It's crunch time again. Negotiators for baseball owners and the striking Major League Baseball Players Association will resume collective bargaining today in Scottsdale, Ariz., with little more than a week to reach a settlement that would allow the 1995 season to begin with major-league players.
Boston Red Sox owner John Harrington, who heads the ownership bargaining committee, said Friday that the negotiations must bear fruit by March 5 to allow time for clubs to get unsigned players under contract and in shape for Opening Day. Nobody is setting any deadlines, but that leaves little time for the sides to jump-start negotiations that have been stalemated since midsummer.
Union leader Donald Fehr met last week with several owners during a two-day meeting in Milwaukee that acting commissioner Bud Selig described as "the most positive meeting I've ever seen between these parties," but Selig still wasn't ready to predict a breakthrough in the Phoenix suburb.
"It's hard to read," Selig said. "That's what I've told a lot of clubs. I just don't know. The discussions we had [in Milwaukee] were very rational, but it's hard to say. We have a long way to go."
The meeting in Milwaukee was intended to reduce tension between the bargaining teams, which have been grating on each other since the start of serious negotiations nearly eight months ago. But no substantive issues were discussed, so both sides essentially are at the same point they were when negotiations broke off at the White House two weeks ago.
The owners insist on a soft salary cap and are proceeding with plans to open the regular season with strikebreakers if they don't get it. The players union is ideologically opposed to any plan that would inhibit the earning potential or geographic mobility of free-agent players.
Nevertheless, several owners appear optimistic that this latest round of negotiations will end the most protracted and bitter labor dispute in the history of professional sports.
Orioles owner Peter Angelos predicted after the White House summit that the dispute would be over within a two-week period. That period has elapsed, but he couldn't have known it would take that long just to resume negotiations. If the Scottsdale meetings lead to a settlement, he still can say he called it right.
New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner expressed optimism over the weekend that a settlement is near.
"I've got a little more confidence than most people in what they're hopefully going to accomplish," Steinbrenner told the New York Daily News. "I have no way of knowing because I'm not part of that group. But I have discussions regularly with those people, and some of the things that I said should be done were done. Smaller groups, very small groups compared to what they've had. I don't know of anybody who could get anything settled with 50-60 people in one room.
"Bill Usery's back in the middle of it. He's a good mediator. . . . His background is union. But he is good at what he does. Get it out of Washington, get it out of New York. Get in there and settle down, whether it's Milwaukee or Scottsdale, I don't care. The only thing that concerns me is, do we have two sides who want to make a deal? There's no excuse for them not wanting to make a deal."
There are all sorts of signals that both sides are ready to get down to business. The management replacement scheme has created friction inside several organizations and has put Major League Baseball at odds with Congress, several state legislatures and the many localities that depend on revenue from baseball.
The players association is losing the battle for public opinion and also has been forced to fill some cracks in union solidarity.
The players still are standing firm in their opposition to a salary cap or heavy luxury tax, but there is no reason to crack in spring training. Major-leaguers don't start getting paid until two weeks after the regular season begins, so there will be no way to get an accurate reading on player unity until the final days of spring training.