BASEBALL / ROSS NEWHAN : Season Taking a Last Gasp as Missing Link Is Sought

It is almost impossible to predict the course of baseball’s stalemated collective bargaining negotiations and the possibility of saving any of the diminishing season.

Jerry McMorris, owner of the Colorado Rockies, said Friday it would take a miracle to save it.

However, he also referred to the similar but dissimilar tax plans that the players and owners have put on the table at various times and said:

“There ought to be a way of working with the concepts and formulas to find a solution.”

There was none Friday.

The modest optimism that accompanied presentation of the players’ proposal Thursday faded on Day 29 of the strike when it was rejected by the owners.

The door closed, but not completely.

Acting commissioner Bud Selig, who had set Friday as a tentative deadline, said he would delay a decision on canceling the remainder of the season until early next week.

Two members of the owners’ negotiating committee, Boston Red Sox CEO John Harrington and Atlanta Braves President Stan Kasten, remained in New York to continue examining numbers and concepts, and lawyers for the two sides planned to meet twice today, possibly re-examining the rejected players’ proposal in relationship to a tax plan discussed previously by the owners.

Call it a last gasp, or as Selig said of the nearly comatose negotiations and possible cancellation of the World Series, horrifying and heartbreaking.

The acting commissioner, the man of many hats, dressed it in the solemnity that has characterized his public posture, having flown in to preside over the rejection of the players’ proposal and the postponement of his deadline.

He left only a few hours after he had arrived, returning to Milwaukee to guard the self-interest of his Brewers and the small-market coalition that is zealously pursuing a salary cap and is now closing in on what the union has long suspected is the owners’ goal: unilateral implementation of a salary-cap system.

Selig again denied reports that 19 of the 28 clubs favor compromise and resumption of the season, with only the Angels, Brewers, Pittsburgh Pirates, Minnesota Twins, Oakland Athletics, Seattle Mariners, Chicago White Sox, San Diego Padres and Kansas City Royals left among the hardliners.

He insisted again that not one club has suggested changing the owners’ proposal and that it is long past the point at which the union should be questioning the owners’ unanimity and relying on the defections of previous years’ negotiations.

Selig delivered that message, along with a sense of hope and urgency, to Don Fehr, the union’s executive director, in a meeting early Friday evening, but Fehr’s top aide, Gene Orza, shook his head and said, “There’s no doubt that the majority of clubs would like to settle” but are frustrated by the voting rule that requires 21 of the 28 to approve an agreement.

As convinced as Orza is about that, the union is mystified by the refusal of any big-market owners to speak up, state their real hopes and shatter the perception of unanimity.

Even Friday, when some clubs did not receive a copy or full explanation of the players’ proposal until the negotiating committee had already rejected it--the union had delivered the proposal Thursday afternoon--the grumbling was minimal.

Even as Selig was saying that all of the clubs had been told about the proposal, Peter Angelos said his Baltimore Orioles had yet to be told. He didn’t think the Orioles were alone in that regard, but didn’t have anything critical or biting to say about it.

Peter O’Malley of the Dodgers was characteristically mild in his appraisal of the situation.

He said the negotiating committee has the authority to reject or approve a proposal within certain guidelines. He said there is need for flexibility on both sides, but if chief negotiator Richard Ravitch opposed the players’ proposal, so did the Dodgers. Is there a schism among the owners? No, insisted O’Malley.

“There’s a lot of anxiety and frustration, but the owners are united more than ever. The need for cost certainty is shared by all 28 clubs.”

The Dodger owner’s strained relationship with Selig has been chronicled. He recently seemed to point a damning finger at the acting commissioner when he told The Times that he would not blame Ravitch or Fehr if the season went down.

Friday, he said that “in every negotiations, there must be responsibility and accountability,” and “the focus keeps coming back to (Selig).”

Selig was ducking blows on several fronts Friday. There was the issue of when clubs were told about the players’ proposal and what they were told. There was the issue of unanimity again. And there was the issue of why Ravitch had not given the union full details of the owners’ revenue-sharing plan and why it finally took McMorris to do it last Saturday, a situation that has reportedly prompted several clubs to demand Ravitch’s benching--not an unprecedented situation for an owners’ negotiator near the end of another negotiation.

The season is on the brink of vanishing, and the only thing that matters is this last-gasp attempt to find a solution--a link, perhaps, between tax plans.

Is it possible? Not if the owners continue to insist on a salary cap or ceiling. Not if they keep their proposal intact so that it can be implemented as their last, best offer. That is the one predictable factor in an otherwise unpredictable situation.

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