Baseball Has Extra Day to Solve Its Problems. : Labor: President Clinton delays settlement deadline 22 hours. Management mulls a change of lawyers.

Baseball’s owners and players have spent six months in a futile attempt to narrow their labor differences, so it was probably not a surprise that special mediator William J. Usery asked President Clinton Monday for a 22-hour extension before delivering his own settlement recommendation.

Usery met with Clinton and Labor Secretary Robert Reich at the appointed deadline hour, 5 p.m. EST Monday, and received Clinton’s permission to wait until 3 p.m. today before submitting a recommendation to the White House for the owners and players.

There were no negotiations between the two sides again Monday, and Usery said: “I’m always optimistic. I refuse to be pessimistic, but it’s hard to believe there will be a voluntary settlement.”

Said Reich: “On the 100th anniversary of Babe Ruth’s birth, Babe would not be enormously optimistic that there will be a very quick settlement.”

Amid doubt that Clinton can force a settlement if the Usery recommendation is rejected--”we may not have the tools for that and have to hope the sides will continue talking,” said a senior White House official--Usery said he simply “ran out of time” preparing the recommendation while continuing to talk with the sides.

That they have no interest in talking to each other became clearer Monday when the union filed new charges with the National Labor Relations Board, basically accusing management of collusion in imposing a signing freeze.

It was also learned that a “considerable number” of clubs, according to an American League owner, have begun a “review of the record” during management’s long affiliation with the Washington-based law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, possibly jeopardizing Chuck O’Connor’s status as management’s general counsel.

According to the owner, the Chicago Tribune Co., which owns the Cubs, is pressing for removal of O’Connor in favor of one of its own representatives, Robert Ballow of King & Ballow in Nashville, Tenn. Ballow did not return calls Monday. A union lawyer, referring to Ballow’s union-busting reputation, said bringing him in “would be an act of nuclear war.”

A spokesperson for the owners denied a change is imminent, but the AL owner insisted that “a dozen or so” clubs are “dismayed by their legal advice” over several years.

“They spent the last 2 1/2 years alone setting up an impasse so that they could implement the salary cap, and a month later they have to backpedal and remove the cap because the NLRB was about to rule the impasse illegal,” a source close to the situation said. “There’s a lot of unhappiness (among the clubs).”

Union lawyer Lauren Rich said the owners’ signing freeze represented “their sixth attempt to institutionalize collusion” since 1985. They were fined $280 million for colluding in the signing of free agents in 1985, ’86 and ’87.

The freeze was announced by O’Connor on Sunday night after the union had lifted its own freeze. The union ban followed implementation of the salary cap on Dec. 22.

The union’s decision to lift its freeze came after management removed the salary cap Friday and replaced it with the terms and conditions of the old system to avoid NLRB sanctions for declaring an illegal impasse.

The union contends owners violated their agreement with the NLRB and terms of the old system by imposing a freeze that, according to O’Connor, is legal under labor law and makes the owners’ Player Relations Committee the single bargaining unit for the 28 clubs, taking away the clubs’ ability to bargain and sign players individually.

The freeze, union lawyer Eugene Orza said, “wipes out a hundred years of baseball history in which the clubs have bargained individually.”

Union leader Donald Fehr called it “provocative and serious stuff.”

“Is the PRC going to sign free agents and assign them to different clubs?” he asked facetiously. In its filing with the NLRB office in New York, the union asked for injunctive relief against the freeze, charged the owners with unfair labor practice in relation to the freeze. It asked the board to amend and reconsider the previous union charge that led to the threatened sanctions the owners avoided by withdrawing the cap.

In addition, a group of players attending the meeting here, including Tom Glavine, Dave Winfield, David Cone and Cecil Fielder, asked Usery to carry a letter to Clinton in which, Glavine said, they simply expressed their concern if the dispute continues and their hope he can help resolve it.

Before delivering his proposal to Clinton, Usery said he will try to spark some negotiations by offering parts of it to the two sides.

Clinton had no comment after the meeting with Usery on Monday. He earlier delivered a $1.6-trillion budget to Congress on Monday and said of the baseball dispute: “It’s just a few hundred folks trying to figure out how to divide nearly $2 billion. They ought to be able to figure that out.”

That bottom line simplicity ignores the complexity of the owners’ and players’ differences. Usery, 71, has been involved in the dispute since Oct. 14. He said he got only three hours sleep and was up at 4:30 Monday morning to work on the recommendation.

He has been conducting separate meetings with the sides--he met with them again Monday night--to probe their philosophy and parameters on nine issues: a payroll tax, arbitration, free agency, pension, revenue sharing, growth fund, length of a new contract, non-salary issues such as termination pay and strike settlement terms relating, in part, to restoration of pay and service time for players.

“He doesn’t want to get anyone’s nose out of joint,” Usery aide Dick Conn said. “He wants very much to be even handed.”

It is doubtful that a middle ground--even if Usery can find it in all of those issues--will satisfy either side.

If they reject the recommendation, the dispute rests with Clinton.

Whether he can get Republican support for special legislation that would either impose Usery’s recommendation as the settlement or force the sides to accept binding arbitration appears uncertain.