Owners

Owners of a four-story apartment building in Wayne have been cited for violations of the Radnor Township building and fire codes. Harry and Isadora Shooster, owners of The Wayne House, 100 Windermere Ave., failed to maintain fire-resistant doors in working order, according to one complaint filed by Bernard Quinn, township fire marshal. The doors do not close properly, the complaint says. The second complaint cites an unrepaired hole in the refuse chute that would allow either smoke or fire to travel upward.

Harold MacDonald, the agent for Derrick Coleman and Terry Mills, is convinced the locked-out NBA players have grossly underestimated the strength and resolve of the owners and that it could cost them the remainder of the season. "I think it's a miscalculation," MacDonald said. "I don't think the players realize how united the owners are. My opinion is, the league is prepared to let the season go and probably has a contingency plan. " But Billy Hunter, the executive director of the National Basketball Players Association, preached solidarity to a group of agents and selected players on a two-hour conference call yesterday.

Three issues are likely to dominate the conversation tomorrow when the NHL's board of governors meets in New York to go over the Players Association's latest proposals for a collective-bargaining agreement. NHL players have been on strike since Wednesday, and the NHLPA is set to offer its latest set of compromises at tomorrow's meeting. Terry Carkner, the Flyers' union representative, said the only issues still far from resolved concern the licensing and merchandising of NHL-related products, the distribution of surplus pension funds, and the length of the new agreement.

NEW YORK - The NBA players' association, not Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, proposed the elimination of the salary cap during negotiations aimed at ending months of labor strife, a league official said yesterday. NBA senior vice president Mike Bass said union executive director Billy Hunter made "several misstatements" during an hourlong podcast with ESPN.com on Monday. Among them was the revelation of the salary-cap plan, which Bass said was actually an exception to the cap, not the elimination of it. Hunter said that, during a meeting last week, Cuban proposed what he called a "game changer" - a plan to replace the salary cap with a heavy tax for teams that spent to a certain level.

Baseball owners, found to have illegally imposed a salary cap in December, scrapped the whole system yesterday and removed the major obstacle blocking talks toward settling the six-month-old strike. With President Clinton pressing for an agreement by Monday, the National Labor Relations Board unexpectedly sped up its process and told owners it would file an unfair labor practice charge against them. Owners immediately backed down and said they would restore baseball's old business rules.

Fighting the image that it is staggering now, struggling to stay on its feet, the striking NFL Players Association challenged the league's owners to a game of chance yesterday. As the strike enters its fourth week and the situation continues to deteriorate, the players have offered to end their strike in return for a pledge by the owners to negotiate for six weeks with a mediator, and then send all unresolved issues to binding arbitration. Three other conditions were attached by the union: c All striking players would have to be reinstated for the rest of the season with a roster freeze.

Now that striking NFL players have said they will return to work if certain conditions are met, the ball seems to be in the owners' court. The NFL Players Association said the players would end the three-week strike immediately, if the owners approved certain proposals, including taking the dispute to binding arbitration if a new collective-bargaining agreement could not be achieved after six weeks of mediation. "All along the ball has been in the players' court," Eagles player representative John Spagnola said upon arriving from Chicago last night.

Of all else that happens in baseball this season, the biggest news may be the end of Peter V. Ueberroth's contentious reign as the sport's sixth commissioner. The owners must tell Ueberroth this year whether they intend to retain him for a second term, starting in 1990. Those who are willing to speak to the issue say Ueberroth - if he wants the job - would have no problem holding onto it. But the commissioner is not so sure. "I think my approach to the job has not endeared me to those making the decision on my future," Ueberroth said.

There isn't a single black or Hispanic manager in the major leagues, but you probably already knew that. There isn't a single black or Hispanic general manager in the major leagues, but you probably already knew that, too. And you also probably already knew that there isn't a single black or Hispanic owner in the major leagues, either. Jesse Jackson certainly knew all that. So why is he smiling? Why did he come out of yesterday's 60-minute summit meeting at the Four Seasons Hotel with baseball's all-Caucasian owners throwing kisses instead of daggers?