Players Would End Strike With Injunction If Federal Judge Restores Arbitration, Free-Agent Bidding, Baseball Players Would Return

Baseball players decided Wednesday to end their 7 1/2-month strike if a federal judge issues an injunction restoring salary arbitration and free-agent bidding.

Players also decided to make a counterproposal to the offer owners gave them Monday and will present it to acting commissioner Bud Selig on Thursday.

“I’ll be coming in,” Selig said by telephone from Milwaukee late Wednesday night. “It’s tentative; we have to firm it up in the morning. But I’m sure I’ll be coming.”

Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Curt Schilling said he thought the union will move toward the position of the owners, who claimed in court papers filed Wednesday the strike has cost them $700 million.

Schilling thinks the union’s new offer will contain a tax of 30 percent with a threshold of $49 million or $50 million. That would have caused six teams to pay a tax in 1994, five more than the players’ previous plan, five less than the owners’ proposal.

“We’ll find out how serious the owners are when we make our counterproposal,” Bobby Bonilla of the New York Mets said after the union’s executive board concluded its two-day meeting.

U.S. District Judge Sonia Sotomayor has scheduled a Friday hearing on the petition by the National Labor Relations Board for a preliminary injunction against owners. The NLRB has accused them of illegally changing the terms of the expired collective bargaining agreement before an impasse in bargaining.

“If the prior terms and conditions of employment are restored effectively by the injunction, the players will end the strike and return to work,” union head Donald Fehr said after the unanimous vote of his executive board.

The season is scheduled to open Sunday night, and owners planned a conference call for Thursday to approve the use of replacement players. If players do end the strike, owners could lock them out. But that possibility is decreasing.

“I don’t personally know whether there’s 21 votes there or not,” said Colorado Rockies chair Jerry McMorris, who is inclined to oppose a lockout.

American League lawyer Bill Schweitzer met in Baltimore with Orioles owner Peter Angelos, who again refused to field a replacement team. The league is threatening to make the team forfeit any missed replacement games.

In their latest proposal, owners offered to keep basically intact the system of free agency and salary arbitration under the expired deal.

That left the owners’ demand for a luxury tax as the primary obstacle, although the union also objects to changes in the owners’ revenue-sharing plan and a proposal that teams who release an arbitration-eligible player receive draft-pick compensation if that player signs with another team.