Union Frustrated by Pace of Baseball Talks, ‘Generalities’ of Owners’ Plan

As the clock continued to tick toward Feb. 15 and a possible lockout of the spring training camps by baseball’s owners, representatives of the Major League Players Assn. spent four more hours Thursday in an unsuccessful attempt to decipher the owners’ revenue-sharing proposal.

“I’m not going to make a judgment on it yet, but we continue to have questions and reservations,” Don Fehr, the union’s executive director, said after the collective bargaining meeting with the club’s Player Relations Committee in Tampa, Fla.

However, Fehr said there was a significant development in that the PRC acknowledged that the problem it is attempting to address with revenue sharing--the income disparity between big and small markets--is one that won’t become critical for several years.

“There are two ways for the players to consider a radical proposal of this type,” Fehr said. “One is for the clubs to show that there is an immediate need for it. The second is for the clubs to prove that the players would be better off with it.

“Since the clubs have now removed immediate need as a factor, it will have to be demonstrated that the players will be better off with it.”

Is that possible, considering the proposal would eliminate arbitration and modify free agency?

“As I said, we have reservations,” Fehr said.

Charles O’Connor, interim director of the PRC, said he has never attempted to paint revenue sharing as anything but a long-term consideration that would be phased in gradually.

“Our point has been that it would best be discussed and enacted in a time of industrywide health rather than a time of crisis,” O’Connor said.

“I mean, I can’t put it up on the board and say we’ll reach that crisis in June of 1994, but you look at the numbers and you say to yourself, ‘It’s definitely going to happen.’ ”

Fehr expressed dismay and frustration at the lack of progress, saying he has been unable to present many of the union’s proposals because of the PRC’s ongoing discourse regarding revenue sharing.

At one point, he said, he asked O’Connor and other members of the PRC, “Why are you attempting to re-invent the wheel?”

“I mean, all they have given us are generalities,” Fehr said. “How do you grab hold and find a solution?”

Two union proposals have been rejected, Fehr said. The first would have lowered eligibility for salary arbitration from three years to two years. The second would have reworked the amateur draft so that teams with poor records would get more of the early picks.

Fehr said the union was told that proposals dealing with an increase in roster size and minimum salary would be discussed in the context of the revenue-sharing proposal.

The next negotiating session is scheduled for Wednesday at New York, nine days before the owners are to meet and vote on a possible lockout.