Owners to Open Talks on Revenue : Baseball: Some big-market teams oppose sharing plan. Meeting expected to be divisive.

Seeking to increase the amount of revenue they share, major league baseball owners begin a potentially fractious two-day meeting in Kohler, Wis., today.

The deliberations are tentatively scheduled to end Thursday, but could extend into Friday.

“There’s no way anyone can predict how a vote will go,” Dodger President Peter O’Malley said Tuesday. He was referring to the need to have 21 of the 28 clubs approve a new formula that would also be contingent on the players union’s acceptance of a new compensation system based on a salary cap and a designated percentage of revenue going to salaries.

The Dodgers, O’Malley said, continue to support a sharing increase tied to those price controls, but several big-market owners are believed to strongly oppose revenue sharing.

Among those clubs are the Toronto Blue Jays, Chicago Cubs, Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees.

Yankee owner George Steinbrenner has reportedly prepared a lawsuit challenging an increase in revenue sharing. One National League owner said Tuesday he expects a “heavyweight fight” over the issue. “We should be meeting in Madison Square Garden,” the owner said.

The owners are believed to have established a $100,000 fine for anyone divulging details of the formulas under discussion.

If the owners approve a new formula, Richard Ravitch, president of their Player Relations Committee, will immediately begin negotiations with the players union on a new collective bargaining agreement, with little chance of the union accepting a salary-cap system. If there is no new formula, Ravitch will be left with nothing to take to the union, and he might be tempted to resign, a PRC source said, having wasted a year attempting to sort out baseball’s economic problems.

The union has said it is considering a September strike because of the owners’ delay in beginning bargaining talks after voting in December to reopen the negotiations a year early.

Don Fehr, executive director of the union, said last week that he would consider a no-strike pledge if the owners agree not to stage a spring lockout or unilaterally impose a new compensation system after the collective bargaining agreement expires Dec. 31.