Donald Fehr, executive director and general counsel of the Major League players' union is interviewed by the Cincinnati Enquirer after meeting with New York Mets players Friday. (AP photo/Osamu Honda) | ZOOM |

        NEW YORK — Donald Fehr, head of the Major League Baseball Players Association, rolls his eyes and laughs at the suggestion that he's the most powerful labor leader in America.

        “The notion that you can compare us to an airline union or the Teamsters or anything else like that, with vastly more employees in critical industries, is to my mind a little silly,” he said, sitting in a Shea Stadium dugout. “And you don't see a hell of a lot of business or labor writers saying that. You mostly see sports reporters quoting owners.”

        Yet the players' union could be headed for baseball's ninth work stoppage in the last three decades carrying an 8-0 record against the owners.

        In an interview Friday with the Enquirer, following his meetings with Reds and New York Mets players, Mr. Fehr said he remains confident an agreement can be reached without a strike.

        Excerpts of that interview:

        QUESTION: It might be 10 more days before you'll finish meeting with players on all 30 teams to discuss issues and get their approval to set a strike date. Is there enough time to set an August strike date?

        Mr. Fehr: There is enough time to reach an agreement. Of all the things that would keep us from reaching an agreement, it seems to me that running out of time is the least likely.

ISSUES

Issues between players and owners:     Revenue sharing: Under the current plan, teams shares about 20 percent of local revenue. The owners want to raise that to 50 percent, while the players propose a smaller increase, to 22.5 percent or 25 percent.     Luxury tax: To keep some owners from spending big sums on players, the owners propose a 50 percent tax on payroll exceeding $98 million annually. The players oppose it, saying they're concerned that any penalty on payroll becomes a salary cap.     Contraction: The owners want to shut down two teams. The players say that's negotiable. The issue is in arbitration, and a decision could come as soon as next week.     Drug testing: The owners want players tested for steroids. The players consider this an invasion of privacy, but appear willing to compromise.     Salary arbitration: The owners want to tweak it, allowing players to be cut if they don't accept an offer. The players oppose changes to arbitration.     A competitive-balance draft: Both sides appear willing to arrive at a plan allowing weak teams to draft players from talent-rich teams.     A worldwide draft: The two sides have already agreed on an amateur player draft of players from the United States and around the world. The owners want about 40 rounds; the players want about 16.

        Q: Can you afford to be on strike on Sept. 11?

        Mr. Fehr: We certainly hope we don't ever have to be on strike.

        Q: Why set a strike date?

        Mr. Fehr: In collective bargaining, sometimes, management will say, “If we don't have a deal by such-and-such a date, we're going to lock the players out.” The NBA did that in 1998. Sometimes, the employees will set a deadline. The labor law in the United States contemplates that if you can't reach agreement, either side may resort to economic means. Sometimes, that helps prod the parties together.

        In this circumstance, we certainly hope it isn't necessary. We haven't had to set a date so far. And nothing would make me or the players happier that not to have to do so.

        Q: How much does public opinion count in your strategy?

        Mr. Fehr: The last thing the players want to do is anything that would be upsetting to the fans, and you certainly take public opinion and the fans' opinion into account in everything you do.

        When it comes to collective bargaining strategy, though, while that is a consideration and you think about it, in fact you're not bargaining with the public, you're bargaining with the other side. So that has perhaps a more primary focus.

        Q: Professional football is viewed as more successful than baseball, and it has three things that baseball doesn't: broad revenue sharing, a salary cap and labor peace. Does baseball need to be more like football?

        Mr. Fehr: No. We would certainly love to have long-term agreements reached without having to go through bargaining which has some tension to it. That would be wonderful. They've managed to achieve it in football for whatever set of reasons. That has not been managed to be achieved in baseball, hockey or basketball. It was achieved in football primarily because football players had access to the antitrust laws. (Major League Baseball has an antitrust exemption.)

        In football, two-thirds of the revenue is generated by national sources. One third is generated mostly from gate receipts, and you're only trying to sell out eight games. In baseball, you're trying to sell out 81 games, most of them are not on Sunday afternoons, a good part of them are during the school year and you're trying to broadcast locally up to 162 games. By definition, it means what you do locally matters much more than it does in football; and by definition, you will see significantly wider spreads. There's nothing you can do about it.

        Q: That doesn't mean you can't have broader revenue sharing in baseball.

        Mr. Fehr: In point of fact, the players' proposals we've made call for significant additional revenue sharing. We have some disagreements with the clubs as to exactly how much, and how it should be done, but there's no doubt this agreement will have significantly more revenue sharing.

        Q: What about a salary cap?

        Mr. Fehr: No. They (the owners) haven't put it on the table, and that's not something the players would be interested in.

        Q: Is there anything about the financial state of baseball that concerns you? You can't deny there are imbalances.

        Mr. Fehr: You worry about that, but then you have to ask yourself a series of questions. Merely saying that there's an imbalance in revenue without asking yourself why or what can be done about it, doesn't tell you very much. If we had said 12 years ago there are imbalances in revenue, there are some clubs that just can't make it, we would in fact have gotten rid of Cleveland and Seattle.

        What we now know is that the notion that you could not generate large amounts of revenue in those two cities turned out to be wrong. The teams were managed differently, more investment was put into them, they managed to get stadiums built and they turned around. You have to consider lots and lots of different factors. The fact that we are looking at more revenue sharing along with a lot of other things is an indication that we're trying to address those concerns.

        Q: Is the biggest threat to baseball a work stoppage?

        Mr. Fehr: I don't know if it's the biggest. It's the one I'm working to try to avoid at the moment. Certainly, it's not something anyone wants to see.

        Q: You've said you oppose a salary cap and a luxury tax, that everyone's goals can be reached through revenue sharing, but you don't want a system that simply punishes the successful teams and rewards the weak. Can you describe a revenue-sharing system that works for all sides?

        Mr. Fehr: Essentially, it would look like this: You would have to find a way that moves some money around in a fashion that does not destroy the willingness to invest to grow the game to make it better. If you tell a club, "If you're successful we're going to take all your money away,' nobody's going to want to be successful. It's the same reason we worry about income-tax rates. You've got to worry about those kinds of things. And then what you've got to try and do is — in connection with our proposal, at least — is move players and draft choices around in a fashion that can give some real advantages to the weaker teams, which is what we've proposed.

        Q: Are there too many teams in baseball?

        Mr. Fehr: I certainly hope there aren't too many teams in baseball. The basic approach ought to be that we're trying to make baseball more widely available, not less.

        Q: Are you concerned about the prospect of replacement players?

        Mr. Fehr: I think the experience we had with replacement players was of a type to make it very unlikely. (Replacement players were used during spring training in 1995, but the season ended up starting late, with the regular players.) It turns out the fans can figure out who's actually in the uniforms rather than what it says on it.

        Q: Would the players strike to put Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame?

        Mr. Fehr: (Laughs.) It's a question I've never thought about.

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