Major League Baseball Players Association director Donald Fehr told baseball players on Friday to prepare for a lockout by the owners, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.

Fehr spoke with players from the Minnesota Twins, Montreal Expos and Florida Marlins in a 90-minute conference call, the newspaper reported. He told the players that the union will fight baseball's proposed contraction of two teams and raised the possibility that the owners will lock out the players next spring while the players and owners negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement.

However, a deal to delay contraction for at least one season might be in the works as representatives of MLB and the Players Association were negotiating Friday night, according to The Washington Post.

Sources have given the Post conflicting views on how the talks for a no-contraction pledge for the 2002 are going.

One source characterized the negotiations, which are not being conducted face to face, as "fluid," and even said an agreement could be reached Friday night.

Another source, however, told the Post that negotiations hit a road block.

"Something could be worked out or the whole thing could fall apart," the source told the Post, declining to be more specific.

The owners had voted Nov. 6 to buy and fold two unidentified teams -- believed to be the Montreal Expos and Minnesota Twins -- before next season.

If a no-contraction pledge is reached, a possible move by the Expos to the Washington area for the 2002 season is "not likely to happen," one of the sources told The Post.