As Don Fehr Prepares to Step Down, He Must Still Answer for the Biggest PR Gaffe in Sports History

Donald Fehr, the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) for almost 25 years, announced Monday he will be stepping down from his post and retiring in the up coming months.

As head of the most powerful union in the United States (maybe the world), Fehr successfully negotiated five labor contracts during his tenure which led to the average player’s salary to increase from $289,000 in 1983 to today’s $3.24 million average.

Fehr was also responsible for exposing the owners’ illegal scheme in the mid 1980’s where each of the fat cats entered into a secret agreement with each other to not sign any free agents in an attempt to hold down salaries – i.e. collusion.

Fehr and the players association successfully sued the owners and received a settlement of $280 million, while also embarrassing the owners in the process.

Fehr, along with his predecessor Marvin Miller (the greatest injustice of a hall of fame omission in the history of halls of fame), stand as legends in the great and important history of union organizers in America. The MLBPA completely reformed and revolutionized the business of sports and shattered the strong grip the owners held on the players’ throats for more than a hundred years.

In absolutely no uncertain terms, everything MLB players and all major pro athletes have earned (the multi millions of dollars put in their pockets) in the last 30 years is because of the incredible work done by Miller, Fehr and the players association.

However, as important as it is to praise Fehr for all of his success as executive director, he also has to be held accountable for maybe the greatest public relations disaster in the history of sports.

We’re all familiar with the evolution of baseball’s black cloud -

The players used and abused steroids and other performance enhancing drugs (PED) during, roughly, the 1990’s through the mid 2000’s. Throughout that time, MLB’s commissioner, owners and union representatives pretended it wasn’t happening and looked the other way while the league generated historic amounts of revenue.

When the steroid bubble finally burst in 2005, players had to answer for baseball’s drug epidemic while Fehr and the player’s association were nowhere to be found. The players association sat back and allowed each of the suspected players to individually face the heat – completely embarrassing themselves and destroying their own reputation and some of baseball’s.

The genesis of MLBPA’s PR mess can be traced back to 2003 when the union collected urine samples from players as part of an exploratory drug testing program. The samples, and their results, were promised to be kept confidential and would be immediately destroyed.

But for some inexplicable reason the samples and results were not destroyed and subsequently seized by the government as part of its investigation into BALCO.

So, over time, some of the names of the 104 players who had tested positive for a PED in ’03 were leaked to the media (illegally) – Jason Giambi, Alex Rodriguez and, most recently, Sammy Sosa are among the names “outed”.

In 2005, a handful of MLB players were called to testify in front of Congress to discuss the “steroids in baseball” crisis. We all remember Mark McGwire’s pathetic attempt to shield himself from accusations of steroid use with his feeble pleas of “I’m not here to talk about the past.”

And let’s not forget Rafael Palmeiro’s finger-waging statement to Congress: “Let me start by telling you this: I have never used steroids, period. I don’t know how to say it any more clearly than that. Never.”

Less than four months later it was revealed Palmeiro had not only used steroids in the past but had injected himself with the potent anabolic drug stanozolol, the same drug that Olympic sprinter Ben Johnson of Canada took in 1988 that cost him his gold medal.

Also, on the heels of the government’s BALCO investigation, Commissioner Bud Selig hired formed Senator George Mitchell to conduct a private investigation for MLB which became famously known as “The Mitchell Report”.

After Mitchell’s 20-month investigation, his 409-page report was turned into Selig. The report contained numerous names of players and their alleged links to PED.

In an attempt to spin the overwhelming negative publicity MLB and its commissioner’s office was suffering for allowing the biggest drug crisis in sports history to operate under its nose, Selig released the Mitchell Report to the media in an attempt to turn the focus away from MLB and on to the players.

It worked.

Like a hungry dog chasing a pork chop on a string, the media jump all over each of the individual players named in the report and made them the story – not Selig and MLB.

So while superstar players like McGwire, Palmeiro, A-Rod and Sosa have been ripped apart and humiliated in the media, and walking disasters like Roger Clemens makes PR mistake after PR mistake – where is the help and protection for these players?

Regardless of how one feels personally about MLB players and their use of PEDs, the player’s association exists for the specific purpose to support its members – not just to get them more money, but to take care and make sure their players are treated fairly and properly.

Under Fehr’s watch, many of baseball’s once brightest stars have been reduced to laughing stocks and have become national jokes. It’s sad, really.

By not fighting for the players suspected of PED use and creating a PR strategy to combat all of the damaging media attention, Fehr has essentially said to these players “Hey, you’re on your own.”

Yes, Fehr is responsible for increasing the players’ bank accounts exponentially. But by allowing many of MLB’s prominent players to go down in flames and not fight for them, much of the great work credited to Fehr has been destroyed like the reputations of the players he failed to protect.