Mediator Will Try Today to Get Stalled Baseball Talks Restarted

William J. Usery, baseball’s special mediator, will travel to Milwaukee today to meet with acting commissioner Bud Selig, and management and union negotiators in an attempt to get the stalemated strike talks restarted.

A management source said it wouldn’t be a negotiating session but rather “an attempt to see where we are and where we go from here.” The antagonists have not met since Feb. 7.

Meanwhile, several clubs assailed the union’s position that minor leaguers who play in exhibition games will be considered strikebreakers.

Cincinnati General Manager Jim Bowden said that minor leaguers who refuse to play may be sent home, and even Baltimore owner Peter Angelos, who will not field a replacement team, said he didn’t understand the union’s position.

Minor leaguers have always played in exhibition games, he said, and he expects to use them again, providing the opposition doesn’t use replacement players.

“The difference is that in the past, minor leaguers weren’t playing alongside scabs,” Fehr said from his New York home.

“These are replacement games. If they want to play minor league games, that’s fine.”