Baseball Owners Affirm Plan for Lockout at Spring Training

ROSEMONT, Ill. —  Baseball owners today reiterated their plan for a spring training lockout but seemed to soften their hard-line stance.

“There is no change in our strategy,” Milwaukee owner Bud Selig said. “But there is going to be another meeting with the players on Monday, and this is going to be a day-by-day negotiation.”

Camps are scheduled to open Thursday. Clubs have been told by the owners not to start spring training unless an agreement is reached with players on a new contract.

Selig, chairman of the owners’ Player Relations Committee, tried to avoid the word “lockout.” When pressed, he said, “nothing has changed.”

Chuck O’Connor, management’s chief negotiator, said, “The clubs are not free to go to camp on Feb. 15.”

Commissioner Fay Vincent, who attended the two-hour meeting with owners, said he hoped something could be accomplished in next week’s bargaining sessions.

“I’m eager to find a resolution to this problem. I am trying, in a way I hope is relevant, to be useful,” Vincent said.

“I am convinced that the efforts will be very intensive to reach an agreement in the nearest possible time frame. Will that happen? I have no idea.”

Donald Fehr, executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Assn., was about to enter a meeting with players in Phoenix when owners announced their decision.

“It’s so unnecessary,” said Fehr, who met with 50 players in Los Angeles on Thursday night. “This is a lockout in an industry that just signed a billion-and-a-half dollar television contract. It’s going to be very difficult to generate any kind of sympathy.”

At issue is a demand by the owners to tie player salaries to the amount of money the teams make. Such an arrangement would in effect cap salaries.

In addition, the owners want to make performance on the playing field a determining factor in how much players are paid in their first six years in the major leagues.

Selig said the owners endorsed the strategy that the negotiating committee has adopted.

“Obviously if on Feb. 15 there is no agreement, the camps won’t be opened,” he said. “We’re going to take each day and each week as it comes and get this done.”

The players are seeking an increase in the minimum salary from $68,000 to $125,000 and oppose any proposals that would put a lid on how high salaries can rise.

Some star players have reached stratospheric salary levels, with several receiving contracts worth more than $3 million a year in recent months, led by Will Clark of the San Francisco Giants.

The decision to lock the spring training gates was the second such move by the owners since 1976 when a 22-day stoppage occurred. That was halted on orders from then-Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, and the regular season opened on schedule.