BASEBALL STRIKE REPORT : Head of Mediation Service Foresees Little Opportunity for Joint Talks

While baseball’s negotiations remained in limbo on the fourth day of the strike by the major league players, the director of the mediation service hoping to aid a settlement said he couldn’t be sure when the players and owners would hold another joint session.

John Calhoun Wells, head of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, said Monday that “given the history and deeply held positions,” it would be unrealistic to think a quick or easy settlement can be achieved in baseball’s eighth work stoppage since 1972.

“We’ll continue to be in touch with both sides this week, and I’m hopeful the timing will be right to hold a joint session,” Wells said.

Negotiators for the players and owners have not spoken since Friday. The four-day strike has wiped out 46 games and become the third-longest in-season strike in baseball history, exceeded only by the 50-day strike in 1981, which forced cancellation of 712 games, and the nine-day strike of 1972 that wiped out 86 games.

Don Fehr, executive director of the players union, spent Monday in Washington, pursuing antitrust matters, according to a source. He and owners negotiator Richard Ravitch met separately with four mediators Saturday--John Martin, Brian Flores and Wilma Liebman of the FMCS, and Steve Rosenthal, associate deputy secretary of the Labor Department.

Reached in Washington, Rosenthal said it would be up to the FMCS to decide “when mediation should take place and in what form.”

According to the Associated Press, the Boston-based Martin has been in touch with both sides since the owners voted in December of 1992 to reopen collective bargaining a year before the agreement expired. Martin, who mediated the 11-day NHL strike in 1992, said his team would maintain daily communication but didn’t know if it would attend bargaining sessions immediately.

There are no sessions scheduled the rest of the week.