By imposing a salary cap, baseball's owners may be paving the way for legal battles with the players association and possible congressional intervention.
Talks between the players and owners broke down Thursday night, and the owners imposed the salary cap - leaving details for union head Donald Fehr to pick up at the front desk of his hotel.Barring an unforseen and unexpected settlement, baseball players will be seen over the next few month in courtrooms, not on sun-drenched fields. The camera crews that converge on Florida and Arizona each March likely will view replacement players along with any major leaguers who break ranks.
"This is a very frustrating and disappointing moment," said Boston Red Sox chief executive officer John Harrington, head of the owners' negotiating committee.
"This certainly is a sad day," Fehr said. "It's regrettable, but I am reasonably certain the owners will come to regret it - sooner than they think."
Colorado Rockies owner Jerry McMorris put up a brave front, saying that installing a salary cap "is just another step in what continues to be the collective bargaining process."
However, Fehr's plans are not for additional negotiations, but instead to file an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board. The move could come as early as today - the 19th anniversary of free agency - or perhaps Tuesday. The union will ask the NLRB to seek a preliminary injunction against the cap in federal court.
"If this is the road they want to take, if this is where they wanted to go, this is going to be an ugly situation," Detroit's Cecil Fielder said.
Fehr said owners notified the union of the exact terms being implemented by leaving an envelope for him at the hotel where the talks were being held. He got it following the closing news conferences.
"When I got to my room, the message light was on," he said early today. "They told me I had a package at the front desk."
Fehr called the imposition "preordained." Players struck Aug. 12 rather than accept a salary cap, wiping out the final 52 days and 669 games of the season. On Sept. 14, owners canceled the World Series for the first time since 1904.
The cap eliminates salary arbitration and immediately creates a new group of 63 restricted free agents, including Jack McDowell, Jim Abbott and Marquis Grissom. It also forces 21 teams to cut a total of $56.2 million from their 1994 payrolls, and rolls back many of the union's gains in collective bargaining during the past 23 years.
The next effort to restart the baseball talks could fall to former President Jimmy Carter, who expressed his willingness to get involved if needed. Fehr also raised the possibility of a long court fight, saying, "It may not even be halftime yet."
"They measure every proposal up against a salary cap and unless it measures as high as a salary cap, they don't want it," Fehr said.
The decision to impose the cap came after the owners rejected a new offer from the players that would have imposed a 25 percent payroll tax on teams that spent more than 160 percent of $60 million on salaries.
Dave Montgomery, the co-general partner of the Philadelphia Phillies, said that figure is $8 million more than any team paid in salaries in 1994 - meaning no teams would pay a tax in 1995. A separate, 10 percent tax would generate just $600,000, he said.
And while the owners face a certain legal battle from the players, they may also have trouble on Capitol Hill.
As the talks wound down to their contentious end, influential lawmakers said they're interested in considering whether to repeal the sport's antitrust exemption.
Utah Republican Orrin Hatch, who will chair the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he would be concerned if the owners "hide behind the antitrust exemption while imposing their own conditions on the players."
"I'd prefer not to have the Congress enter into it, but the antitrust exemption is an anomaly," Hatch said. "Some people think that if we just leave things alone, the owners will break the players union."
Incoming House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., told three players who live in his district that he was interested in reviewing the antitrust issue - even if a settlement was reached.
On Thursday, House Judiciary Committee aides told The Associated Press that their panel might also explore repealing the antitrust exemption - even though the panel's incoming chairman, Illinois Republican Henry Hyde, said in a report last month that Congress should not get involved in baseball's labor battle.
"I don't know if his position is as firm right now," a committee staffer, who asked not to be identified, said Thursday. "A lot has happened in the last few days."
"The longer this strike goes on, the more pressure builds. We're not going to ignore it."
Since a 1922 Supreme Court decision, baseball has been exempt from antitrust law. The high court affirmed the decision in 1953 and 1972, saying any change was up to Congress.
If Congress repeals the exemption, owners would have to prove that an imposed salary cap isn't an illegal restraint of trade.
"Not only is it not over," Fehr reflected, "it may not even be halftime yet."