award-winning journalists new york times bestsellers no topic out of bounds no opinions left unsaid an institution for sports talk and information this is the sports reporters here's mike lupica mitch alb and bob ryan i'm mike lupeka new york daily news m lb.com. I'm Mitch Album of the Detroit Free Press.

And I'm Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe and ESPN.

We're welcome to the Monday morning edition of the Sports Reporters podcast.

And though I would love to be, I'd like to break into song, guys.

Take me out to the ballgame.

But I won't do that.

I'll spare you that.

But the fact is that the baseball situation remains at a disturbing impasse,

and we do not have anything settled yet, although the clock be ticking, right, gentlemen?

That's the issue. The clock is ticking, and we could get to a point where the implementation of a draconian rule by the owners to play a truncated season

appears to be what is in the offing unless they get some dramatic turnaround in these.

I don't think it could be, Bob.

I think it is.

I think the players over the weekend basically said, you do it to the owners.

We're not negotiating

anymore. We get paid for every game that we play at full salary. And if that's the case,

the owners have had a number in mind all along, and that's 48 games, and they're probably

going to do that. I don't see them voluntarily upping that number very much, maybe a handful

here or there, but they offered,

what, the latest one was 72. It's so hard to keep track of these numbers. The latest one was 72,

but at a discounted rate, 75% salary or 80% salary, and the player said, no. If we play,

we get paid full. Okay, fine. The owners have a number that they have in mind i

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