A New Man on the Point for Owners : Baseball: Charles O’Connor took over at the last minute as lead negotiator for baseball management. Will his outlook affect the outcome of the talks?

As a former high school catcher and lifelong baseball fan who graduated from Holy Cross and the Boston College law school, Charles O’Connor is heir to a New England legacy.

He has been tormented, he said, by the cruel destiny of the Boston Red Sox.

Nevertheless, a picture of the left field wall at Fenway Park still hangs in his office at the Park Avenue law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius in New York. Rooting for the Red Sox may seem sublime compared to the tormenting task confronting O’Connor, a labor lawyer for 21 years.

As the recently appointed lead negotiator and interim executive director of the baseball owners’ Player Relations Committee, O’Connor, 49, will try to convince the Major League Players Assn. that sweeping changes are needed in the economic structure of the collective bargaining agreement. He will try, in some measure, to turn back the clock.

The proposal presented to the union includes a modified salary cap and restrictions on free agency, but the owners’ quest seems to be for what O’Connor calls an “evening of the playing field,” an attempt to put teams in smaller markets on a comparable footing with those in larger markets.

This key to the owners’ proposal is that all 26 teams share equally in the payment of salaries to players with zero to six years of major league service. Those salaries would be determined by performance statistics. Arbitration for players in that category would be eliminated. So would the need for agents.

The first negotiations were held in New York last week. They will resume in Los Angeles Tuesday through Thursday.

If significant progress has not been made by the start of spring training, O’Connor said in his suite at baseball’s winter meetings here the other day, the owners might resort to a lockout.

Barry Rona, his predecessor, had targeted Feb. 15, but O’Connor won’t specify a date, saying he has told the union only that the clubs want an agreement before the season, meaning before spring training. He cited the obvious reasons:

--The saving of spring expenses and payment of player salaries, coinciding, in most cases, with the start of the season.

--The desire to avoid a midseason shutdown, such as the 51-day player strike of 1981, and the pressures relating to completing the season once it starts.

“Every labor negotiation has the potential for a lockout or strike,” he said. “The fact of the matter is that 98% never use either weapon. The system functions so that the pressures exerted on either side--the union with its strike and management with its shutdown--are just that, pressure points and leverage points.

“They point to the alternative, and usually when people look at the alternative, they find a way to resolve their differences.”

Both sides are financially prepared for a stoppage.

Would the owners open spring training and continue to negotiate if there were assurance from the union that it would not strike?

O’Connor shook his head and said that the promise of labor peace for a season would not be enough. He said that the clubs require changes in the compensation system and would consider opening the season only if there was assurance of peace and some agreements already in place.

A hard liner? O’Connor’s reputation is that of a conciliator. He is a labor lawyer by choice, that being the only part of the law that ever intrigued him, he said.

His practice has been directly related to collective bargaining and contract enforcement in such industries as trucking, brewing, construction and public services. It is a career, he said with a laugh, that had seldom made him the subject of media attention.

He and his labor-oriented firm--one of the largest in the country--were hired by then-Commissioner Peter Ueberroth two years ago to work with Rona and the PRC.

Why Rona, who had been with the PRC throughout the ‘80s, resigned on the eve of the current negotiations is still not clear, although some maintain that he was pressured by owners who believed he contributed to collusion and the work stoppages of the last two labor negotiations.

Commissioner Fay Vincent has emphasized improved relations with the union, and some owners reportedly figured there was need for a fresh face at the bargaining table.

O’Connor said he does not pretend to be a baseball expert and has trouble remembering which players are on which teams. He credits Rona for being an effective teacher.

“His absence is a loss, but the transition won’t be difficult,” O’Connor said.

A conciliator?

“Anybody in my business has to be optimistic,” he said.

“Conciliator? Yes. But the thing I’d be concerned about is that I don’t think--at least in my experience dealing with union leaders and management leaders--that you should ever confuse civility with weakness.

“In other words, the person who is civil and willing to reach out, is also the one you have to watch the longest.

“So I don’t shrink from the term.

“I think the one thing good lawyers have in common is the ability to find a way to conciliate an agreement.”

He will make his attempt at a time when the market has become a gold mine for the players. Seldom, even in the early years of free agency, has there been a more dramatic escalation of salaries. How does such spending equate to the owners’ alleged need for changes in the compensation system?

O’Connor said there are two aspects of it.

--The recent signings should address the union’s legitimate concerns that the two collusion decisions permanently hurt the market’s ability to bounce back. The market has worked its will and bounced back.

--And in the process, he said, it should be providing a clear signal to the union that not all 26 teams can afford to play such a high-stakes game. The industry, with its current pattern, might soon belong to the big-market elite, undermining competitiveness.

The sides should take advantage of today’s relatively good financial situation to produce a system that would assure long-term stability and cost-certainty to all 26 teams, a system to be eased in over the life of the new contract.

“We want to make the playing field fairer, not eliminate free agency,” he said. “There would still be a free market because clubs would be spending their own money for players with six or more years, but the savings through a 1/26 funding of the players in the zero-to-six category would provide the clubs with a measure of cost certainty and predictability.

“That’s the objective, but we’re not married to any proposal. The manner in which you reach an objective is part of the bargaining process. We do happen to think that the statistical framework we came up with is a good starting point, a legitimate basis to judge players.”

Don Fehr, the union’s executive director, conducted meetings with the 26 player representatives in Scottsdale, Ariz., this week and said the activity of this winter resembled the market before collusion.

He said that the money being spent was the $100 million to $200 million that the clubs saved during collusion.

Whatever validity there was to the clubs’ claim of financial distress during the last negotiations, Fehr said, has long since evaporated.

He said the industry is extremely healthy and that he expected increases in minimum salary and pension benefits. He said he couldn’t address revenue sharing because the PRC has yet to define revenue or explain how much is to be shared.

And of the new face at the bargaining table? Fehr wondered how talk of a lockout and economic warfare relates to conciliation.

“I can make an argument that there will be a softening,” Fehr said. “I can make an argument that there will be a hardening. I can make an argument that it doesn’t matter.

“I lean toward the latter. Barry Rona was not the policy maker. He took orders and acted on those orders.

“Bud Selig (the Milwaukee Brewers’ owner) was chairman of the PRC and is still chairman. The negotiations aren’t driven by personalities but by issues.

“If indeed Rona’s absence is a softening, it should be apparent in the direction the negotiations take. We’ll see in time.”