Ravitch Won’t Seek Extension : Baseball: Contract ends Dec. 31 for author of salary-cap proposal who has been replaced as owners’ chief negotiator.

Richard Ravitch, who was recently replaced as chief labor negotiator for the major league baseball owners but whose salary-cap proposal they may soon implement, said Monday he will not seek an extension when his contract expires Dec. 31.

Ravitch was hired at $750,000 a year in November 1991 to help develop a new economic system. He said it was never his intention to stay in baseball beyond the life of the contract, and that he had no anger or bitterness over what has seemed to be a diminishing role in recent months.

“My only emotion is one of sadness in that we have been unable to reach a collective bargaining agreement that would insure the future viability of baseball,” he said. “I thought we could do it in two years. I never dreamed it would take three or four, but the owners have the situation well in hand and that’s the way it should be.

“At this point only the owners can make the decision as to what is acceptable and what is not. Hopefully, the next round of talks will produce an agreement. If not, we’re headed for a long siege of suits and countersuits, and my presence isn’t required in court. I don’t feel I’m leaving the owners in the lurch.”

The owners are in a holding pattern, waiting for resumption of bargaining talks in Rye Brook, N.Y., on Friday, a last-gasp attempt to reach a negotiated settlement before they meet in Chicago on Dec. 15 to declare an impasse and unilaterally implement the salary-cap proposal. That move will prompt the players’ union to seek injunctive relief through the National Labor Relations Board.

The owners bowed to pressure from special mediator William J. Usery last week and agreed to postpone that meeting for 10 days to give the union a chance to meet with constituents in Atlanta this week and formulate a counterproposal to the payroll tax plan submitted by the owners on Nov. 17.

Seventy-eight striking players vowed Monday not to give in to owners--even if it means sitting out next season and possibly not playing again.

In the largest meeting of major leaguers since the strike began Aug. 12, players opened a three-day session by reiterating their solidarity.

“We will never back down,” Texas pitcher Kevin Brown said.

Said Milwaukee pitcher Bob Scanlan, “There’s a good chance at this point that we’re not going to be playing baseball in 1995. I have to make decisions based on this assumption.”

Atlanta pitcher Tom Glavine admitted a few major leaguers may play as strike breakers if the owners try to start the 1995 season with replacement players, although Kansas City pitcher David Cone didn’t seem to believe too many would.

“Certainly the stigma that you’re going to carry that for the rest of your career, maybe the rest of your life, is enough,” Cone said.

Donald Fehr, the union leader, had little reaction to Ravitch’s decision, other than to say that the negotiations “have been driven by the desire of the owners and not their negotiator.” Fehr had once referred to Ravitch as a “hatchet man” for the owners and was consistently critical of him in public and private comments.

However, sources said his relationship with Ravitch improved as their contact began to diminish in September, when owner Jerry McMorris of the Colorado Rockies and Chief Executive Officer John Harrington of the Boston Red Sox initiated direct communication with the union on the approval of acting commissioner Bud Selig.

Harrington recently replaced Ravitch as lead negotiator in a move urged by Usery, sources said, to create a more conciliatory and moderate atmosphere--”the old good-cop, bad-cop routine,” a management official said.

Ravitch, 61, said he encouraged that change because it made “common sense to have an owner at the head of the owners’ negotiating committee at a time when it’s the owners who will have to decide what’s agreeable to them and what’s not. If Don or anyone else puts a hard-line spin on it, that’s ridiculous. I welcomed the change.”

Ravitch also said he has never responded to Fehr’s criticisms and wouldn’t now.

“I have always said that baseball needs a strong union,” Ravitch said. “My disagreement with Don is that he has never acknowledged the meritorious argument that baseball needs a new system to survive, and he has operated on the assumption the owners would eventually cave in. It’s been bizarre because of that. I mean, there has never really been any negotiation, but I feel good about the way I’ve articulated the economic problems to the public and to the owners.”

It took Ravitch more than a year to get the often self-centered owners to aid their less fortunate with a new revenue-sharing formula linked to the cap, but they have displayed unprecedented unanimity in pursuit of the new system.

“Dick Ravitch was instrumental in helping the clubs recognize the seriousness of the economic problems of the industry and then create a solution to resolve those problems,” Selig said. “He ran interference for it. He deserves an awful lot of credit for it. We are grateful for his efforts and wish him well in future pursuits.”

Selig denied reports that his own relationship with Ravitch--a candidate for New York City mayor in 1989 and former New York Transit Authority chairman--had deteriorated, but he refused to say if Ravitch would have been offered an extension.

The owners--never sure of their own commitment and with no control over intervening commissioners--have experienced a frequent turnover in labor leaders over the last 20 years. The next commissioner, under terms of a restructuring that has been approved by the owners, will have full control over labor matters, which is ironic because Ravitch, Selig and others led the push that forced Fay Vincent out of office in September 1992 when he refused to yield any of his labor authority after intervening to end the 1991 lockout.

A new commissioner will not be hired until a new labor agreement is reached.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.