CHICAGO -- So this is it -- it is now crunch time.

For MLB commissioner Bud Selig. For his favorite union man, Donald Fehr. And for all their constituents wherever they are. Crunch time has arrived.

This is the point where it's time to rise up and save their sport. By finding a real compromise on issues baseball fans everywhere are sick of hearing about. By making a labor deal that avoids the pain and the suffering and the darkened ballparks of yesteryear.

It's all in their hands now. The players as much as said so Monday -- in a ballroom instead of on a ballfield. By not setting a strike date, they were telling us, telling you, telling the leaders on both sides, they see a deal there to be made.

So now it's time to make it. Or else.

We know Bud and Don don't have a real attractive career average in late-inning pressure situations. But they proved Monday that this time might be a whole different game.

They proved it in a telephone conversation in which, according to a baseball source, they agreed that nobody wants a work stoppage, that nobody ought to need one to work this out, that nobody can afford one.

Afterward, they didn't want to say a whole lot publicly about that conversation. But in many ways, it was actually their finest hour.

The commish acted like a true leader, latching onto his sport's big picture instead of his side's smallest minds.

And Fehr proved that, despite what many baseball fans have occasionally suspected about him, it isn't his goal in life to break the all-time record for strike dates set. Or met.

But now comes the hard part. Now they have to find a way to get it done.

Over the next few days, you can bet Selig will be hearing an earful from every hard-liner in his flock. But here's what Bud needs to tell them:

His side has already won.

It isn't a win the way the David Glasses of the world may have envisioned this great triumph. It isn't a win in a 29-2 kind of way. But here's why it's a win all the same:

Because whatever deal gets made here, these owners are going to share more revenue than they've ever shared, there is almost certainly going to be some kind of payroll-tax system, there is going to be a worldwide draft and there is going to be drug testing.

That isn't Jerry Reinsdorf's whole Christmas list. But it would be an inroad in every major area these owners were concerned about.

So if Bud Selig wants to be regarded as a real leader, he needs to remember that. Then he needs to let his negotiators agree to a deal on a common ground that allows all 30 teams to survive.

That means not just the Brewers, not just the Yankees, not just the rich or the poor or Bud's beloved middle markets. This deal needs to be acceptable to everyone in some way, shape, form or revenue-sharing check.

But it has to be a deal that recognizes the players have their concerns, too. If Selig's side asks for too many givebacks, too many unchecked powers for the commissioner, too high a payroll-tax rate -- and can't offer any assurance that revenue-sharing money will be spent on players -- his deal is going to fall apart faster than he can say, "Harvey's Wall Bangers."

This union has philosophical problems with a luxury tax that it could recite all day and all night for the next quarter-century if Bud wants to hear that. But there were indications Monday that it is willing to consider certain levels of taxes under certain other conditions.

That means owners are going to have to move off 50-percent tax rates on the big spenders and think more modestly, more creatively. Their lead negotiator, Rob Manfred, praised the union Monday for showing "flexibility" in its stance on revenue sharing and a tax. Now the commish has to flash the "go" sign to his side to show that same flexibility.

They can't solve all the problems of this sport in the next few days. They can't solve them all in this labor deal. But they are at a point now where they have to solve whatever they can in as peaceable a way as they can.

For the last nine months, since the contraction circus began amid the background warbling of the We're-Going-Broke Chorus, baseball has taken a nonstop beating. It can't undo all the damage that's been done over those nine months in the next 72 hours.

But the best signal it could send to the weary and the dubious is to make labor peace without having to make war first. It would be a sign that, for once, this sport got its act together when it needed to most.

And there is absolutely no reason at this point -- none -- that it shouldn't do exactly that.

When Tom Glavine said Monday that this is a lot different negotiation than 1994, that the current differences are a "lot easier gap to bridge," he was saying, essentially, that this time around, these two sides have already created the framework for a deal.

So now it's up to them to connect the dots and make that deal.

Or else.

Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com.