hours before a deadline that would send the sport into its second mid-season strike in four years.

A high-ranking baseball official, meanwhile, said prospects of avoiding a walkout “do not look good.”

The chief negotiators for the two sides, Lee MacPhail for the owners and Fehr for the players, met informally this morning for about 1 1/2 hours.

Fehr later told reporters that the union again offered to reduce its demand for increased pension fund financing from $60 million to $40 million but received little response from the owners’ side.

“Based upon what I’ve learned in the last several hours, this appears to be a rerun of 1981,” Fehr said, referring to the first mid-season strike by American pro athletes.

Asked about this morning’s informal session between MacPhail and Fehr, Bob Fishel, American League executive vice president, said: “It did not look good. They all had long faces.”

Fishel said he expects Fehr and MacPhail to meet again later in the day.