Ballplayers and Owners to Meet With Mediator : Strike: Both sides stress differences, appear pessimistic the dispute can be quickly resolved by federal assistance.

On Day 1 of the strike by major league baseball players Friday, negotiators for the players and owners agreed to federal mediation in their stalemated collective bargaining talks. Neither side seemed optimistic, however, that their dispute could be easily resolved by outside assistance.

“Nothing we have said or done during (these negotiations) has seemed to matter to the owners, so I don’t know what impact a mediator will have,” said Don Fehr, executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Assn. “All I can say at this point is that I don’t think any harm will come from it.”

Owners negotiator Richard Ravitch agreed, but added: “We have been asking the union a simple question. . . . ‘Either in absolute dollar amount or by percentage of revenue, how much do you want to play ball?’ They don’t respond. We can’t get an answer. Maybe a mediator can, but I think it will be a tough task.”

Ravitch and Fehr had both been saying that their ideological differences over the economic state of the industry and the attempt by the owners to install a salary cap as a centerpiece of a new compensation system were so deep that they didn’t think mediation could help.

“It’s not that we misunderstand what the other side is saying,” Fehr said. “It’s that we don’t even have the conceptual framework within which we can negotiate a deal.

“The secretary of labor (Robert B. Reich) and (the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service) has been calling regularly and tracking the situation for several months. We’re at the point where it won’t hurt to have someone else participate, but it’s not something we requested.”

Neither Fehr nor Ravitch, who also said he hopes to meet with Reich next week, was certain when the mediation would begin. Both were hopeful they could set up separate meetings over the weekend, but nothing had been scheduled as of late Friday.

Both said it was unlikely they would hold another negotiating session until they had met with the mediator, who can only urge a settlement, not enforce one. Federal mediation almost ensures that negotiations will continue on a regular basis, although it served no value during baseball’s 50-day strike in 1981.

On other fronts Friday:

* Acting baseball commissioner Bud Selig, owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, sent a fax and spoke by conference call to the 28 clubs reaffirming a previous request to let Ravitch serve as the only spokesman on the negotiations. Selig’s action came in response to a barrage of critical comments by some owners on Thursday that questioned and seemed to undermine Ravitch’s position and the owners’ proposal.

Colorado Rockies owner Jerry McMorris, for example, said the salary cap should be a negotiable issue, and New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner said owners should be allowed to join Ravitch at the bargaining table and that Ravitch’s ongoing attempt to sell the salary cap as a method of improving the competitive balance “didn’t wash.”

Although sources told The Times that owners will be fined for speaking up, Selig insisted: “This isn’t a gag order. Other people will still have the freedom to do things locally, but Dick and myself will speak on the national level.”

Ravitch said it is impossible to think all 28 owners will ever agree with everything he does but not one has suggested he modify their proposal.

* There was no progress during a two-hour negotiating session between lawyers for both sides. The union asked for the meeting, Fehr said, because it wanted a more meaningful response to revenue-sharing ideas proposed to the owners last week.

Responding to what Ravitch believes is a competitive and industry threatening disparity in revenue between the clubs, owners in the bigger markets have agreed to increase the amount of revenue they share with the smaller markets, but only if the union accepts a salary cap.

The union claims a salary cap would transfer millions of dollars from the players to the owners and would force the players to repay the bigger markets for their generosity to the smaller markets.

The union gave the owners three concepts, all formulated with the help of outside economists and devoid of a salary cap:

* Expand the number of franchises immediately and provide teams in the struggling markets with a larger share of the expansion fees.

* Share local broadcasting revenue--only national TV revenue and a small percentage of cable revenue are now shared--among all clubs based on the size of their market.

* Provide “stopgap” relief by increasing the amount of ticket money going to visiting teams in the National League from 5% to 20%; eliminating what the union called baseball’s “tax” on pay-cable revenue; and creating a short-term subsidy pool to help the allegedly troubled teams.

Ravitch said he thanked the union for its suggestions but that the owners had negotiated revenue-sharing concepts and formulas for 12 to 14 months before resolving it in combination with the salary cap and that their internal rules “were not a suitable subject for collective bargaining.”

“I don’t want to denigrate the union ideas, but all they’re doing in the final analysis is moving money around and redistributing unprofitability. It’s not a matter for a union to bargain how an employer distributes its revenue among its partners.

“We have to know what it’s going to cost to play ball,” Ravitch said, his voice rising. “A union whose members average $1.2 million in salary is now on strike. We keep asking, ‘How much more money do you want?’ and we never get an answer. Until we do, there can’t be any bargaining and certainly no progress. It’s a shame. Tens of thousands of people connected to the game are going to lose their job over this strike, and I would remind everyone that our proposal guarantees the union the same $1 billion (for compensation) that the players now receive with the possibility of much more.”

Fehr, whose goal is to maintain the current system, said he hasn’t responded to the question of how much the players want “because it’s up to the free market to determine how much they should receive. That’s the way the Western economies work, but it’s not good enough for baseball.”

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