Fehr understood that Baseball was strictly business

June 23, 10:42 AMBusiness of Sports ExaminerEvan Weiner

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It might have been in a dugout in Fort Myers, Florida or maybe somewhere in Manhattan where Don Fehr many years ago taught me a lot about the business of sports and how things really operate in a very simplistic but powerful manner. Don was talking about the Major League Baseball Players Association's approach in negotiating with baseball owners and it came down to this. The players association had to negotiation with (at the time) 26 of the most influential and powerful business people in the world and the players representatives could not allow themselves to be intimidated by those 26 powerful people. The players had to be tough at the bargaining table.

Fehr also had a job to do. Fehr and his team could not be concerned about public opinion as he and his team had to get the best possible deal they could for their clients, the members of the Major League Baseball Players Association. That is all that mattered to Fehr and his associates at the Players Association. The players through meetings and with help of their agents and advisors told Fehr want they wanted and Fehr led the charge.

He seemed to get what the players wanted and if Fehr could not get the desired package he would use everything he had in his toolbox including going to the National Labor Relations Board and to court.

He was either praised or damned for leading the nation's most powerful labor association.

It was not an easy job. There was one night back in 1994 where Fehr had a long day of arguing with the owners at a negotiation at the Doral Arrowhead hotel in Rye Brook, New York where he just needed to get away and chill out. Fehr couldn't really the complex but he found something in the wee hours of the early morning that worked, he became the Piano Man and started tinkling the keys in the middle of the lobby. Nobody passed the hat, nobody bought him a round but Fehr was doing his job, getting the best deal for his players. The 1994-95 baseball strike ended on March 29, 1995 when United States District Judge Sonia Sotomayor ruled that the owners violated the National Labor Relations Act by trying to end free agency and salary arbitration and ordered that the old collective bargaining agreement be reinstated. Judge Sotomayor, who was appointed by President George H. W. Bush to the bench, also ruled that the owners had bargained in bad faith. One of those owners was George W. Bush who had a small share in the Texas Rangers but was the team's managing general partner in 1994 as he ran for governor of Texas.

Fehr was right about the guys across the table, they are a powerful bunch.

Fehr was well respected within the sporting industry. He served on the United States Olympic Committee's Special Commission to investigate alleged improprieties related to the selection of Salt Lake City to host the 2002 Winter Olympics that was headed up by the former United States Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell in 1999. He advised the National Hockey League Players Association Executive Director Bob Goodenow during Goodenow's run as the hockey association's boss.

Fehr served the players rather well although baseball writers always managed to compare him to his predecessor Marvin Miller in sort of an unfavorable light. Miller got everything and Fehr had to live up to that legacy. Of course that was not the case; Miller hired Fehr in 1977 as the association's general counsel based on Fehr's work as an outside counsel on the Andy Messersmith-Dave McNally case in 1975. The two pitchers, Messersmith and McNally, refused to sign contracts, claimed they should be free agents challenging baseball's reserve clause. The two pitchers filed a grievance against the owners and ended up winning in arbitration when the arbitrator Peter Seitz ruled that Messersmith and McNally were free to negotiate with other teams after the 1975 season because a baseball team could not hold onto a player indefinitely. That decision, which was appealed by the baseball owners, freed players from the reserve clause. After all the appeals were exhausted, the owners and players reached an agreement that allowed the players free agency after six years of service.

Fehr did not succeed Miller as the head of the players association. Ken Moffett took over from Miller on December 9, 1982 but Miller came back on an interim basis for a 17 day period starting on November 22, 1973 and Fehr was named acting director on December 9, 1983. He became the Executive Director in 1985.

Fehr led the association through a turbulent period, much more so than Miller who initially was fighting for things like getting an increase in meal and pension monies. Miller did get free agency and other benefits such as salary increases but Fehr not only had to maintain that momentum but had to deal with other issues including drug testing in the 1980s for cocaine and other illegal substances and labor actions in 1985, 1990 and 1994-95. Fehr's players also had to approve two baseball expansions in 1981 and 1995 and Fehr also had to battle the baseball owners attempt at collusion in 1985, 1986 and 1987.

Fehr rightfully defended the players with drug testing for banned substances because of privacy issues. The government should have investigated allegations of banned substance use by players not the players association. The players and owners came up with stiffer drug testing procedures after Jose Canseco's book came out in 2005 and aroused some elected officials in Washington from a slumber and produced a great grandstanding opportunity for Senators and House members including one from Florida, Ocala's Clifford Stearns who held hearings because he didn't like cheaters forgetting that possession and usage of steroids was illegal.

Fehr never looked at baseball as anything more than a business which is something that he always conveyed in our conversations. Fehr headed up the players and that was his team. He let the owners cut national and local cable and over-the-air local and network domestic and international TV deals along with radio contracts, stadium agreements with local and state governments, build a broadband network, bring in marketing partners and sell tickets to the corporate community and to fans.

Fehr was a United States Olympic Committee delegate and though baseball is no longer a part of the Olympics, he helped pushed the globalization of the game in partnering with Major League Baseball to form the World Baseball Classic. It put additional funding in the players pockets by creating a venue to showcase baseball in baseball hot spots like North America and the Caribbean and the Pacific Rim and more importantly it brought baseball federations into the partnership that are little more than developing baseball countries like South Africa and Italy.

Fehr understood it is all about business and you could learn a lot about how sports operates from him if you listened. Fehr was unfairly roasted by baseball fans and a good number of baseball writers and radio sports talk show hosts who cannot separate emotion from reason and react in an irrational fashion when it comes to sports. The dynamics of sports have changed since 1984 in the United States with the Cable TV Act of 1984 and the 1986 Tax Act which poured more money into sports, far more money than the owners or Marvin Miller could ever imagined. Fehr not only had to deal with 26, then 28 and now 30 of the most powerful business captains on the planet but government as well.

Baseball is a just business, that it all it is. Fehr understood that whether other people liked his assessment or not.

evanjweiner@yahoo.com