Vote Taken to Lock Out the Players : Baseball: Owners reached unanimous decision in December to keep spring training closed if union does not accept revenue-sharing plan.

Baseball’s owners voted unanimously in December to keep spring training camps closed if the Major League Players Assn. does not accept a revenue-sharing proposal that has stalled the collective bargaining negotiations, several owners revealed Thursday.

It has been assumed that a lockout vote would be conducted at a Feb. 9 owners meeting in Chicago, but that vote was actually taken at the annual winter meetings in Nashville.

Said Jerry Reinsdorf, co-owner of the Chicago White Sox: “There is no doubt in my mind there will be a lockout because we already voted on that. I haven’t taken a poll on what everybody’s been thinking lately, but the last time I checked, it was 26-0.”

Reinsdorf last checked in Nashville.

He said there has been misinformation and misconception about the meeting in Chicago Feb. 9.

“That meeting is just for us to update ourselves on what has transpired since the last time we met and get a progress report on the negotiations,” he said. “So unless the union agrees to a revenue-participation program, there will be a lockout, and I’m in total agreement with it.”

Said Bill Giles, president of the Philadelphia Phillies: “There’s a misconception about a vote taking place (in Chicago). We already voted when we met in December, and it was unanimous. If we have to lock them out, we lock them out. It’s that simple.

“I believe wholeheartedly in the revenue concept. I know it works for everyone in basketball, and the players and agents love it. Hopefully, our union will be so wise to see what it’ll do for them.

“I know this, if the current system does not change, everybody will go broke, and we’ll be in the same shape as we were four to five years ago.”

Informed that a lockout vote had already been taken, Don Fehr, the union’s executive director, alluded to the lack of progress in the bargaining talks and said:

“I’m not surprised. We’ve heard a lot of rumors. It just reinforces the notion that this is all a sham.

“I mean, I’ve assumed there will be a lockout, and I’ve assumed it since the clubs began beating the drums for it more than a year ago. I assume Chuck O’Connor (general counsel of the owners’ Player Relations Committee) wouldn’t be shooting his mouth off if he didn’t know that he had the support of the owners.”

O’Connor has repeatedly said that the camps will not open if the union does not agree to the concept of revenue sharing by Feb. 15.

He said it again Thursday during a news briefing in New York.

Asked later about the Feb. 9 meeting in Chicago, O’Connor said: “We’ll be giving the owners a report on the status of negotiations. There’s no need for a referendum. The clubs have already authorized the PRC to make the decision (on a lockout), and none of the clubs have questioned it.”

Fehr said that the fact that a vote had been taken even before negotiations began on a new bargaining agreement enforced his belief that the clubs have not bargained in good faith and that the union would be justified in taking legal action seeking to halt a lockout.

“Nothing we say on the central issues matters at all,” he said. “We presented our proposals (Wednesday) and they said they would discuss them only after we agreed to revenue sharing. What’s happened here is that they decided they had all the answers before the negotiations started. . . . We have a lot of questions and doubts about the legality of this lockout.”

O’Connor said that the union’s claims regarding illegalities were without merit.

“We’ve conducted good faith bargaining in the best sense of that term,” O’Connor said. “The negotiations have been conducted well within what’s required by law.”

The sides met for three hours Thursday to discuss non-economic issues. The admittedly frustrated Fehr did not attend. There has been no progress on the main issues, with Fehr reiterating Thursday that the union has yet to receive a satisfactory explanation on why the radical changes as proposed by the clubs are needed.

Fehr opened a door of sorts when he added that the union might be willing to consider revenue sharing if it weren’t accompanied by a salary cap that restricted free agency and a pay-for-performance scale that eliminated arbitration, plus guaranteed and multiyear contracts for players with zero to six years of major league service.

The union also contends that the clubs would have to share more than the proposed 48% of their gate and TV income, which translates to the same amount that the clubs spent on salaries and pension donations in 1989.

O’Connor said Thursday there is no limit on what can be negotiated within the framework of revenue sharing, meaning the pay-for-performance and salary caps proposals, among others, are subject to modification. The goal, he reiterated, is for the clubs to achieve a system of cost certainty that will help reduce the revenue disparity between the big and small markets.

The PRC proposal calls for all salaries of players in the zero-to-six category to be shared equally by the 26 clubs.

Jeff Smulyan, chairman of the board of the Seattle Mariners, said he supported a lockout because the system has to be changed.

“We have to have a modification. It’s got to be a game for everybody,” he said. “If there are cities that can’t keep up, it no longer can be the national pastime. I don’t think there’s any mystery about the large revenue disparity in our game.”

Andy MacPhail, executive vice president of the Minnesota Twins, said there is heavy pressure on the smaller markets. The Twins made a $23-million commitment to Kirby Puckett and Kent Hrbek this winter but only after trading Frank Viola and allowing Jeff Reardon to go to Boston as a free agent.

“You can see that if things continue to escalate like they are, we’ll be in real trouble, and it’ll be very hard to compete,” he said.

Peter O’Malley, owner of the Dodgers, and George Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees, could not be reached Thursday. They operate the two most profitable franchises. The Yankees’ cable TV deal alone brings the club close to $50 million a year. Yet Steinbrenner also favored a lockout in support of revenue sharing.

“You always point fingers at (the Yankees) thinking they may act differently, but I know in December they were in favor of a lockout,” Giles said.

Asked Thursday if the union would agree not to strike during the season if the clubs, in turn, would not enforce a spring lockout, Fehr said: “What, and get to the end of the season and let them implement their plan and go about their business and change everything next winter? No way.

“That’s not to say that if they want to make a proposal that can be analyzed and talked about we wouldn’t listen to it, but I have no reason to believe that anybody thinks (putting it off a year or forfeiting strike rights) is a good idea.”

And a lockout? Is that a good idea?

Said Joan Kroc, owner of the San Diego Padres: “We know this isn’t going to be the end of baseball, and certainly, there will be a season, but who would have dreamed it would have happened like this? This is unthinkable.

“My God, if we can keep our countries at peace, I would think we can work out an agreement in baseball.”