ATLANTA -- It is both a briefing and a brainstorming session, but the three-day executive board meeting convened by the Major League Baseball Players Association yesterday is not likely to change the chemistry of baseball's long-running labor dispute.
The players union is expected to come away with a counterproposal to the taxation plan that management put on the bargaining table Nov. 17, but even that is not a certainty. It will be up to the 75 players in attendance to decide whether one last attempt at compromise is worth the effort.
The owners are waiting impatiently for an answer, which probably will come when joint negotiations resume Friday or Saturday in Rye Brook, N.Y. By then, there will be just days left before management's new deadline for imposing a salary cap . . . just days before baseball enters a frightening new phase in what has become a collective bargaining nightmare.
"I hope it's not inevitable," said union director Donald Fehr. "If the owners have already decided that this is going into spring, then it doesn't matter what we do. We're going on the assumption that isn't the case, and we're going to try to put something together that will advance this process."
While the players began plotting strategy, the author of baseball's doomsday book quietly began cleaning out his office in New York. Richard Ravitch, who was the president of baseball's Player Relations Committee and the ownership bargaining chief until he was replaced last month, announced his resignation -- three weeks before his contract is to expire.
"I leave with the confidence I haven't left owners in a lurch," said Ravitch, who was replaced as the owners' labor spokesman on Nov. 10 by Boston Red Sox chief executive officer John Harrington.
"I understand how critical it is for baseball to achieve its collective bargaining objectives, and I don't want to impair that effort in any way."
Ravitch had been moved aside at the request of special mediator William J. Usery, but the hard-line bargaining strategy that he formulated still is in effect. The only thing standing in the way of implementation of the salary cap is the unlikely prospect of a dramatic concession on the part of the union.
Fehr did not even hint at that, but he did say that the players would spend time working on more creative alternatives to the owners' taxation proposal.
"I don't know if creative is the right word," he said, "but we did indicate to the owners that since we didn't get anywhere with the old system and aren't getting anywhere with the direction we have been going, maybe we ought to look for a third direction."
The ownership proposal calls for severe penalties on clubs that exceed a target payroll ceiling. The taxation plan proposed earlier by the union called for a small tax (1.6 percent) on the top 16 payrolls and a similar levy on the revenues of the top 16 income-producing teams. Though both plans include the taxation concept, the players and owners remain worlds apart when it comes to the actual dollars involved.
Sources indicated last night that the union leadership may go to Rye Brook with a list of taxation alternatives -- rather than one proposal -- and put the owners in the uncomfortable position of rejecting all of them before declaring an impasse the next week.
The players have not formally responded to the owners' taxation plan, but Fehr made it clear yesterday that the union considers it another step in the wrong direction.
"It is no surprise that it is our feeling that their proposal is unlikely to form the framework for an agreement," he said.
Sound familiar? The owners haven't changed their tune, either, except to turn up the volume on their threat to use strikebreakers if the players do not report for the 1995 season.
Usery had done a good job of quieting the angry rhetoric up to that point, but he has failed to get either side to make a significant move. He is expected to arrive in Atlanta today to encourage the players to make a workable counterproposal, but could be running out of reasons to remain involved in the dispute.
For all of the polite negotiating sessions and shuttle diplomacy, the union news conference yesterday looked and sounded exactly like the ones that took place in New York during the days leading up to the Aug. 12 strike deadline.
The players still are professing their undying loyalty to the union and saying that unity appears to have been galvanized by the threat of replacement players.
"If they open camps with replacement players, I'm not going to be there," said Boston Red Sox pitcher Roger Clemens, "and there are a lot of other players who feel the same way."
If it comes to that, there will be tremendous peer pressure to carry the strike well into the '95 season.
Kansas City Royals pitcher David Cone shied away from threats of retribution against players who cross the picket line, but said that the consequences might not be worth the paycheck.
"I don't think this is the place to talk about violence," Cone said. "I would just tell them that there will be consequences down the line. Not necessarily violent, but the stigma of knowing that you ,, crossed. That is something you'd have with you the rest of your life."