Interesting...
Don Fehr, the controversial long-time executive director of Major League Baseball's Players Association, is retiring after 25 years. He will leave a controversial legacy on a number of issues, such as the explosion of players' salaries and his role in the 1994 Strike that resulted in the World Series being canceled. The most important and damaging part of his legacy will be his handling of the issue of steroid testing. Why did he mess up the steroid issue so badly? That he screwed it up is almost beyond discussion at this point. Even he admitted before Congress that he misjudged the situation and failed to handle it properly.
The steroid scandal is in another league because it goes to the credibility of the game itself and it will taint the legacies of some of the most famous players in Major League history as well as an entire era of play. Of course, there is plenty of blame to go around and many others deserve that blame, but he was different. As the powerful representative of the players', he was often the lone voice of opposition to steroid testing for years. Is there any doubt that if he had insisted on comprehensive steroid testing in 2000 or 2002, the game of baseball would be in a much better position today?
The steroid scandal was a ticking time-bomb that was going to explode at some point. That should have been obvious, especially to someone involved with the issue so closely and for so long. Perhaps he fell into a trap of opposing anything and everything proposed by the Commissioner, even if it had merit. He possibly thought that is would send a bad message for the Players Association to give in on anything and reduce their influence in other areas. It really, though, should not have been that difficult to see that blind opposition to steroid testing was unsustainable and would result in negative effects in later years.
The current situation is unpleasant for baseball: widespread suspicion, ruined careers, suspensions and a tainted era in the record books. He did not create the problem, but bears responsibility for prolonging it. When the subject of testing for steroids was first really starting to make headway in 2002, Fehr testified before a Senate Commerce subcommittee, and others were disappointed with his response:
Tom Verducci writes in Sports Illustrated that Fehr thought letting the steroid culture run its course was advisable.
It was a messy, ugly issue to start with and has only gotten worse over time. Dealing with it effectively for Fehr would have meant selling the players on the necessity of steroid testing. As difficult as it is to imagine the players jumping at it in the early years of the scandal, something tells me that if he could have explained how their earning potential was tied to being in a clean sport, they would have gone along with it. He (and others) made a series of bad choices and baseball will be dealing with the consequences for a long time. The game of baseball is paying a heavy price, and so will Fehr's legacy.
Sandra
Don Fehr, the controversial long-time executive director of Major League Baseball's Players Association, is retiring after 25 years. He will leave a controversial legacy on a number of issues, such as the explosion of players' salaries and his role in the 1994 Strike that resulted in the World Series being canceled. The most important and damaging part of his legacy will be his handling of the issue of steroid testing. Why did he mess up the steroid issue so badly? That he screwed it up is almost beyond discussion at this point. Even he admitted before Congress that he misjudged the situation and failed to handle it properly.
The steroid scandal is in another league because it goes to the credibility of the game itself and it will taint the legacies of some of the most famous players in Major League history as well as an entire era of play. Of course, there is plenty of blame to go around and many others deserve that blame, but he was different. As the powerful representative of the players', he was often the lone voice of opposition to steroid testing for years. Is there any doubt that if he had insisted on comprehensive steroid testing in 2000 or 2002, the game of baseball would be in a much better position today?
The steroid scandal was a ticking time-bomb that was going to explode at some point. That should have been obvious, especially to someone involved with the issue so closely and for so long. Perhaps he fell into a trap of opposing anything and everything proposed by the Commissioner, even if it had merit. He possibly thought that is would send a bad message for the Players Association to give in on anything and reduce their influence in other areas. It really, though, should not have been that difficult to see that blind opposition to steroid testing was unsustainable and would result in negative effects in later years.
The current situation is unpleasant for baseball: widespread suspicion, ruined careers, suspensions and a tainted era in the record books. He did not create the problem, but bears responsibility for prolonging it. When the subject of testing for steroids was first really starting to make headway in 2002, Fehr testified before a Senate Commerce subcommittee, and others were disappointed with his response:
Management officials were disappointed at Fehr's stand on testing. "Everyone in the room — with the exception of one person — favors the testing program. There wasn't much opposition, just one abstention," said MLB President and Chief Operating Officer Bob DuPuy, referring to Fehr.
It is particularly ironic that in his zeal to protect the players from the evils of testing, he ended up hurting those same players much more than if they just had the testing from the beginning. How many of them wish now that they had stringent, Olympic-style testing from 1996 (or even 2000) onward? Fehr said for a long time that testing would be an invasion of privacy for the players. This argument was flimsy and counterproductive. Other sports have had tough steroid testing for years: the NFL started testing in 1987!
Tom Verducci writes in Sports Illustrated that Fehr thought letting the steroid culture run its course was advisable.
He truly believed he was doing right by his players by letting the steroid culture run its course, by some ratio of design to ignorance (though more than a dollop of ignorance from such a smart man challenges the imagination).
If true, this says a lot about Donald Fehr and why his response to the steroid scandal was so inadequate. There was never any chance of the issue running its course on its own. Even if the culture of steroids could have "run its course" (which is doubtful), testing was needed so that people on the outside could be certain that the game was clean.
It was a messy, ugly issue to start with and has only gotten worse over time. Dealing with it effectively for Fehr would have meant selling the players on the necessity of steroid testing. As difficult as it is to imagine the players jumping at it in the early years of the scandal, something tells me that if he could have explained how their earning potential was tied to being in a clean sport, they would have gone along with it. He (and others) made a series of bad choices and baseball will be dealing with the consequences for a long time. The game of baseball is paying a heavy price, and so will Fehr's legacy.
Sandra
