In yet another discussion with a MLB player representative this week, just how close the players and owners were to a new collective bargaining agreement this past winter was made clear.

“I was driving when I got a call from Donald Fehr [the players’ union leader],” said the representative. “I had to pull off the road because [Fehr] had most of the players reps on for a conference call. He said he thought an agreement was going to be reached and all he needed was our OK to go forward with it.”

Smiled the rep, “I told him, ‘hell yes, let’s get this thing going.'”

Fehr and former MLB vice president Paul Beeston did get it done, but as reported here in previous columns, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig canned the deal, not once, but twice, because he still wanted contraction and a salary cap. Those were items that Fehr and Beeston had found ways around.

Now comes the Forbes magazine article that says the testimony of Selig before Congress this year saying most teams were losing money is not true. In fact, the Forbes article says Selig’s own former team, the Brewers, now run by his daughter, was the most profitable team in baseball last year after the revenue sharing.

Selig has long held the Brewers out as an example of a small-market club that can’t win on the field or in the accountant’s office. The embarrassing Forbes conclusions forced Selig to have to respond that the Forbes figures were nonsense.

Selig did not, of course, offer to have outside accountants examine the baseball books to decide who was lying. The players are scoffing at Selig’s response to Forbes and have found it as another reason to believe nothing he says.

How can Selig not only remain in office, but also receive an extension on his contract as commissioner, when he has no respect from the players and continues to take every step imaginable to lead the game toward a shutdown?

Selig’s power comes from the team owners who hire him. There are a group of owners who detest the players’ power in the game and want to destroy the union. That isn’t going to happen, but they vote Selig in because he is willing to maneuver in that direction.

Another group of owners would just as soon see Selig gone, but they love making money and Selig is willing to maneuver around the members, so they vote for him. Since Selig’s former team makes money from revenue sharing, this group probably figures he is not going to act against their interests.

Yet a third group of owners, from teams that are really struggling, would love to get him out and find a partnership with the players, but they do not have the votes. Furthermore, they are the teams benefiting from revenue sharing from the successful teams and any move against Selig would be a move against the owners of those teams.

There is no reason to believe a new collective bargaining agreement will be reached during the season. There is no impetus from the owners to do so.

The players will have to decide during the second half of the season if they are willing to risk bargaining in the off-season when they have less leverage. The alternative is a players action that would affect the postseason. That would make the players the bad guys in the public’s view unless they can find a way to show the owners have been lying about team finances.

The players are examining just how Forbes magazine came up with its numbers and whether that background information might be just the ticket to turn the tables on the owners’ claim of poverty.

This is a high stakes, big business confrontation with the outcome very much up for grabs.

Old Town native Gary Thorne is an ESPN and NBC sportscaster.