Players May Send Mediator to Showers : Baseball: As Clinton goes to Congress, unhappy union considers asking Usery to withdraw.

WASHINGTON —  Among the artifacts in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, where representatives of the baseball owners and players failed to resolve their labor differences Tuesday night despite an expanded mediation team that included President Clinton and Vice President Gore, is the Nobel Peace Prize won by Theodore Roosevelt for helping resolve the 1904 Russo-Japanese War.

With Congress about to get Clinton’s request for special legislation that would require the owners and players to settle their dispute through binding arbitration, it seems clear that there will be no peace prizes for the special baseball mediator appointed by Clinton on Oct. 14.

The players union, so unhappy with the settlement proposal submitted by the acclaimed William J. Usery Tuesday and his inability to justify many of its key components, is considering asking Usery to withdraw today, according to union sources.

“It will be very difficult for us if Mr. Usery remains involved,” union leader Donald Fehr said after returning from the White House Tuesday night.

Fehr said he and others repeatedly asked Usery to explain the economic impact and other ramifications of his proposal when it was presented to the union Tuesday morning and he couldn’t do it.

“I asked him at one point within the nearest $100 million what economic effect his plan would have and he couldn’t tell us,” Fehr said.

At another point during that morning meeting, union lawyer Eugene Orza admitted, he responded to Usery’s inability to answer a question by saying, “What do you mean you can’t answer? Should I explain to the players that it was proposed by a senile old man? He didn’t answer.”

Orza said he would apologize for an intemperate remark, but he and others in the union were still dissatisfied with the proposal, which management was willing to accept but the union flatly rejected, primarily because of a high rate payroll tax they said was the same as a salary cap.

Usery offered his proposal in response to Clinton’s Monday deadline--extended to Tuesday--for a mediated recommendation if there was no settlement or progress in the talks.

If adopted, the proposal would enhance the players’ free agency regulations starting in 1996 but give the owners a major victory with total elimination of arbitration starting in 1997 and a phased-in payroll tax providing the cost-containment mechanism that has been management’s No. 1 objective.

“It was so off the wall,” one union lawyer said, “that it was as if Usery had never been in the room during the last three months.”

The highlights:

--Any team exceeding the payroll average of the 28 clubs would be taxed 50% on the amount it was over. If the Dodgers, for instance, were $10 million over the average, they would pay a $5-million tax, an obvious disincentive to spend. Based on management calculations, 15 teams exceeded the 1994 average of about $41 million.

The owners’ last proposal, made a week ago, called for a 75% tax on payrolls of more than $35 million and 100% on payrolls of more than $42 million. In December, the union proposed a two-tier tax of 25% and 10%, but the trigger points at which the tax would kick in were so high that few clubs would have been affected.

--Salary arbitration and free agency to remain as is in 1995.

--Arbitration only for three-year players in 1996 and eliminated entirely in 1997.

--Unrestricted free agency for any player with more than three years of major league service starting in 1996.

--Adoption in 1996 of the revenue-sharing plan approved by the owners in January of 1994, with 16 high-revenue teams sharing $58 million with 10 small-revenue teams.

Union and management have been sharing Usery’s $120,000-a-month salary, but whether the union can exert enough influence to remove a Presidential appointee is uncertain.

Management, of course, praised Usery and his proposal.

“The proposal is far from perfect . . . but the negotiating committee feels this compromise is a step in the right direction and a fair and reasonable solution to this dispute,” acting commissioner Bud Selig said, reading from a statement.

Selig also said that binding arbitration, suggested at the White House and agreeable to the union, “is not the solution . . . and we reject the idea. For one thing, Congress has made it clear it is not prepared to consider the necessary legislation. The clubs do not believe we should put the future of major league baseball and its 28 franchises at risk under such a procedure. We believe now, as we always have, that we should reach a negotiated settlement.”

Obviously, however, that is easier said than done. There were no negotiations here after Friday, and there are none scheduled. With spring training scheduled to begin in nine days, the negotiating teams were expected to scatter today as Clinton sends his legislation to Congress.

In a news conference at the White House, Usery, 71, said he has never seen such hostility or mistrust between management and labor and that the sides were so far apart that he knew his proposal would have difficulty getting joint approval. Binding arbitration, he said, might be the only real solution.

The hostility and mistrust is so deep that the owners rejected a union proposal at the White House that called for the players to return to work under the old economic system and play out the 1995 season while a fact-finding commission appointed by the President collects material that prove helpful to renewed collective bargaining when the season ended.

It is clear the owners want a new system in ’95 or will play it with replacement players. Both sides accused the other of failing to negotiate in good faith during a late-night news conference.

When will they appear on the same podium again? No one knows, but Usery might not be with them if the union has its way.

“His proposal was easily the most one sided I’ve ever seen or heard about,” Fehr said, possibly embellishing. “There was no realistic hope we would pay serious attention to it.”

* A REAL PICKLE: President Clinton will ask Congress to order binding arbitration to end the baseball strike. A1