Players and owners traded new proposals Saturday but the plans angered both sides, leaving them just as far apart in their efforts to settle the 61/2-month baseball strike.
"Obviously at the rate we're moving this, we could all well be here until Labor Day, and some of us could well have Arizona residence by that point," said Colorado Rockies chairman Jerry McMorris, who has headed his side at the bargaining table since acting commissioner Bud Selig left Thursday.The union's offer was for a 25 percent tax on the portion of payrolls above 133 percent of the average, a figure that in 1994 would have been $54.1 million. That would have affected just one team, the Detroit Tigers, who would have paid a tax of $663,633.
Management's proposal, essentially formalizing some of the suggestions made last month by mediator W.J. Usery, was for a 50 percent tax on the portions of payrolls above the average, which was $40,695,856 last year. That would have affected 15 teams, with Detroit paying the most at $8,042,082.
"The basic reaction all of us on the players' side have is one of profound sadness," union head Donald Fehr said. "We repeatedly take steps in their direction and they repeatedly back away. If they truly want an agreement, then they have to make forward steps, not backward steps."
Both sides said this weekend was critical if they intended to reach an agreement that would get major leaguers back on the field by opening day, scheduled for April 2.
However far apart, the sides in their public numbers at least were ever-so-slowly approaching a midpoint on the tax. A person with knowledge of the negotiations, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said management's last unofficial proposal was for a 40 percent tax on the portions of payrolls above 115 percent, or about $47 million in 1994.
"We were disappointed," McMorris said. "I wish that it would have been more but it isn't. But at least we have a number out there and that's something."
While owners were discouraged, players were livid.
"We've reached a point where I think players are very seriously considering, `Enough is enough,' " Atlanta pitcher Tom Glavine said. "It's hard to tell whether there's anything worth talking about right now."