Fehr’s Back-Channel Talks Yield Nothing : Baseball: Meeting with owner of the Rockies precedes those next week that may be last before salary cap is implemented.

With baseball’s collective bargaining negotiations expected to resume next week, union leader Donald Fehr and owner Jerry McMorris of the Colorado Rockies continued their back-channel search for a middle ground during private meetings in Denver on Thursday.

Fehr, returning to New York from a Wednesday speaking engagement in Los Angeles and accompanied by his brother, Steve, a Kansas City lawyer, said, “It was strictly a preliminary assessment of where we are,” adding that nothing substantive had developed.

McMorris, who had been among the most active owners in trying to keep communications alive through behind-the-scenes meetings with the union before the season was canceled on Sept. 14, was more enthusiastic but acknowledged, “No credible plan emerged that can be laid on the table next week.”

He added, however, “We had a positive and thorough exchange of ideas on how best to get the talks started again, and hopefully that will happen by the end of the week.

“I’m still hopeful that we can find something both sides can live with.”

McMorris said his was probably a last-ditch attempt before the owners unilaterally implement the salary-cap proposal, a move expected before the end of the month.

He said that among the concepts discussed briefly was a plan that owner Peter Angelos of the Baltimore Orioles presented to Fehr on Sept. 24 and to acting Commissioner Bud Selig in Milwaukee on Wednesday. Under the Angelos plan, the union would apply a 3% tax to player salaries, generating about $30 million in addition to the $70 million that the big-market clubs are prepared to share with the small-revenue teams through the proposal now on the table.

The Angelos plan would also eliminate salary arbitration in return for earlier free agency. It does not include a cap, but Angelos has theorized that the $100 million available to the small markets would help put them on even footing with the successful teams and could best be used to finance new stadiums.

Angelos is something of a maverick among the owners and it is doubtful whether the majority would be enthusiastic about an agreement that does not include a cap, but Selig said he is receptive to any ideas, that the owners are not committed, as the union insists, to implementation, and that the Angelos plan would be run through the computers and presented to the full ownership.

Fehr said he would meet with his staff in New York today to weigh the owners’ request for a 45-day freeze on contract signings and a delay in the start of free-agent filing from Oct. 15 to Nov. 30. Management attorneys, in a letter to the union Thursday, also asked the players to waive the anti-collusion provisions of the current agreement during the proposed freeze.

While Fehr and McMorris were meeting in Denver, baseball’s antitrust exemption was under attack again, this time in Florida, where that state’s Supreme Court, in a 5-1 decision, ruled that the exemption applies only to the reserve system, not the overall business of the sport.

The ruling permits Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth to continue to investigate whether National League owners conspired in 1992 to keep the San Francisco Giants from moving to St. Petersburg.