Fehr strikes out? Hardly

Here's the script from this week's Sports At Large, heard each Monday at 5:30 p.m. and Tuesday mornings in the 9 a.m. hour on WYPR 88.1 FM in Baltimore.

Ever since former President Reagan routed the air traffic controllers 28 years ago, labor unions in this country have been taking it on the collective chin.

If, in the best of economic times, one union after another has been forced to give things back to management, imagine what the auto workers had to surrender this year to keep Detroit afloat.

Among the sports players unions, hockey players gave back 25 percent of their salaries a couple of years ago. Basketball players have been operating under a salary cap for more than 20 years, and football's union is as weak as a newborn kitten.

Only one group, baseball players, have seen their lot improve over the years, and one of the driving forces behind that improvement announced his retirement last week.

Sometime before the beginning of the next season, Donald Fehr will step down as executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, a post he has held since December, 1983.

Fehr will leave with a winning percentage that any pitcher, any manager, any franchise would kill for, as he will retire virtually undefeated in important showdowns with baseball management.

Fehr, who replaced the fired Ken Moffatt, the former air traffic controllers union chief, effectively won five collective bargaining negotiations with baseball owners during his tenure.

In addition, the union charged the owners with banding together to artificially depress free agent salaries in 1985, 86 and 87. The players won a $ 280-million settlement of a suit.

Perhaps the biggest mark of Fehr's dominance of the collective bargaining process: When he took over from founding executive director Marvin Miller, the average player salary was $289-thousand.

Last year, the average ballplayer took home a yearly salary of 2-point-9 million. Nice work if you can get it.

Now, beyond the fact that he was representing rich athletes, whom are hardly seen as warm and cuddly by the public, Fehr was imperious and single-minded in his focus toward improving conditions for the players.

Fehr's detractors say his desire to get the most favorable conditions for the players kept him from doing what was best for the game, namely authorizing a salary cap and permitting steroid testing before 2002.

Those criticisms are about 75 percent wrong. Baseball owners have historically restrained player movements as well as their pay.

A union leader who would allow management to cap salaries given the owners track record would be derelict in his duty.

The steroid charges stick to Fehr more thoroughly, but only to a point.

Yes, Fehr should have been more diligent about steroids as a health issue, but again, his first obligation was to protect his membership from the unreasonableness of management.

If Donald Fehr were a player, his career stats would give him an easy ticket to enshrinement in the Hall of Fame.

However, the record of his mentor, Marvin Miller, is even better than Fehr's and he isn't in Cooperstown yet.

As it is, Fehr will probably have to be satisfied with merely paving the way to the Hall. That's probably all he wanted in the first place.