Players Poised to End Strike : Baseball: Vote calls for just that, but only if judge issues injunction restoring arbitration and free-agent bidding.

NEW YORK — 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. Union chief Donald Fehr said he hoped talks would resume today but no meeting was set as of Wednesday night.

“If they’re going to have an offer (today), certainly we’ll get together and I’ll be there to talk to him,” said acting Commissioner Bug Selig from Milwaukee.

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

Schilling said he thought the unions’ counteroffer would contain a tax of 30 percent with a threshold of $49 million or $50 million. That would cause six teams to pay a tax, five more than the players’ previous plan but five less than the owners’ plan.

“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 ended its two-day meeting.

U.S. District Court 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,” 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 chairman Jerry McMorris, who has said he may vote against a lockout.

American League attorney 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.

“There has been mention of the potential penalties that can be assessed,” Angelos said. “My position is that everything the Orioles have done is in the best interests of baseball, in the best interest of Cal Ripken’s streak.”

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.

Owners asked for a 50 percent luxury tax on the portions of payrolls above $44 million, which was 108 percent of the average last season. The union proposed a 25 percent tax on the portions above 133 percent, which was $54.1 million last year. A tax plan at the level Schilling talked about would be at 120-122 percent of the average.

While teams want the tax to start in 1996 and end in 2000, players don’t want the tax to last for more than three years.

“It’s movement but it’s very, very little,” free agent pitcher Orel Hershiser said of the owners’ plan, calling it “a baby step.”

While the timing of the next negotiating session wasn’t clear, the sides prepared for Friday’s court hearing. Owners submitted a 38-page brief in response to the NLRB’s petition.

“If the court issues the requested injunction,” the owners said in a brief filed with the court, “the union . . . . will have a compelling reason to delay further serious negotiations until the late summer or early fall when it is again advantageous to strike the clubs.”

Although teams haven’t signed any free agents since the union ended its signing ban on Feb. 6, management’s Player Relations Committee claimed in the brief that the market hadn’t changed.

“There . . . . is no evidence that that the PRC has altered or eliminated (anti-collusion provisions) or the competitive free agent bidding system,” the brief said.

Owners said the NLRB was asking the court “to directly intervene in ongoing collective bargaining notwithstanding the law and the traditions of free collective bargaining in this country.”

“The union’s offer to end its seven-month strike in return for an injunction should have absolutely no bearing on this court’s review of the petition,” the brief said.

Owners also asked Sotomayor not to rush to a decision. Daniel Silverman, the NLRB’s New York regional director, asked her to rule before replacement baseball is scheduled to begin Sunday night.

“The purpose of that argument is to create an artificial emergency that would require extraordinary relief before the court can carefully review the relevant legal and evidentiary issues,” the brief said.

The NLRB voted, 3-2, Sunday to give general counsel Fred Feinstein permission to seek the injunction. One of the two members who voted against, Charles Cohen, issued an unusual statement explaining his reasoning.

“It appears to me that, at least as of the time of the actions by the owners, the parties were deadlocked on the major issues dividing them,” he said. “At this time I have my doubts that the general counsel can establish a violation of law.”