New York ? Owners immediately slammed baseball players Saturday for making what management called backward proposals on the key issues of revenue sharing and a luxury tax.

Just six days before the union’s Aug. 30 strike deadline, the sides appeared to be on a collision course for baseball’s ninth work stoppage since 1972.

“We could not have been more disappointed in the proposal we received,” said Rob Manfred, the owners’ chief labor lawyer. “This is raw regressive bargaining.”

Players said their proposals were a positive step and moved closer toward the clubs, and didn’t understand why management publicly attacked them.

“Whoever the bar owner was in ‘Casablanca’ was shocked to find gambling, too,” union head Donald Fehr said.

Manfred accused players of backtracking on increased revenue sharing, because the union’s proposal Saturday phased in the increases.

Owners want the entire amount of the increase to start next year, which players think would cripple the richest teams.

While owners want $268 million transferred next year from the wealthiest teams to the poorest ones, up from about $169 million under the current formula, the union proposed transfers of $172.3 million in 2003, $195.6 million in 2004, $219 million in 2005 and $242.3 million in 2006.

In 2006, the final year of the proposed deal, the sides are relatively close. Owners have proposed transferring $268 million. All figures use 2001 revenue figures for analysis.

Under the union’s plan, teams would share 33.3 percent of their local revenue, up from 20 percent under the current deal. Fehr said players had previously been at 31 percent and owners at 37 percent, and that the union shifted to management’s preferred method of redistributing the money, which favors middle-markets teams.

Fehr said the sides had discussed phase-ins for at least the past 112 years.

The union thinks that’s important because the very richest teams, such as the New York Yankees, would have to pay more next year, even though the overall transfer amount wouldn’t change.

“The parties have discussed for a long time that when agreements are eventually reached, changes will have to be phased in over time,” Fehr said. “They clearly understand this would be phased in. Therefore, I am at a loss to explain what this is all about.”

The union also moved $5 million toward the owners on the luxury tax, designed to slow spending by high-payroll teams, but Manfred said that was far short of what owners want because it would affect only two teams next year, based on this season’s salaries.