Frustrated Owners Try a New Team : Baseball: Talks in trouble as Selig leaves and McMorris ready to turn things over to hard-liner Reinsdorf.

Baseball’s labor talks teetered so close to collapse Thursday that Colorado Rocky owner Jerry McMorris, his normal optimism turning to anger and frustration, suggested he and other moderates withdraw from management’s negotiating team and turn it over to the hawks, principally Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf.

That possibility could still become reality if McMorris, ordered to stay as the leader of a reshaped negotiating team by acting Commissioner Bud Selig, doesn’t get instant answers from the players’ union when the fragile bargaining resumes this morning.

“As far as I’m concerned, progress has to start very quickly tomorrow,” McMorris said. “The union has to finally identify its position (on the key economic issues).”

Three days of optimism seemed to disintegrate late Wednesday night when McMorris, accompanied by attorney Rob Manfred, failed to get a clear picture of where the union stands on a luxury tax and the other core issues in a two-on-two meeting with union lawyers Lauren Rich and Michael Weiner.

Selig, who had joined the negotiating process for the first time, said the inability to get answers during that meeting “epitomized the frustration levels in this dispute” and he was taking two steps.

“I’m going home (to Milwaukee) tonight because I’m tired for the moment of going nowhere (in the negotiations). I’m also asking Jerry McMorris to make one more try at finding a common ground,” Selig said. “I had a hard time, but he has agreed to do that.”

In addition to McMorris, management’s new team, also devoid of the previous lead negotiator, Boston Red Sox Chief Executive Officer John Harrington, is composed of Milwaukee Brewer general counsel Wendy Selig-Prieb, Chicago Cub President Andy MacPhail, Philadelphia Phillie Executive Vice President David Montgomery and lawyers Manfred and Chuck O’Connor.

In the background, however, is the militant Reinsdorf and an aggressive attorney with a union-busting reputation, Robert Ballow. Management sources said Ballow, who counsels the Chicago Tribune Co., owner of the Cubs, on labor relations, has already been counseling the owners in general during this dispute but could move into a more visible and prominent role if Reinsdorf takes over.

“John (Harrington) and I have been involved since August and haven’t accomplished anything more than Dick Ravitch did,” McMorris said at the height of his midday frustration over the Wednesday night meeting. “We’re right back at the bottom of the barrel. I have other things in life. I don’t have the time to waste on this. The moderates’ system and style isn’t working, and we’re probably at a point where the baton should pass to different owners and different attorneys. We’ve got some hard-line guys. Maybe it’s their turn. I’d recommend Jerry Reinsdorf.”

Selig refused to discuss the possible ascension of Reinsdorf after talking McMorris, who said he felt “used” by the union, into another try. The union considers Reinsdorf the owners’ leading hawk and believes he has been orchestrating much of their strategy from behind the scenes, but union head Donald Fehr said: “They’re entitled to employ who they wish. I won’t engage in that debate.”

The union, of course, also took a different view of the Wednesday night meeting, believing McMorris and the owners overreacted. Fehr said Rich and Weiner came away with clarifications on several aspects of the clubs’ tax approach and revenue sharing plan and “we’re attempting to integrate what we learned last night into an approach that will hopefully have some new elements in it.”

Fehr said he would be ready to discuss that approach with McMorris--”I think he was probably a little tired and burnt out and will be back to his old self”--today.

There were no negotiations Thursday. Fehr met with Selig and said he tried to convince the acting commissioner that frustration is normal in a long and complex negotiation. Selig and the entire management team, including Reinsdorf, who has a home in the area, later went to the players’ hotel for a meeting in which Selig announced to the players--of which there are about 25 here--that he was leaving, that the owners couldn’t and wouldn’t turn their backs on the industry’s economic problems and that at some point they had to address those problems, as every other sport has.

There were no tears as Selig left.

“He hasn’t been part of the negotiations for four months,” Kansas City Royal pitcher David Cone said. “We can make a deal with or without him.”

Added Fehr, of a day in which the negotiations seemed totally doomed again and now hang by a thread: “I’d characterize it as a blip. If it turns out to be bigger than that it will be too bad.”

Notes

Baseball’s expansion committee will ask owners next week to vote on which two cities to add in 1998 and what to charge for the franchises. Expansion committee chairman John Harrington of the Boston Red Sox said he isn’t sure whether owners will take a final vote when they gather at Palm Beach, Fla. Phoenix and St. Petersburg, Fla., are considered the overwhelming favorites to get the franchises, which are expected to cost from $125 million to $150 million. Two groups from northern Virginia and one from Orlando, Fla., also have applied.