IN BRIEF MLB tells union 60 games max

The players’ association was told by Major League Baseball on Friday that teams will not agree to more than 60 games in the pandemic-delayed season, leaving open the possibility of an even shorter schedule of perhaps 50 games or fewer.

While the NBA and NHL have found ways to restart their sports, baseball has been unable to cope with the economic dislocation because of the new coronavirus and the prospect of playing in empty ballparks, reverting to the fractious labor strife that led to eight work stoppages from 1972-95. With time slipping away, the sport will have at best its shortest schedule since the dawn of professional baseball in the 1870s.

The sides are increasingly dismayed with each other and appear headed to a spring training lockout in 2022. Still, they agree on one novelty: MLB’s latest proposal this week include starting extra innings with a runner on second base, and the union’s counter-proposal said that would be acceptable for 2020 only, in the event of an agreement.

That aspect, first reported by USA Today, was confirmed to The Associated Press by a person familiar with the negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity because no announcements were made.

Commissioner Rob Manfred flew to Arizona and met with union head Tony Clark for five hours on Tuesday in an effort to end the fighting and strike a deal. Manfred said the next day the sides had reached a framework for a 60-game regular season schedule and the full prorated pay that players had demanded, and the postseason would expand from 10 teams to 16 this year and either 14 or 16 in 2021. Like the extra-innings experiment, the larger postseason would occur only in the event of an agreement.

But Clark refused to call it a framework and said his eight-player executive subcommittee rejected it. The union countered with a 70-game schedule as part of a proposal that left the sides about $275 million apart.

■ The Phillies shut their spring complex after five players tested positive for COVID-19 and at least two others teams closed camps, raising the possibility the coronavirus pandemic could scuttle all attempts at a MLB season. The Blue Jays shuttered their site in Dunedin, Fla. — about five miles from the Phillies’ camp in Clearwater — after a player showed symptoms consistent with the virus. The Giants’ facility in Scottsdale, Ariz., was shut after one person who had been to the site and one family member exhibited symptoms Thursday.

Golf: Webb Simpson and Bryson DeChambeau were trading birdies with vastly different games. Rory McIlroy ran off enough birdies to make the cut. And the biggest move of the day at the RBC Heritage belonged to a player who made it to the course, but not the tee. Nick Watney became a footnote in golf history as the first player to test positive for the coronavirus. Watney tested negative when he arrived Tuesday, experienced symptoms Friday and took another test that came back positive. He now faces self-isolation for at least 10 days as the tournament goes on. Simpson got the last word with a 6-foot birdie on his final hole at No. 9 for another 6-under 65, giving him a one-shot lead over DeChambeau (64) and Corey Connors (63).

NHL: Canada has approved the NHL’s return-to-play proposal that could lead to one or more cities north of the border serving as host sites for the league’s 24-team playoff format. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland announced Friday that the nation’s top public health officer, and health officials in Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario had signed off on the NHL plan.