The Soup Is Losing Its Flavor : Baseball: As a palliative, the deadline to cancel season is extended. But more than chicken and noodles is needed.

The 33rd day of the strike by major league players passed uneventfully Monday, with no contact between negotiators and no decision by acting commissioner Bud Selig to cancel the remainder of the season.

With no settlement in sight and no negotiations scheduled, that decision is still expected in the next 48 hours, probably Wednesday.

“I felt another couple of days hoping and trying is in everyone’s best interest,” Selig said on a conference call from Milwaukee. “It’s like taking chicken soup when you have a cold. There’s no proof that it helps, but what harm does it do?

“I mean, I’m always an optimist, but I have to admit that we don’t have a lot going for us, and that might be an exaggeration.”

It’s come down to chicken soup, and the union was finding it hard to swallow again.

“Unless and until the owners show a willingness to negotiate, there’s nothing we can do,” executive director Donald Fehr said Monday night after he and his staff spent four hours updating 27 player representatives.

“We’ve made every effort, but there’s been no reciprocity. It’ll be tragic if the playoffs and World Series go down, but this has not been of the players’ making.”

He referred to the unwillingness of the owners to deviate from their salary cap proposal. He said there had been some indication from Boston Red Sox CEO John Harrington and Atlanta Brave president Stan Kasten on Saturday that the union would hear back from them on Monday, but it didn’t happen.

Asked what his reaction was when he heard that the owners’ negotiator, Richard Ravitch, attended the U.S. Open tennis tournament here on Saturday, and Selig spent part of Sunday at the Green Bay Packer-Miami Dolphin football game in Milwaukee, Fehr said:

“It occurred to me when I heard both of those things that they don’t seem to care very much that they’re giving the appearance that they have no interest in negotiating. I suggest that’s probably because they have no interest in negotiating.”

Selig said he attended only the first half of that game as guest of Wayne Huizenga, ownerof the Dolphins and Florida Marlins.

He bristled at the ongoing speculation about rifts among the 28 owners and said “we’re well past the point where that should still be an issue. There should be no question about the owners’ unanimity. Not one has dissented from the need for a new system that provides cost certainty.”