New Offer Made in Bid to End Baseball Strike

Striking baseball players Thursday delivered a “taxation” plan to owners in the hope it would be accepted in place of a salary cap, but there was little indication from owners that a settlement is approaching.

Players’ union representatives presented their idea to owners during a 30-minute, early-evening meeting in New York. The owners will respond today, according to their negotiator, Richard Ravitch.

“Other than to say we’re studying it, I don’t think it would be fair for me to characterize it,” said one owner, Boston Red Sox Chief Executive Officer John Harrington.

The proposal, according to the players union, is based on a framework similar to the revenue-sharing agreement owners adopted last January. Instead of a salary cap, however, it includes a taxation concept in which clubs could have any payroll they wanted, but would be forced to share a larger amount of locally generated revenue as their payrolls increased.

The players said they hoped the proposal would extend today’s deadline, originally set by acting commissioner Bud Selig, for canceling the rest of the season.

Soon after the proposal was delivered, however, Selig said in Milwaukee that the Sept. 9 deadline, which he set last week, “still applies.”

No formal bargaining session to took place between the two sides on Thursday.

Instead, players met with their lawyers and economists for most of the day at the union office in Manhattan, then walked three blocks to the commissioner’s office, where three union lawyers delivered the “concept.”

Negotiations have taken on a sense of urgency since Selig announced the deadline last Friday. The strike, which began Aug. 12 and enters its fifth week today, threatens to prevent the World Series from being played for the first time since 1904.

Owners presented their salary cap proposal on June 14, but the union has said it never will accept the idea. Owners repeatedly have insisted that they need cost certainty, but players have said they like the free-market system of free agency and salary arbitration that has increased the average salary from $51,501 in 1976 to $1,188,679 on opening day this year.

Five more games were wiped out Thursday, increasing the total to 357, more than 15% of the season. A settlement today, which appeared unlikely, probably would allow players to return to the field on Sept. 16 or Sept. 19.

The new proposal comes in the wake of an informal three-hour meeting between officials of both sides late Wednesday night at a Manhattan hotel.

Colorado Rockies owner Jerry McMorris and Harrington of the Red Sox sounded hopeful after the informal session. They attended the meeting along with Selig’s daughter, Milwaukee Brewers Vice President/General Counsel Wendy Selig-Prieb, and management lawyer Chuck O’Connor. Management negotiator Ravitch was not present.