Donald Fehr To Retire: Fay Vincent Reflects
June 24, 2009 – 10:00 am by Michael Bean
Donald Fehr has announced his sudden retirement as the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association. He had held the position since 1986 and was involved in leading the game through the 1994 strike. Of course, the game of baseball is littered with scandal and problems relating to performance enhancing drugs but to Fehr’s credit, his job had been to protect the interests of players first and foremost. Former Major League Baseball commissioner Fay Vincent joined 790 The Zone in Atlanta to talk about the tenure of Fehr and about the things they worked on together during the 1990s.
On Fehr’s career:
“The first thing that comes to my mind is how proud he should be. I thought he did a remarkable job. He succeeded a legend, Marvin Miller, he did it very well. I think like all of us, he’s not perfect. There were some things that I thought the union could have done differently or better – I’m thinking of steroids or the drug policies – but overall I think every topic, every subject, the union gets very high grades. They’re very honest; they’re very smart; they protected the players. I think Donald Fehr can retire feeling he did a wonderful job for his constituency.”
On whether or not it was possible that Fehr was in any way forced to step down:
“I don’t think that has anything to do with it. He’s been talking about retiring for 20 years.”
On the tests given to players in 2003 that were supposed to be kept secret and confidential:
“I think it was a very good idea. We needed to know how big a problem was. Unfortunately we never really got the complete answer and again very unfortunately, those tests were preserved because of the court order. And baseball and the union I think were very disadvantaged by that and now some of the information is leaking out about that. It’s all a sad and not very pretty story.”
Listen here to Vincent on 790 The Zone in Atlanta
Tags: Donald Fehr, Donald Fehr retires, Fay Vincent, former Major League Baseball Commissioners, MLBPA
