Glimmer of Hope Offered in Strike : Baseball: Some owners are optimistic as talks with players resume today in New York.

Against the backdrop of a tentative Friday deadline for saving the rest of the 1994 major league baseball season, owners and players will resume negotiations in New York today amid a degree of optimism.

Owner Bill Giles of the Philadelphia Phillies described it as “a glimmer of hope,” and Dodger owner Peter O’Malley said Wednesday there was “definite reason to be optimistic.”

The cold war has not ended after 27 days of the players’ strike, but it is believed that the union, which asked for the meeting, is prepared to make a proposal aimed at dislodging what remains of the owners’ hard-line insistence on a salary cap by offering a cap derivative and modifications to the owners’ longtime nemesis, salary arbitration.

“The ownership side may be creating an air of expectancy that may not be justified,” Donald Fehr, the union’s executive director, said in refusing to confirm or deny that the union has prepared a proposal. However, Fehr added that the union had received new financial data from the owners Saturday.

“We’ve been crunching the numbers to see where they take us,” he said.

A union source said: “It’s the type data that’s hidden when you don’t want to make a deal and exposed when you do. I’d say that we’re at least on the same page now, as far as their revenue-sharing objectives (go).”

A series of behind-the-scenes meetings that have basically removed Fehr and owners’ negotiator Richard Ravitch from the business of daily confrontation are said to have partially disengaged the stalemate.

Jerry McMorris, owner of the Colorado Rockies, has been the key player, assisted by Atlanta Brave President Stan Kasten and Boston Red Sox CEO John Harrington.

They, with Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, Milwaukee Brewer vice president-general counsel Wendy Selig-Prieb and retired St. Louis Cardinal president Stuart Meyer, who wrote the owners’ current revenue-sharing proposal--were selected by acting commissioner Bud Selig to return to New York Wednesday. There, McMorris, Harrington, Selig-Prieb and owners’ counsel Chuck O’Connor had a three-hour dinner meeting with Fehr and his staff.

Union counsel Gene Orza described the meeting as constructive and said, “There’s a conceptual basis for continuing. We’re better off tonight than we were yesterday. People on both sides are willing to reach an agreement. We just don’t know if there’s enough people on their side.”

The union, giving impetus to the possibility of a breakthrough, has asked its negotiating committee, which includes Orel Hershiser and Brett Butler of the Dodgers, to attend today’s meeting.

McMorris said: “I’m more optimistic that we’re at least . . . ready to start meeting again, but it’s taken years for this thing to get in this kind of mess and I don’t want to go overboard on my optimism.”

Led to believe that the owners are willing to accept something less than an inflexible salary cap, the union is believed willing to discuss a “taxation” concept they had previously dismissed as the equivalent of a cap.

Under the taxation format, clubs that went over a designated ceiling would have to pay a percentage of the excess to the small markets as part of the revenue-sharing formula. There is also a spinoff by which the players would pay the excess tax. A union source said the new data has prompted the players to take another look at the concept.

“It discourages clubs from exceeding the cap but doesn’t prohibit them from doing it, as a cap would,” he said.

Twenty-one clubs are required to approve a settlement. Sources said 19 clubs are now pushing for compromise. The nine clubs still favoring a straight salary cap are believed to be the Angels, White Sox, Brewers, San Diego Padres, Pittsburgh Pirates, Seattle Mariners, Oakland Athletics, Kansas City Royals and Minnesota Twins.

Fehr said he planned to ignore Friday’s deadline and continue working for an agreement, adding: “If the owners walk away and the season goes down, we’ll call it ‘Bud Selig Day’ and make it a national day of mourning.”

Both sides are under the gun, of course. There are only 3 1/2 weeks left before the scheduled start of the playoffs, although there was speculation Wednesday that a quick settlement might prompt extension of the regular season by a week.

Not everyone was optimistic. Owner Peter Angelos of the Baltimore Orioles said that both sides remain intractable regarding the cap and that the season is dead.