When Donald Fehr stepped up and took over the MLB Players Association in 1983, the average player made around $290,000 per year. As he steps down that same average player made $2.9 million last year. To get from there to here he lead the union on three work stoppages, one of which resulted in the cancelled season in 1994.
He has fought collusion by the owners to the benefit of players throughout the league. But he has also fought to allow players to maintain illegal activities at the cost of the game. Not just the obvious use of steroids, but speed and other drugs were left outside of MLB purview even though they were blatantly illegal for the rest of the country.
Think of it this way, inside MLB clubhouses Toko’s rules for life applied. The porn was just a bonus. Outside, the rules the rest of us know were, and are, in effect.
PHIL ROGERS and DAVE VAN DYCK (Tribune) try to put everything into perspective.
But while the union continued to win economic successes for its members, it is seen by many to have contributed to the anything-goes, wild-west mentality of baseball by opposing random drug testing long after it had become a reality in other sports.
Fehr and Orza most recently have been in the news because the union failed to expeditiously order that samples from a confidential round of drug testing in 2003 be destroyed. Alex Rodriguez and Sammy Sosa have been identified as steroid users off those samples, which have been preserved because of a court order sought by federal officials.
Former Commissioner Fay Vincent said Fehr protected players at a cost to the game’s credibility.
“He was wrong to see things in terms of civil liberties for the players and not in terms of the overall interests of baseball,” Vincent said. “He always said that was your responsibility [the commissioner and the owners]. But I don’t want to harp on that as it is just one aspect of an outstanding career.”
Fehr said he understands the criticism that links him to the widespread use of steroids—and an even bigger cloud—in the last two decades.
“If we—I—had known or understood what the circumstances were a little better, then perhaps we would have moved sooner,” Fehr said.
The union has been livid about leaks from a list of 104 names testing positive in the 2003 round of testing. The union sued unsuccessfully to get the list out of the hands of federal prosecutors and continues to pursue an appeal through the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
There are many people, myself included, who think that the timing of Fehr’s retirement has less to do with job stress and a desire to learn needlepoint than a deep need to get the hell out of Dodge before the Congressional bullets really start to fly.
But, on the other hand, I know a man who has met Fehr on numerous occasions. He claims that Fehr has a wicked sense of humor and a pathological sense of decency. Such a man would go to the wall for individual rights. I can easily see that. But, and this is for all of our conspiracy theorists out there, such a man might feel obligated to put all the cheaters on the same page with the rest of the American populace.
In other words, such a man might have “accidentally” forgotten to burn a list that has 104 names on it.
Right now, it may not be fair to guess, but it is still fair to wonder.
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