With baseball’s owners planning to return to...

With baseball’s owners planning to return to court if there is no labor agreement by the end of the month, negotiators failed to resolve long standing differences during talks in New York.

Sources said management’s lead negotiator, Randy Levine, would brief the owners’ executive council in Milwaukee today and possibly seek official approval to pursue lifting of the court-mandated injunction that ended the players strike in March of 1994 by reinstating the expired work rules.

Negotiators will meet again Friday, with management planning to make a final proposal next week, according to the sources. If there is no progress, owners would then ask federal district judge Sonia Sotomayor to lift the injunction, giving owners the opportunity to declare an impasse and implement their own work rules.

“Any attempt to shut off negotiations can’t make things better,” Donald Fehr, executive director of the players union, said. “If they choose to go back to court and publicly re-air our disputes, I have a hard time believing that’s positive.”

Union sources have said they would respond to a lifting of the injunction by recommending a players strike during the October playoffs or next spring.

However, in the aftermath of the 232-day strike of 1994-95, the union may have problems getting a majority of players to support another stoppage.