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Owners move toward middle

Union calls new revenue-sharing plan a step in the right direction, though not a 'substantial' one as owners say.

©Associated Press
August 22, 2002

NEW YORK -- Baseball owners presented a new revenue-sharing deal to the union to try to spark talks, calling the offer a significant step toward what players want.

The proposal, made Tuesday night and disclosed Wednesday, was much better received than management's luxury-tax plan last week, which was so far from what players would accept that they set an Aug. 30 strike date.

Revenue sharing among teams and a luxury tax on high payrolls to slow salary increases are the chief issues that could lead to baseball's ninth work stoppage since 1972.

Rob Manfred, management's top labor lawyer, said the revenue-sharing plan was a "substantial move toward the union both in structure and in transfer amount." He wouldn't disclose details and said the next move is up to players.

"I am frustrated a little bit," Manfred said. "I'd like to get a more active dialogue going on the tax and the revenue sharing, but it takes two parties to have a dialogue."

Union lawyers said the proposal was a move in the right direction, but they wouldn't agree the shift was "substantial."

"We will respond to their proposal on revenue sharing in the very near future, more likely than not (today)," Gene Orza, the union's No. 2 official, said after Wednesday's second bargaining session.

In memos to players and agents last weekend, union head Donald Fehr said players already had agreed to raise the amount of money to be transferred from high-revenue to low-revenue teams from $169-million to $235-million annually, using 2001 figures. Before Tuesday's offer, owners had proposed $282-million be transferred.

Meanwhile, a management lawyer sent a nine-page memo to team executives to prepare them for a strike. The memo to chief financial officers, general managers and assistant general managers urged them to make plans to cut expenses.

"All operations should be carefully reviewed with an eye toward reducing overhead costs during the strike," said the memo, written by Frank Coonelly, a lawyer in the labor relations department of the commissioner's office.

Coonelly's Aug. 19 memo details how teams should look to cut costs.

Each team, he wrote, should "examine all of its contractual obligations, including agreements with other unions, employment contracts. leases, etc., to determine what cost-saving measures may be taken during the strike."

Since the 1994-95 strike, which lasted 232 days and wiped out the World Series for the first time in 90 years, the commissioner's office instituted standard employee contracts for non-players such as managers, general managers, scouts and trainers.

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