Negotiations Resume With No Progress

Major league baseball owners on Wednesday offered to restore service time lost because of the strike to all players except the 20 who would become free agents at the end of this year if the time were restored.

The union is certain to reject the offer today.

Owners had insisted that their reluctance to credit players with service time for the 75 regular-season days they were on strike was based on principal. But as labor negotiations resumed after about a 10-day break to allow acting Commissioner Bud Selig to negotiate with fellow owners by phone, principal seemed to give way to basic economics and a degree of self-interest by clubs that could lose free agents if service time is restored.

Management negotiator Randy Levine and union leader Donald Fehr met for about 90 minutes in New York. Levine made two proposals seemingly designed to placate hard-line owners who oppose the granting of service time and inclusion of a second tax-free year at the end of the proposed agreement. It doesn’t appear Levine’s efforts will succeed.

“First of all, the clubs have known for a long time our position on service time and that there will be no deal without it,” Fehr said. “[The restoration of service time] is what you do if you want to make peace.

“Secondly, all the concessions and trade-offs that have been made have been made against the background of service time being part of the deal.

“Thirdly, we’re not going to leave 20 players high and dry. The other players wouldn’t permit that.”

A deal breaker? Sources close to the talks seemed to view it as some management gamesmanship to see if the union could be moved off service time.

The prediction when talks resumed was that it would take five to seven more days to produce a settlement, assuming progress.

How the second tax-free year factors in isn’t clear, except that owners would probably trade full service time if the players accepted either of the options offered Wednesday.

An agreement had already been reached to give the union an option on a tax-free year in 2001 (2000 is also tax-free) in trade for the union reducing its share of the divisional playoff receipts from 80% to 60%.

On Wednesday, the owners offered a different plan.

Said Selig: “I don’t want to comment on specifics. The important thing is that they’re back at the table where they need to be and where they need to stay.”