Who’s On First, And When?

Spring training

On the first day of the eighth month of the baseball strike, the two parties in the labor dispute were confused.<

Negotiators for the owners and the players had different understandings Sunday of when they are scheduled to meet this week near Orlando, Fla. They’re supposed to reach agreement in time for the striking players to be in uniform by the start of the season three weeks from Sunday night.

Bud Selig, the acting commissioner, said that the owners’ negotiating committee thinks it is meeting with the players and Bill Usery Jr., the mediator, on Tuesday. Union officials said they were unaware of any meeting until Wednesday.

The only thing they agreed on was the site of the meeting - a Walt Disney World hotel just outside Orlando. The site will create a torrent of jokes, but how can it produce an agreement if the two sides don’t know when they’re supposed to meet?

They most likely will straighten out the confusion today, but by then, the owners’ negotiators are scheduled to be at the hotel for a 2 p.m. meeting at which they will begin discussing a new offer Usery wants them to present to the players when they do meet, whenever that is.

Cubs edge Merroriners

All of Chicago’s runs were unearned because of six errors, and the Cubs beat Seattle 6-5 Sunday.

Right fielder Joaquin Contreras dropped a fly ball with two outs in the ninth inning, allowing two runs to score and enabling the Cubs to withstand a four-run Seattle rally in the bottom half.

Seattle has committed 22 errors in nine games.

“It gets a little sloppy at times,” M’s manager Lou Piniella observed. “The errors we made weren’t the kind where the official scorer has to scratch his head and look at a replay three or four times.”

Weak week for baseball

Negotians collapsed, owners took time to take $260 million from two expansion teams and George Steinbrenner - twice suspended from baseball - was elected to the owners’ executive committee. And that’s not the worst of it for the week just concluded, according to Jim Caple of the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

“Nice week, huh?” Caple wrote, adding the baseball retirement of Michael Jordan to the list. “Losing Mike and promoting George in the same week is the worst transaction in baseball since the Red Sox traded Jeff Bagwell for Larry Andersen.”