BASEBALL LABOR TALKS : Extension Only Result of Emotional Meeting

RYE BROOK, N.Y. — The final hours of the attempt to reach a negotiated settlement in baseball’s four-month-old bargaining dispute turned out to be long and contentious ones Monday night.

In what a management official said was an often venomous meeting here that ended at 1:15 Tuesday morning, the owners ultimately gave the players union an extension until mid-morning to accept or reject their Sunday night tax proposal that the union continued to characterize as a salary cap.

There was no indication, however, that the owners would extend their implementation deadline. They still are scheduled to meet in Chicago on Thursday to declare a bargaining impasse and unilaterally impose the salary cap proposal made on June 14.

The union has yet to officially reject the latest management proposal, but a union lawyer compared it to a Rube Goldberg contraption and said it contains the same spending deterrents that the owners’ high-rate tax plan of Nov. 17 did and the same deterrents as the salary cap proposal the owners have kept on the table while juggling the tax plans.

“I wouldn’t read anything into the fact that we’re going late tonight,” Dodger pitcher Orel Hershiser said. “If the mediator wants to have a meeting and the owners are willing, we’ll be there, but we’re still talking about issues that have been there since June.”

Talking, Hershiser added, without really bargaining.

“We’re still trying to get to the heart of the issue,” Kansas City Royal pitcher David Cone said. “We’re trying to say to the owners, ‘Let’s cut through all the technicalities and side issues so that we can get to your best offer.’ We’re trying to say, ‘What’s the one primary reason you want to implement?’ and maybe we can find a compromise.”

It seemed to be a little late in the procedure for all of that, and only the tenacious effort of special mediator William J. Usery to keep the sides at the table and the owners out of Chicago probably prevented the talks from dissolving during Monday’s emotional pre-dinner phase. It was then, one union official said, that the players “railed against the owners phony deadlines” and virtually pleaded with them not to wipe out 25 years of negotiations by implementing their “regressive salary cap proposal.”

“At least no one got hurt in there,” Atlanta Brave pitcher Tom Glavine said of the intense atmosphere as the sides broke for dinner.

Said union leader Donald Fehr at the end of the long night: “There was a lot of discussion. I’m not sure it went anywhere.”

His associate counsel, Eugene Orza, said that after crunching numbers overnight and throughout the day that their initial impression of the owners latest proposal as another cap in disguise hadn’t changed. He also said it was fundamentally different from the players’ plan in the context of where the money comes from and where it goes. The owners’ plan would virtually match the players’ flat payroll tax of 5%, but a secondary rate escalates rapidly after payrolls pass a $34.8 million threshold.

“We’re trying to get the compensation level down to 50% of revenue, but this isn’t a cap,” Colorado Rockies’ owner Jerry McMorris said. “When you hit a cap you’re done. That doesn’t happen with this plan. It will put a 25% to 35% less drag on salaries than our previous proposal.”

Perhaps, but the certainty that these talks will not go beyond today seemed to be 100%.