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American Morning

Baseball Talks in Extra Innings

Aired August 30, 2002 - 07:04   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: "Up Front" this morning, Major League Baseball talks now in extra innings in New York City.
Back to Josie Karp, who has been up all night right along with the negotiators here.

Josie -- how are you? Good morning.

JOSIE KARP, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I am doing well, thank you.

We have all been up all night. It was about 22 hours ago that negotiators on both sides reported for work, and none of them have been home since.

By our count, they have had seven face-to-face meetings. The seventh one started at around 6:25 a.m., that's of this morning. It only lasted about 25 minutes, with a pair of union negotiators coming over to Major League Baseball headquarters. They have been alternating back and forth. They just a couple of blocks away here in midtown Manhattan.

So where do things stand right now?

Well, from the union's perspective, one reason those two negotiators might have had to leave is at 7:00, a number of conference calls were scheduled to start. One was with players in general to update them on their travel arrangements, but merely to give a general appraisement of what's gone on.

The other is a team conference call with the Boston Red Sox. This is important, because the Red Sox are scheduled to leave Fenway Park on a bus to go to a charter plane for an 8:30 flight to Cleveland for a game that they're supposed to play this afternoon.

I spoke to a union source, who said they have to consider a lot of different scenarios. One, maybe a deal is done, and they can get on that plane and just go. Another scenario is if they push that charter flight back until a later time, say 12:30 this afternoon, that gives everyone a little more time negotiate.

The other scenario, according to this union source, is if there's no deal done, the team cannot arrange another charter, and the strike officially begins at 8:30, because they won't let them get on that plane if they don't want to go to that game.

So that's from the union's perspective right now. A little different story from the owners' perspective. There was one meeting that was held from 4:00 a.m. to 4:15 a.m. this morning, and after that, an owners' source was asked, point blank, "Can you get a deal done and avert a work stoppage?" And he said, point blank, "We'll get it done."

So that's where things stand right now from both sides. They are continuing to talk, and we will have the up-to-the-minute details as we get them.

For now, back to you.

HEMMER: Got it. That's a long night, and possibly a longer day today straight ahead.

Thanks, Josie, we'll talk throughout the morning here.

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