(FORTUNE Magazine) – With pennant contenders scheduled to play and draw big crowds, the union representing major league baseball players called a strike for August 6. Unless owners sign a new collective bargaining agreement before then, players will walk off the field for the second midseason strike in baseball history. The last one, in 1981, dragged on for 50 days. The owners' negotiators and the Major League Baseball Players Association have been talking since the end of last season, with no movement on either side. The major issue is how much owners should contribute to the players' pension fund. Players maintain the fund should keep getting a third of network TV revenues, but with the current TV contract that increases revenues nearly fourfold -- to a total of $1.1 billion over six years -- the owners want to disconnect their contribution to the pension plan from the broadcast dollars they're raking in. The dispute has led the owners to open their books to players. They say baseball lost $28 million last year, when 18 of 26 teams were in the red, and forecast a crippling deficit of about $150 million by 1988 if the players get what they want. The players' association responds that teams are fudging the figures and that they actually made $25 million last year. Donald M. Fehr, acting executive director of the players' association, says that salaries, including bonuses, increased 30% in 1982 but only 10% this year. The average annual salary is now $363,000. Fehr complains: ''Whatever problems there are, they don't appear to have anything to do with the players.''