Game May Be Over Today : Baseball: Selig likely to make announcement canceling season, including playoffs and World Series.

Acting baseball commissioner Bud Selig, barring another spasm of indecision, is expected to announce today that he is canceling the rest of the 1994 season, including the playoffs and World Series.

Selig, it was learned, faxed a resolution to the 27 other owners on Tuesday, asking them to sign off on the decision to call off the rest of the season.

The resolution, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, says it is with “enormous regret” that the rest of the season must be canceled “in order to protect the integrity” of the regular season and playoffs.

Meanwhile, in Washington, according to the Associated Press, a Senate bill that would have ended the strike fell through. Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) failed to obtain an immediate vote on the measure, which would modify the sport’s antitrust exemption.

Metzenbaum said he had spoken with Donald Fehr, head of the players’ union, and was told that Fehr would recommend ending the strike if the bill passed Congress.

The senator needed unanimous consent under Senate rules to get a vote, but Sen. J. James Exon (D-Neb.), objected, saying it would be a bad precedent for Congress to intervene in the strike now.

Selig’s resolution cited the lack of negotiating progress and said it would be impossible for the players to resume play at a championship level without a substantial training period.

Asked about the resolution, Selig said there has been an increased level of communication between the clubs in various forms over the last few days but he would not be specific.

Sources said Selig has a conference call scheduled with the owners for mid-afternoon, after which a tentative news conference has been scheduled in Milwaukee. Does he intend to cancel?

“We’ll see what happens overnight, if anything,” Selig said. “I’m still hoping, but each day the ground becomes more tenuous.”

Said one National League owner: “There’s a strong possibility (Selig will make the announcement today), but he’s so careful and cautious that he’s liable to find a glimmer of hope in anything.”

Selig’s anticipated announcement on Day 34 of the strike by major league players would mean that the World Series, which has survived two World Wars, a depression and the 1989 Bay Area earthquake, will not be played for the first time since 1904.

It also would mean that the last 52 days and 669 games of the regular season will have been erased by a strike that began on Aug. 12. The mid-season strike of 1981, the previous longest, wiped out 50 days and 712 games.

A union lawyer estimated that the owners will have lost $600-$800 million in gross revenue and $400-$500 million after the saving on salaries is deducted.

Fehr said Selig called him and “asked me to sanction pulling down the season and I told him that if he wanted to pull down the World Series it was his responsibility, not mine.

“The idea that he cares one iota about what we think or do is nonsense. They have been looking forward to and planning for this day for a long time, he and Dick and Jerry.”

The reference was to owners’ negotiator Richard Ravitch and Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, and to Fehr’s contention that the owners’ goal has been to break the union and unilaterally implement their salary cap proposal without meaningful negotiations.

There were no negotiations again Tuesday, but it was learned that Fehr and owner Jerry McMorris of the Colorado Rockies were in phone contact again Tuesday night.

A management official said it seemed doubtful that their “back channel” talks would lead anywhere, and McMorris, who has tried to keep the process alive, would not discuss the specifics of his latest effort.

“As great as this game has been to all of us, it’s a disgrace that this group of people can’t save the season,” he said.

The disgrace, Ravitch said, is that the players have not addressed the primary issues.

“This has all the elements of a Greek tragedy, but the fans have to remember that the owners didn’t go out on strike and didn’t force the players to go out,” Ravitch said.

“We didn’t make some kind of radical or off-the-wall proposal. We asked them to consider the same system that is working in football and basketball, and we guaranteed the same billion dollars in compensation they are receiving now, with a chance to receive considerably more if revenue continues to grow as it has in recent years.”

Ravitch said he remains dumbfounded by the players’ unwillingness to discuss cost certainty and cost containment, or to acknowledge the industry’s economic problems. He accused the union of buying into expectations that the owners would back down as they have in previous negotiations and refusing to discuss anything that would impede free agency and salary growth.

“The union’s contention that the owners forced the strike so that they could implement their proposal is nonsense,” Ravitch said. “Implementation doesn’t solve anything. Collective bargaining does. We can implement from now to kingdom come, but we can’t force the players to sign and we can’t force them to play. We do have a Constitution in this country.”

It is expected, however, that at some point in October the owners will declare an impasse and unilaterally implement their proposal, touching off a winter of legal chaos leading to resumption of the strike next spring.

The players have a $200-million strike fund, with the first checks due to be mailed Friday.

Looking ahead to next spring and the possibility of continued hostility, Dodger pitcher Orel Hershiser, a member of the union’s negotiating committee, said the players are united in their opposition to a salary cap.

“This is all uncharted waters, but history shows the players have stayed together better than almost any other union,” he said. “There’s such a kinship and unity among players because of career length, of what it took to get here. . . . and all the different things that bring baseball players together. I don’t think people would cross the line.”