IU graduate Fehr to retire as head of players union

NEW YORK – Donald Fehr’s time in charge of the MLB Players Association will be remembered for a strike that canceled the World Series, explosive growth in salaries and eventually 14 years of labor peace.

To his detractors, the biggest mark was that he presided over a go-slow approach to steroids.

Fehr, a 1970 IU graduate and member of Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity on campus, said Monday he will leave the powerful union no later than the end of March, ending a reign that began in December 1983.

Fehr recommended that he be succeeded by union general counsel Michael Weiner, the No. 3 official and his longtime heir apparent. The move is subject to approval by the union’s executive board and possible ratification by all players.

“I have no hesitancy in recommending to the players that he be given the opportunity to do this job,” said Fehr, who turns 61 next month.

Weiner, 47, will lead negotiations for the next contract; the current labor agreement expires in December 2011.

Weiner and Steve Fehr, the union leader’s brother, were the primary day-to-day negotiators of labor contracts in 2002 and 2006, baseball’s first since 1970 that were achieved without a work stoppage.

“I think I have some sense of what I’m getting into,” Weiner said.

As part of the succession plan, Weiner met Monday in the union’s conference room
with Donald Fehr and the 92-year-old Marvin Miller, Donald Fehr’s predecessor.

“I think that he’s a bright guy,” Miller said. “He’s certainly not lacking in experience. He’s got the background for it.”

Donald Fehr headed negotiations for five labor contracts plus a divisive August 2002 drug agreement that was revised three times under congressional pressure. He decided he didn’t want to negotiate the next labor contract in two years and wanted to give Weiner lead time.

“After a while, it wears you down,” Donald Fehr said. “I think it will be good for everybody.”

Weiner has been with the players’ association since September 1988 and has been its general counsel since February 2004.

A clerk to a federal judge who became the top lawyer to Miller in August 1977, Donald Fehr took over as acting executive director on Dec. 8, 1983. That was 2 1/2 weeks after players fired Kenneth Moffett, the former mediator who had succeeded Miller following a 50-day strike in 1981.

Donald Fehr led players through a two-day strike in 1985, then became executive director on a full-time basis the following January. His early years were defined by collusion. The union successfully charged management with conspiring against free agents following the 1985, 1986 and 1987 seasons in violation of the labor contract and settled the cases for $280 million.

“He’s done so many good things for the game, even more so for the players,” New York Mets reliever and union representative J.J. Putz said. “But you know, he said enough was enough, and that he was tired.”

Baseball players’ average salaries were $289,000 when Donald Fehr took over nearly 26 years ago, and they rose to $2.9 million by last year. Although players fended off management’s repeated attempts to obtain a salary cap, he has been criticized by some for not agreeing to drug testing until 2002.

“If we, I, had known or understood what the circumstances were a little better, then perhaps we would have moved sooner,” Donald Fehr said.

Most players and owners were far more interested in economic issues.

“You hear a lot of people talk about how he’s as much to blame for steroids as anybody. You know what, nobody’s to blame. It just happened,” the San Francisco Giants’ Rich Aurilia said. “In my mind his legacy should be the positive changes he brought to the game.”

Weiner, like Donald Fehr, was critical of purported leaks of Alex Rodriguez and Sammy Sosa from the list of 104 names of players testing positive from the 2003 anonymous drug-testing survey. Federal prosecutors seized the list the following year before it could be destroyed, and the union sued for its return, litigation that is pending before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“It is regrettable that the names have been out there,” Weiner said. “It is regrettable that the government showed no respect for the collective bargaining agreement and, according to several judges, the Constitution.”

Donald Fehr also presided over a 32-day lockout in 1990 and a 7 1/2-month strike in 1994-95 that wiped out the World Series for the first time in 90 years. That stoppage ended only when the National Labor Relations Board, at the union’s behest, obtained an injunction to restore work rules from U.S. District Judge Sonia Sotomayor, nominated last month by President Obama for the Supreme Court.

“It was very satisfying at the end to say that the players got through it, they got through it in one piece and regardless of what it took to get there, they got a very good agreement,” said Donald Fehr, who ranked the agreement that followed as the achievement he was most proud of.