Donald Fehr was the head of the Major League Baseball Players Association (aka Union).  In my career, it’s been difficult to find anyone more frustrating to work with than anyone with “Major League Baseball” anywhere in their business card or title.  However, I can’t even imagine what it must be like to deal with the Players’ Union.

Fehr’s announcement today has touched off a firestorm on blogs about whether he was good for baseball.  Under him, player contracts went through the roof, so he certainly did his job for his employers.  Every time that they had to negotiate a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, Fehr took the owners to school.   Heck, they cancelled the World Series and he still got his clients darn near everything they wanted.

So this isn’t a piece about whether he should have allowed MLB to test for steroids, or if player salaries have created franchises with no hope of ever winning.  This piece raises the question, “Why retire now, and what does it mean?”

My quick, unsubstantiated take:  Here’s a man who uncannily knows when the time is right.  I think he knows that MLB revenues are in a lot of trouble.  The TV networks who broadcast games are getting killed, and are going to need to cut costs.  All the cities already have their shiny new taxpayer paid stadiums, so there’s no new revenue there to grab.  And it’s become embarassing that Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Washington, San Diego, etc… will never compete.  The league is losing revenue, needs to change and only one group has the power to allow that to happen.

The Players.

Next bargaining round, the MLB Players are going to be forced into a quandary.  The game is taking a hit, thanks in equal parts to the U.S. economic meltdown, players taking steroids from Pez dispensers, players making $12 million a year to not play, and the general ability of the NFL to continue to beat the heck out baseball everywhere it matters.  So the players will have to admit this when they sit at the table.  They’ll have to at least take a modicum of blame for abusing the lack of drug tests to the point that the great joy of comparing 100 years of baseball statistics has been rendered into a useless and meaningless exercise.  And if they admit any of this, they’ll be forced to give concessions on rookie salaries, guaranteed contracts, Free agency, arbitration and/or collective bargaining.  

So my synopsis is that Donald Fehr sees that the MLBPA is about to get crushed in the next round of bargaining.  And quite simply – he doesn’t want to be the guy who gets crushed.  So he leaves the hero or the villain depending on your take.  Let’s see if the next guy is rational and cares about the game, or like Fehr, is simply a brilliant and high paid bulldog representing a completely spoiled client.