Going Through a Nasty Phase

As it was transpiring, amid the dueling conference calls, as Rob Manfred and Don Fehr were firing salvos at each other and listeners wondered if either of the negotiators had ever been in the same room, let alone across the same table from each other, the temptation was to shout, “Stop it children, go stand in the corner.”

I mean, talk all you want about regressive proposals, as management lawyer Manfred did in ripping union leader Fehr’s proposals on revenue sharing and payroll tax Saturday, how about regressive behavior? How about talking to each other behind closed doors instead of talking about each other to reporters?

Incredible.

Six days before the union’s strike date, with the ghosts of eight previous work stoppages to keep them company (well, there have only been eight previous bargaining negotiations), Manfred and Fehr proved that the industry has learned little about keeping its business private.

Instead, it was all about image and public relations Saturday, about who said what when, and while it may only have been posturing and not a fatal bump in the path of a settlement before Friday (after all, the sides are expected to be back negotiating today), it shredded the last measure of civility from talks that had been conducted amid a comparatively improved atmosphere, and it left conference call operators working overtime.

First, there was Manfred conducting his daily briefing with reporters across the nation, saying the union’s tax and revenue sharing proposals represented “raw regressive bargaining” and that he couldn’t have been more disappointed or shocked.

Then there was Fehr conducting a conference call in response, saying the union proposals were clearly not regressive, that he was mystified as to how Manfred could be shocked and that if he had problems with the proposals he should have discussed it across the table rather than going to the media in another of his series of attempts to influence the public and convince people (and the courts, perhaps, if the owners ultimately try to unilaterally implement new work rules) that they have been negotiating in good faith.

If that should have been the end of it, guess again.

Manfred couldn’t resist having the commissioner’s PR staff notify reporters that he would have another conference call to respond to Fehr.

This time, as reporters ran out of paper and the batteries in their tape recorders died, Manfred said that part of what the union was proposing was “intellectually incomprehensible,” that Fehr’s knowledge of what has been said at the table was limited because he has frequently been absent while conducting his “summer tour” of all 30 teams and that he was “getting a little tired of Don telling everyone what I should and should not have known” about what had or had not been said during negotiations.

Think about it. Some three hours after beginning his first conference call, Manfred ended his second, but not before he was asked if the process hadn’t been hurt by Saturday’s public debate.

His response was not without some final shots.

“I don’t think the union proposals helped us, I don’t think Don angrily walking away and taking a 10-day hiatus [without making a tax and revenue sharing proposal] helped us, and, in all honesty, I don’t think these conference calls helped us,” Manfred acknowledged.

So, what does it all mean? Where does it all stand?

Well, it’s still all about money.

It’s still all about the union’s desire to limit the financial damage to the high-revenue teams that drive the salary market.

It’s still all about the owners’ desire to gain a measure of control over salary growth through a payroll tax while significantly increasing revenue sharing to improve the competitive chances of the low-revenue teams.

The fact that Manfred said he would prepare a response to the union’s proposal, even though he didn’t know how to respond to a proposal that went backward, and that they probably will meet again today would indicate that the process will continue and there is still a shot at settlement before Friday’s walkout.

Fehr and Manfred are familiar with the verbal slings and arrows.

The larger question is, can they close what now seems to be a suddenly larger gap on revenue sharing and a still sizable gap on the payroll tax, not to forget steroid testing and the worldwide draft among other significant issues?

At the heart of Saturday’s blowup seemed to be the fact that the union’s proposal called for its revenue sharing numbers to be phased in, the full transfer in the fourth year.

Manfred said he hadn’t known about any phase-in until Saturday and that, because of the phase-in, the amount of revenue transferred to the low-revenue clubs in the first two years of the union plan was only minimally more than what was being transferred in the expired agreement.

Fehr countered that Manfred has known of the phase-in since mid-summer of 2001 and that the phase-in is necessary to give the high-revenue clubs time to adjust their operation.

“With due respect, Mr. Fehr hasn’t ever run a club, so I’m not sure how he would make that judgment,” Manfred said. “He should stop worrying about my clients.”

He also said that his “absolute nightmare scenario” was better than what the union proposed Saturday, but enough of the rhetoric.

This wasn’t Fehr playing the piano for reporters in the lobby of the Arrowwood Resort in Rye, N.Y., while he waited for an owners’ proposal during a futile negotiating session in 1994, but it definitely was one of the more exasperating, colorful and potentially combustible days in baseball’s long, exasperating and combustible labor history.

How it affects the next five days remains to be seen.

Maybe the kids will come out of the corner and remember what’s at stake.