Big news broke in baseball yesterday. Donald Fehr, who had been the head of the Major League Baseball Players’ Association for the last quarter-century, will be stepping down. It is usually at a time like this where I pause to recognize the accomplishments of person who will certainly be in the sports history books. So here goes...
Donald Fehr is one of two people responsible for the death of integrity of professional baseball. And more so, if baseball were to ever officially rescue itself, Donald Fehr will be remembered for nearly piloting professional baseball into oblivion.
Now it’s usually the time where I go over career accomplishments, so here goes...
Donald Fehr has absolutely no history in the game of baseball. He had an opportunity to legally represent the MLBPA in the 1970’s and was one of the people responsible for introducing free agency into sports; his victory in the case is what got him involved with baseball. While free agency is important, because it allows players to be people and not sporting robots, it was his handling of said free agents that made him such an evil genius.
Donald Fehr quickly realized that since he won free agency, he could essentially make every baseball player ever untouchable. Every time that a new collective bargaining agreement came around, Fehr basically played the role of a six-year-old girl at a tea party. If you didn’t fill up his fake cup with fake tea exactly the way he wanted it, he was going to go home with his entire set in hand.
Fehr understood the element of star power in baseball, which is why the “we will strike if we don’t get what we want” mantra was never more prevalent than in 1994 when he tried to break in interim commissioner Bud Selig. The majority of baseball owners were begging for a salary cap. And Fehr said that if they got said cap, the entire player’s union would strike. What ensued was the first strike ever to cancel an American sport’s postseason.
In addition to that, Fehr created a set of rules that gave a lifetime ban from the players’ union to any player who considered jumping the picket fence during the strike. The end result was the MLBPA’s refusal to represent hundreds of young players who desperately wanted their shot to play pro baseball.
However, it wasn’t just the fact that Fehr was willing to backhand slap all young American baseball players and fans in order to protect 900 guys who get paid too much to hit a ball with a stick that made him a horrible person. Because all of what I have previously mentioned pails in comparison to Donald Fehr’s magic word…
STEROIDS.
Every time the baseball tried to toughen up testing, Fehr refused to budge. Finally he agreed to test under the pretense that no one getting caught doing something illegal could get in trouble, and the tests had to be anonymous.
In the years since, nearly every power hitter during Fehr’s reign has tested positive for steroids, and it has become painfully obvious that Fehr knew about it all along. It’s probably also worth noting that the 3 biggest steroid busts in the history of the sport have all taken place within 3 months of Fehr’s “impromptu” retirement.
So Donald Fehr. I would like to take this time to sincerely thank you.
For nothing.
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