Baseball Owners Say They Have a ‘Deal Maker’

Baseball’s collective bargaining talks, idled for eight days, will resume in New York today with the owners prepared to offer a proposal that their chief negotiator said Thursday was a “deal maker.”

Charles O’Connor, general counsel of the owners’ Player Relations Committee, said the owners were “holding nothing back” in offering the biggest economic package in industry history.

“At some point in time you have to do the very best you can do, and I honestly believe that’s what we’ve done,” O’Connor said. “I don’t want to say (it’s the) last or final (offer), but this is not just another proposal.”

But Don Fehr, executive director of the Major League Players Assn., said that unless he is assured this was a substantive proposition, he will not participate in “another public relations charade.” He said O’Connor’s deal-maker declaration was “silly and amateurish.”

Fehr said the owners were trying to save face at a time when their lockout--in its 29th day--is about to force cancellation of regular-season games.

He reiterated that any deal will have to restore arbitration to at least some of the 80 or so players who have more than two but less than three years of major league service. He said there was no indication of movement on that issue in his recent conversations with O’Connor, including several Thursday.

According to sources, the new proposal improves economic offers on other issues but does not fulfill union demands for an arbitration rollback from three to two years.

Asked if other areas of a potential agreement could be improved enough that the union would give up its rollback demand, union counsel Lauren Rich said no.

“They know what it will take to make a deal,” she said. “They know that there can’t be a deal if there isn’t any movement on the two-three issue.

“We think they’re merely getting everybody braced for another publicity stunt. If they have a deal maker, why are they telling the media about it again before they’re telling us?

O’Connor would not discuss the issue of arbitration eligibility. He said that the proposal was not given to the union Thursday because it will be discussed by a full meeting of the PRC this morning, before presentation to the union.

The union’s 26 player representatives are scheduled to begin arriving in New York today for what the union said was a previously scheduled Saturday meeting on today’s expected cancellation of some regular-season games.

It is believed that the owners’ new proposal may be put to the player representatives for a vote.