Players and Owners Look to Hard Bargaining

NEW YORK —  Representatives of owners and players held another fruitless bargaining session Friday in an attempt to avert a baseball strike, and the head of the players’ union said he hopes the two sides would get into “substantive negotiations” next week.

“We began to show today our opinion in respect to the 1984 data they (the owners) provided,” said Don Fehr, acting executive director and general counsel of the Major League Baseball Players Assn.

Those figures, based on information supplied by 24 of the 26 major league teams--all except the Houston Astros and Minnesota Twins--showed an operating loss of $36.5 million last year.

Fehr was asked if he believed the figures.

“No,” he replied.

Lee MacPhail, president of the Player Relations Committee and spokesman for the owners, said that Friday’s 1 1/2-hour meeting, the 28th since November in an effort to come up with a new Basic Agreement, was “the first at which we really discussed financial figures.”

Although MacPhail said there are “no silver linings,” he also said the two sides have “agreed to meet pretty much on a day-by-day basis” beginning Monday.

MacPhail said the major issues continue to “depend on the financial condition of baseball.” He described the major differences as “the payroll plan, or something to insure that there will be some change in the escalation of players’ salaries, and the (owners’) contribution to the (players’) pension plan.” The matter of when to count deferred salary as expenses also is a stumbling block.

Fehr said he told the Player Relations Committee that the players’ association hoped to have the reports from its accountants by July 15 and possibly by the end of next week. The association’s executive board is scheduled to meet July 15, the day before the All-Star game, to set a date for a strike.

Fehr said the players’ accountants eliminated what he called “non-cash expenses” from the owners’ figures and came up with numbers of their own showing that “the ostensible $36.5-million loss became a positive figure of $9 million to $10 million.”