STRIKE III : Tuesday Games Called Off as Impasse Reached; Next Move Up to Ueberroth?

NEW YORK —  With hours of contract talks going nowhere and a major league baseball players strike under way, there were reports here late Tuesday night that Commissioner Peter Ueberroth was poised to take action in an attempt to bring an early end to the walkout.

Ueberroth confined himself throughout the day to brief statements at the beginning of four separate negotiating sessions and to expressions of hope that the owner and player representatives would “hammer out a settlement.”

But with union leader Donald Fehr saying Tuesday night that he had concluded “there is no possibility” of reaching an early resolution of the salary arbitration and pension benefit issues that remain in dispute, and chief owners’ negotiator Lee MacPhail conceding that there had been “not a lot of progress” in eight hours of talks, it appeared that the regular negotiating process may have failed.

In short, without intervention by Ueberroth or someone else, a long strike may now be at hand. Since saying 10 days ago that he would not allow a strike, Ueberroth has been publicly putting his hopes on the professional negotiators--Fehr, MacPhail and their colleagues--to reach a settlement without a strike.

But now, sources said, he has resolved to act within a short time on his own to force a resolution. What they were uncertain of, however, was what he would--or could--do.

Some have speculated that one course of action he might adopt is to propose his own terms for ending the strike and give the parties 24 to 48 hours to accept. According to this scenario, Ueberroth would have to gain the OK of union leaders in advance of proposing his terms in order to be sure they would accept them.

Then, according to this line of thinking, he would attempt to use his powers as commissioner to act “in the best interests of baseball” to compel the owners to go along.

In the mid 1970s, a Federal Court in Illinois upheld broad powers for the baseball commissioner in the case of Finley vs. Kuhn, after Commissioner Bowie Kuhn used his “best interests” powers to invalidate Oakland A’s owner Charles Finley’s plan to sell Vida Blue, Rollie Fingers and Joe Rudi to other clubs.

Ueberroth has indicated in several interviews in recent months that he might take advantage of this decision to act.

Another possible line of action might be to call for binding arbitration of the main issues in dispute. Under this scenario, Ueberroth would suggest the name of a prestigious figure to decide the matters, somebody so well respected that it would be difficult for either side to turn the proposal down without losing face in the public’s eyes.

A third, probably less likely, course of action could be to seek a court injunction against the walkout. A Ueberroth spokesman has already denied that the commissioner would attempt this, and one Ueberroth friend said Tuesday night he thinks it would smack too much of union busting and earn the commissioner too many lasting enemies.

The prospect of quick action by Ueberroth grew Tuesday night after Fehr said he has concluded there is no prospect that the owners’ negotiating team will abandon its push for a cap on arbitration awards to prevent any player under arbitration from more than doubling his salary over the previous year.

Fehr said that the union simply would not agree to such a cap and he expressed fears of a long strike.

MacPhail, for his part, has reiterated several times in recent days that a minimum owner demand in the negotiations is some restraint on future player’s salary increases and has said that changes in the arbitration rules are the favored means. The owners are also asking for a rollback in player eligibility for arbitration from two years of service to three.

Perhaps significantly, Fehr seemed to welcome for the first time Tuesday night the possibility of intervention by Ueberroth.

“I haven’t heard from him,” the union leader said. “But I assume that if Peter wants to be helpful and thinks he can be helpful, that will manifest itself somehow . . . to the extent he helps push somebody along, that’s fine.”

Through much of Tuesday, hopes had been expressed in many baseball quarters that the fresh round of negotiations Ueberroth had requested Monday night might bear fruit in a settlement. There were even reports Tuesday afternoon that a settlement was imminent.

These gained credence when the union was reported to have withdrawn suggestions that the players return home and had told them instead to stay where they were.

The Dodgers were among the teams caught up in it.

At 4 p.m., about the same time Fehr was telling reporters here that he was advising players to stay away from the stadiums Tuesday night--in other words to strike--Mike Scioscia, Dodger player-representative, was saying he had been told by a union official that the Dodgers should return to Los Angeles from Atlanta.

Less than a hour later, however, Scioscia said that he had been told by union negotiator Mark Belanger that a new negotiating session was about to get under way and that the Dodgers should stay put because a settlement was possible. About the same time, Dodger owner Peter O’Malley was reported to have gotten a message to Scioscia that he thought it was 60-40 that a strike would be averted. But within hours, the relative optimism had been dissipated by Fehr’s statement here that no settlement was in prospect.

“I understand that there have been various rumors and press reports circulating that at some point today, we were close to a settlement,” Fehr said. “If that was true, they must have been negotiating with someone else. I never had that opinion.”

Fehr did say that he felt the differences over pension benefits had been narrowed, but he did not give any figures. Monday, it was reported that the union was asking $42 million in annual benefits, compared to the $25 million offered by the owners. The owners are paying $15.5 million now.

The owners were described as adamant on the salary cap issue. For instance John McMullen, the owner of the Houston Astros, said he would never give in on the matter. McMullen also suggested that if the strike lasts until Sept. 1, the fans should be polled to see whether they would like the major league season to be resumed with minor league players.

The strike called Tuesday is being referred to in most quarters as Baseball’s Strike III. It is, indeed, the third strike to hit major league baseball’s regular-season play.

In actuality, it is the fourth to hit organized baseball in the last 14 seasons. A strike cost 86 games in the first two weeks of the 1972 season. Then, there was a strike in the last week of the exhibition season in 1980, but that didn’t affect any regular-season games, since the players went back for the start of the season, contingent upon later action in negotiations. That later action never really took place to the satisfaction of the players’ side, and the dissatisfaction in the spring of 1980 finally manifested itself in the 50-day strike in 1981.