ATLANTA -- Everyone is on board now. The Major League Baseball Players Association met with a large group of player agents yesterday to brief it on the current status of baseball's labor dispute.
Union director Donald Fehr explained the general terms of the counterproposal that will be presented to the owners when joint negotiations resume tomorrow in Rye Brook, N.Y. Union officials also talked strategy in the event that the proposal is rejected and the owners vote next week to implement their salary cap proposal.
There was no dissent. The agents came out of the 4 1/2 -hour meeting and voiced full support for the union position -- even if it means staging a contract boycott to protest ownership implementation.
"I think the players have seriously considered some of the things that the owners want addressed and addressed them," said agent Jim Bronner, who represents Orioles first baseman Rafael Palmeiro. "I hope they [the owners] come to the conclusion that this is the basis for further negotiations."
Union officials feel the same way, but there still is little reason to believe management will back away from next Thursday's impasse deadline. The new proposal calls for an upgraded tax on payrolls and a list of suggestions aimed at creating the long-term partnership that has been the stated goal of the management bargaining committee.
"There is not a lot of optimism that it is going to be accepted," said Tommy Tanzer, who represents former Oriole David Segui. "It seems that the wheel has been in spin for so long that it will be hard for the owners to change their position."
If that is the case, the agents will soon have to face the uncertain landscape of a new economic system. That also came up for discussion yesterday, and there was talk of a signing boycott, though Fehr said the union is not ready to make any recommendations.
"It was a general update on what has happened," Fehr said. "We talked about various contingencies. That subject was discussed, but nothing was resolved and nothing specifically was recommended."
The union is expected to present the new proposal to special mediator William J. Usery today and present it to the owners at noon tomorrow. If it is rejected quickly, there is little doubt about what will happen next.
"If that happens, certainly one could conclude that their intention all along was to ignore any reasonable proposal from the union," said Jeff Moorad, who represents Orioles outfielder Jeffrey Hammonds. "But I believe ownership will be forced to consider in a serious way elements of this proposal."
If not, the players will be forced to deal with a new system, at least until the union can put in motion the legal counterattack it is certain to mount in the wake of implementation.
"It's fair to say that to this point, the union has not made a clear policy determination on what will be done in the event there is a new system," Moorad said. "Certainly, a signing boycott is a possibility."
Still, the agents -- as a group -- were upbeat about the content of the new proposal and the position of the union at this late stage in a protracted labor dispute.
"I'm extremely encouraged about what I understand the plan to be," said agent Tony Attanasio, who represents departing Orioles second baseman Mark McLemore. "If they reject it out of hand as they did the other one, I would be surprised and disappointed."
Disappointed, maybe. Union officials don't figure to be surprised by anything that happens in the next 10 days. They have been preparing for the possibility of a declared impasse for months.
"From the meeting in L.A. [Sept. 27] on, they [the union] have called everything exactly, right up to this point," said West Coast agent Nick Lampros. "There has been nothing that has surprised these people."