Negotiations Taking Optimistic Turn : Baseball: Although no breakthrough, both owners’ and players’ representatives have a sense of progress.

The lockout of spring training camps by baseball’s owners could end by the middle of next week, Charles O’Connor, general counsel of the owners’ Player Relations Committee, said after collective bargaining talks recessed for the weekend Friday.

Referring to the removal of revenue sharing as the complicating issue, O’Connor said: “We’re dealing with understandable issues now, and in that sense we should be able to solve them. I think by Wednesday or Thursday we’ll know where we are.”

Don Fehr, executive director of the Major League Players Assn., shared O’Connor’s sense of movement.

“I feel that for the first time the clubs are genuinely interested in reaching an agreement,” he said. “To that extent I’m encouraged. We haven’t had a breakthrough, but we’re up a little from zero.”

Fehr said the owners were still proposing a 75% limit on arbitration raises, but a source familiar with the negotiations said that, too, is certain to go as part of the owners’ overall pullback and capitulation.

“They are simply making too much money to risk jeopardizing the season with this ill-conceived lockout,” the source said.

Indicative of the movement is that O’Connor said his staff would use the weekend to review pension and benefit proposals. The clubs’ position, as expressed in the recent series of proposals from Commissioner Fay Vincent, has been that they would not increase their $39-million-a-year contribution.

The union believes there should be a percentage increase commensurate with the new television contract. A PRC review seems to point toward a union victory.

It also is likely that another Vincent proposal will fail. The commissioner suggested that a settlement of the three collusion cases be included in the bargaining agreement. The clubs have estimated collusion damages at $70.6 million. The union believes the figure should be more than $100 million and said it won’t discuss it as part of the negotiations.

“We’re willing to settle, but you can’t trade benefits owed current players for money owed previous players,” Fehr said. “There’s no relation between collusion and the current negotiations except that we want assurance it won’t happen again.”

Vincent, who expressed pessimism about the pace of negotiations Thursday, said Friday he was “still worried” about the direction. He said that the union’s refusal to discuss limits on free agency and arbitration left the clubs with no middle ground in their attempt to forge an agreement that would reflect their concerns about economic stability in the future.

He said short of a “thermonuclear confrontation” that would put the season at risk and might break the union, he still was hopeful that the union would accept his proposal relating to a joint study of revenue sharing and the right to reopen negotiations after two years of a four-year agreement.