ANALYSIS : Baseball Owners Trying to Sell Plan to Union Finding No Reason to Buy

A lockout of spring training camps by baseball’s owners is designed to force the Major League Players Assn. to accept their revenue-sharing plan, but it figures to be the owners who will capitulate in this collective bargaining impasse.

The first step in that capitulation could come during their meeting in Chicago today, with the owners possibly extending their Feb. 15 deadline for a revenue-sharing agreement and the closing of camps to late February or early March.

Or, more likely, they could maintain the Feb. 15 deadline, leaving it to Commissioner Fay Vincent to intercede eventually, ordering the camps to be opened. Vincent, who met with management and union representatives Wednesday night, has said that it is not his style to issue an order amid a negotiating process, but he would not rule it out.

The bottom line is that the owners--unable to convince the players or public that they face financial jeopardy now or in the future--eventually will have to accept the status quo for another three or four years, giving a joint committee that was formed during the negotiations Monday a chance to take a hard look at revenue sharing and come up with an acceptable format.

There is nothing in the current package acceptable to a union conditioned to ultimatums, and it is unlikely that a prolonged lockout would change that--or starve the players, who have pooled their licensing money as a hedge against a stoppage.

Here is a review of the elements that mitigate against an owner victory:

--The current proposal would force the union to yield rights already won in collective bargaining. It would eliminate arbitration for players with six or fewer years of major league service, besides eliminating guaranteed and multiyear contracts for players in that category. It would also modify free agency by imposing a salary cap.

--The statistical scale by which the salaries of players in the zero to six-year category would be determined fails to consider defense, character and a wide variety of intangible contributions.

--By setting aside 48% of their gate and TV-radio income for salaries, the owners have offered only 39% of their total income and would have to go to 62% of the gate and TV-radio income to match what players in the NBA get through revenue sharing.

In addition to those substantial hurdles in the proposal, the general atmosphere weighs against the owners, and much of that is their own fault.

They talk about the need for a radical change in the compensation system, but they send salaries skyrocketing, paying so much money up front that, to an extent, they have defeated themselves by removing the players’ financial risk in event of a lockout.

They talk about the damaging revenue disparity between teams in the big and small markets, but they can’t define the disparity’s depth. In addition, there has been no evidence that big-market teams such as the Dodgers, Angels, New York’s Yankees and Mets and Chicago’s White Sox and Cubs will dominate the pennant races. And, in fact, teams in the small markets remain among the most financially active, as illustrated by the Kansas City Royals’ signing of free agents Mark Davis and Storm Davis; the Seattle Mariners signing of free agent Pete O’Brien, and the Minnesota Twins re-signing of Kent Hrbek for $14 million over five years.

They talk about financial peril, yet the industry has never been more popular or prosperous.

The major leagues set an attendance record for the fifth consecutive year in 1989, drawing more than 55 million. Industry revenue in 1988, the last full accounting, was more than $1.1 billion. Continued growth is assured through new TV contracts, increased licensing, the response to competitive parity, new stadiums in Toronto, Chicago and Baltimore and increased ticket prices.

It is now expected that all major league teams--buoyed by the new TV contracts--will be grossing a minimum of $40 million a year.

The reality of revenue sharing is that the owners are trying to sell a familiar story, hoping the players will help create a system that will protect the owners from their own greed and ego.

As usual, it won’t work. The union will simply not approve a proposal that would lower salaries and eliminate the market.

The owners must know it. And they must know that a prolonged lockout would produce a further disrupting legal challenge by the union. The evidence points to capitulation. The question is when?

The owners, in that regard, will try to do a better job of saving face than they have done saving on salaries.