Delaying Talks One Year a Possibility : Baseball: Owners and players concede that negotiations could be put off but say they would much rather settle now.

Representatives of the baseball owners and Major League Players Assn. emerged from Wednesday’s collective bargaining negotiations in New York and conceded that the quest for an agreement could be delayed a year while the 1990 season is played as scheduled.

Both sides, however, characterized a year’s delay as only a possibility and said it is not what they want.

“Everybody’s objective is to do it this year,” said Don Fehr, the union’s executive director. “Nobody wants to go through this again next year. We have lives to lead.”

Speculation that the process could be postponed a year, while the two sides conduct a joint study of an owners’ proposal that would reshape baseball’s economic system, seems to stem from two factors:

--The improbability that an agreement can be reached before Feb. 9, when the owners are scheduled to meet and decide whether to conduct a spring training lockout. Some owners, it is believed, think a change in the system is imperative but are concerned that a work stoppage would threaten the game’s current prosperity and popularity.

--The insistence by the owners of future protection, illustrated by the inclusion of a lockout clause for every year of all multiyear contracts signed this winter and most multiyear contracts signed in the last three years. In other words, the lockout language covers 1990 and beyond.

Mark Langston’s five-year contract has it. Kent Hrbek’s four-year contract has it. So do the three-year contracts of Eric Davis, Joe Carter and Orel Hershiser, who was signed by the Dodgers before the 1989 season.

The lockout language--though written differently in different contracts--basically says the player will not be paid in event of a lockout or leaves the question of payment to an arbitrator.

The owners may believe that a 1991 lockout would be more damaging to the players, since most players with multiyear contracts have compensated for the possibility of a 1990 lockout by taking less salary this year and either more up-front money or larger salaries in the other years.

For example:

--Third baseman Gary Gaetti of the Minnesota Twins signed a three-year contract before the 1988 season. It called for salaries of $1.4 million in 1988, $2.4 million in 1989 and $500,000 in 1990.

--Hershiser received a $1.1-million signing bonus and a $2.4-million salary in 1989. His 1990 salary drops to $1.6 million, then increases to $2.8 million in 1991.

--Langston received $1.5 million as a signing bonus and hedge against a lockout. His 1990 salary is $3 million, then $3.25 million each of the next four years.

The whole issue and legality of lockout clauses will be tested by the union if there is a lockout and salaries are withheld, Fehr said Wednesday.

“It is very likely we would file a grievance because we think they were collusively induced,” he said, meaning that the clubs again violated the collective bargaining agreement by acting in concert to restrict player rights. The clubs, in other words, suddenly said: No lockout clause, no contract.

And does he believe that the extension of lockout language beyond 1990 translates to the possibility of a year’s delay in the talks?

“There’s always a possibility, but I don’t see any evidence of it at this time,” he said. “I mean, you may be on to something, but I think it’s premature to correlate that possibility to what’s going on now.”

Fehr added that he didn’t know what purpose a year’s delay would serve, suggesting that the union would continue to oppose any system that eliminated arbitration, modified free agency and imposed a pay-for-performance scale that failed to consider various intangibles--all aspects of the owners’ proposal.

He also suggested that the union would oppose a delay because most contacts were structured with the possibility of a 1990 lockout in mind, though he reiterated that he felt the lockout language--governing this and future years--ultimately would be ruled illegal.

Charles O’Connor, interim director of the owners’ Player Relations Committee, disputed that, saying the inclusion of lockout or strike clauses are legal forms of economic action and that such clauses traditionally extend over the life of a contract. He said there is no “logical link” between the inclusion of lockout language beyond 1990 and the possibility of a year’s delay.

“I’m not ruling out anything, but (the lockout language) was not designed that way,” O’Connor said, adding that the owners remain committed to a change in the system.

“A delay is certainly conceivable, but you would just be postponing the inevitable.”

Wednesday’s negotiating session, according to Fehr, was devoted to nuts-and-bolts topics such as spring training allowances, termination pay and certain aspects of contract language.

Today, he said, the union will address the clubs’ revenue-sharing proposal and attempt to get an “explicit explanation” of “what they’re trying to solve with it, does this solve it, should the players care if it solves it, and, if we do, is their a better way of doing it?”

“We need a detailed explanation,” Fehr said. “Yes, there’s an economic imbalance. Some clubs have more money than others. But we need a lot more than that before the players will accept the radical changes they’re proposing.”