Baseball Season at End? : Strike: Selig holds off setting date for calling off the rest of the campaign although word could--come as soon as today.

Though Bud Selig won’t be pinned down, the rest of baseball is braced for what may be inevitable: the cancellation of the season on Tuesday or Wednesday.

“It’s unreal. I can’t believe it,” Atlanta Braves president Stan Kasten said. “We’re about to lose the World Series.”

But Selig, the acting commissioner, wouldn’t establish a date for calling off one of the more memorable seasons in baseball history.

“I can’t give you a specific date because I don’t know myself,” said Selig, who last Friday allowed his initial deadline for canceling the season to pass. “We’re just going to play it day by day.”

Selig repeated an earlier statement that teams would not play the postseason unless the regular season was resumed. That means the World Series would be wiped out, too -- for the first time in 90 years.

He said he saw no harm in delaying a decision.

“It’s sort like taking chicken soup when you have a cold,” he said. “Nothing bad can come from it. You keep trying because you hope there’s some triggering mechanism that nobody’s thought about.”

But even Selig admitted, “We know it’s a longshot.”

Players, attending the union’s executive board meeting in New York, said they, too, were prepared for a decision to cancel the Series.

“I think both sides will regret it if it happens,” Hershiser said. “There will be extensive damage to the game, extensive damage to the season. It’s a sobering thought.”

Selig announced Sept. 2 the deadline for making a decision on the season -- and the World Series -- would be Sept. 9. Eugene Orza, the union’s No. 2 official, said Monday he thinks the sides have until Sept. 15 to 17 to reach an agreement that would allow regular-season games to resume and until “eight or nine days after that” to save the World Series.

There was no bargaining Monday as the strike passed its 32nd day, matching the 1990 lockout as the second-longest work stoppage in major league history.

Even the level of telephone activity dropped. Owners conducted conference calls at midday and early evening, and the players’ board met at night.

The only news came from Washington, where the House Judiciary Committee said its subcommittee on economic and commercial law will hold a hearing into baseball’s antitrust exemption on Sept. 22.

“There’s nothing productive happening,” Boston Red Sox chief executive officer John Harrington said.

Harrington and Kasten, who along with Colorado Rockies chairman Jerry McMorris tried to fashion a compromise last week, were back in their offices. “Nothing is happening that I’m aware of,” union head Donald Fehr said before the players’ meeting began.

Owners rejected the players’ new “tax” plan last Friday, a day after it was proposed. According to Harrington and Kasten, the union said Saturday that it would not accept any “tax” that would restrain salaries.

“They made it real clear they wouldn’t entertain any such discussion,” Kasten said. “Once it has real impact on salaries, they wouldn’t discuss it.”

Orza said that the union’s statement didn’t go as far as Kasten characterized it.

“The players’ association is not interested in discussing any proposal that had a pronounced or profound impact on the salary structure that exists in baseball,” Orza said.

McMorris, checking his notes from the meetings, said Fehr told him: “The owners will not get this union to artificially hold down payrolls.”

Before entering their board meeting, players said they were upset that management negotiators went home Saturday.