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They had to place a runner on second base in extra innings well after midnight, and a deal still wasn’t struck.

Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred drew a line in the Florida sand with a Monday deadline for a new collective bargaining agreement, posing the threat of canceling Opening Day and an unspecified cluster of April games without a new deal.

Day-into-night-long talks between MLB and the MLB Players Association in Jupiter ended early Tuesday morning with momentum but without the framework of the next CBA – not quite enough progress was made in marathon sessions on the eighth straight day of negotiations to end the three-month lockout.