FanHouse Donald Fehr

Longtime head of the Major League Baseball Players Association, Donald Fehr, will be stepping down at the conclusion of the season. When he does, he will get a severance package worth more money than he made from 2001-2008, reports are saying.

Fehr, 61, has had an annual salary of $1 million per year since 2001. His severance package will pay him $11 million when he officially retires. Considering baseball's commissioner, Bud Selig, makes $18 million a year and how much extra money Fehr has freed up for the players over the years, the figure seems more than fair.

A female acquaintance swears she knows a baseball player who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs during the now-infamous "survey" to see who was doing naughty things in 2003. He's a famous player, she says, someone who even the casual fan would recognize. She knows he's on the list of 104 bad boys because he told her about his steroid use and the positive test it generated the same night he bought her a diamond necklace. She's pretty sure he also told his wife, his best buddy, some of his teammates, his agent, the kid who takes care of his car when the team is on the road and -- who knows? -- maybe the gardener and his tailor. He's one of the all-time talkers, this guy.

Had Donald Fehr played the game from which he announced Monday he was walking from after 30 years, we'd marvel at his accomplishments like a 700- or 600-plateau home run hitter during that span or a pitcher who managed 4,500 strikeouts. We'd talk about him like a multiple MVP winner and as being one of the greatest ever at his position or any position. We'd talk about him as a surefire first ballot Hall of Fame inductee.

Then we'd throw it all in the nearest trash bin. We'd chuck it all for the same reasons we do the accomplishments of so many of those sluggers and strikeout artists and MVP winners during Fehr's reign.

Donald Fehr has been the executive director the Major League Baseball Players Association since December 1985. During a press conference Monday afternoon, he announced that tenure will come to a close within a year. Assuming the board approves the move, his replacement will be general counsel Michael Weiner. Fehr had originally joined the association as a general counsel in August 1977.

Fehr has overseen quite a bit of polarizing event during his time leading the players Association. On his watch: The infamous Steroids Era, a player strike that resulted in the canceling of the World Series, the beginning of drug testing, expansion, realignment, testimony on Capitol Hill on more than one occasion and a free agency collusion case in which he won a $280 million settlement from the owners for the players.

With baseball wiped off of the Olympic slate for the 2012 Olympics in London, MLB President Bob DuPuy and player's union chief Donald Fehr went before the IOC Moneay with International Baseball Federation president Henry Schiller to plead baseball's case for reinstatement to the games by 2016. Their presence at the meeting was undoubtedly to calm the IOC's concerns that Major League Baseball isn't supportive of the Olympics.

In fact, the Chicago Tribune's Phil Hersch is reporting some interesting concessions that MLB says they're willing to make to accommodate the Olympics. Among the more interesting is that they say they won't schedule major league games on the day(s) that the medal games are played and that they'll make a "representative number of the best players available" to play in the proposed five-day Olympic tournament.

The most inane drug-related rule in my sportswriting life? Back in the old, wacky Continental Basketball Association, naturally. Upon walking through a hallway of weed fumes at the Holiday Inn in Bangor, Maine, where I was doing a feature on a traveling minor-league team obviously participating in cannabis exploration, I checked out my trusty CBA handbook. It confirmed that players were forbidden to use recreational drugs, all right.

On the "day of a game."

Otherwise, smoke and snort away.

Now, years later, I've found a more absurd rule. According to baseball's drug agreement, "A player shall be deemed to have been eligible to play in the All-Star Game if he was elected or selected to play; the commissioner's office shall not exclude a player from eligibility for election or selection because he is suspended under the program." Meaning, Manny Ramirez -- villain of the Scammywood steroids suspension that continues to rock the sport -- is eligible to play in the All-Star Game next month if enough fans vote for his inclusion in the National League starting lineup.

Odds are if you're reading this site, you're aware of the fact that on Wednesday afternoon first pitches will be thrown all over Arizona and Florida. Yes, the Spring Training schedule gets under way tomorrow with 16 games, and I couldn't be happier about it. Now baseball fans can focus on the battle for the fifth spot in their team's rotation instead of who is or who isn't doing steroids.

Besides, there's no reason to worry about steroids anymore anyway. Just ask the head of the players union, Donald Fehr. He'll gladly tell you that there is no problem, for it has been fixed.

As you probably know by his gym attire, President Obama is a fan of the Chicago White Sox. By extension, he is an ally of the team's chairman, Jerry Reinsdorf, who has fallen all over himself in throwing parties, supplying new caps for White House use and extolling the virtues of a Sox guy -- not a Cubs fan -- occupying the world's most powerful political seat. Reinsdorf, a close confidante of commissioner Bud Selig, also has played a significant role in running baseball during 16 years of unmitigated chaos.

Or, the Steroids Era.

The Daily Jolt is a dose of baseball reality every weekday morning.

Baseball will carry on. It always does. If it can survive the fixing of the World Series, it can certainly survive the "revelation" that the once and future home run king juiced. That may not be what people want to hear as they huff and puff and blow indignantly about the shame Alex Rodriguez has brought upon the game and himself. But it is the truth.

Even as Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Roger Clemens have been unmasked, Major League Baseball has set attendance record after attendance record. Everyone talks tough, but at the end of the day, most of them wind up back at the ballpark

Our MLB editor files dispatches from the Winter Meetings in Las Vegas in Notes From Sin City.

There was a long press conference today about the World Baseball Classic, which will return in 2009. Davey Johnson was announced as the manager for Team USA, Derek Jeter was announced as the captain and starting shortstop and a few rule changes were revealed, including a switch from the round-robin format in the opening rounds to a double-elimination setup.

The WBC is very important to Major League Baseball officials because they see it as a way of growing the game internationally, and much of the talk was overwhelmingly positive, but one thing MLBPA head Donald Fehr said stuck with me.

"The competition overtook the skeptics," he said of the inaugural tournament in 2006. "I really believe that ... before too long, before the next decade, this will be regarded as the equal, if not the superior, of any international sporting event."

Really? I guess the previous competition did not overtake this skeptic. There are a number of issues with the WBC -- the time of year it happens, the pitching concerns for major league clubs and my main problem with it, the flukey nature of a baseball competition that is decided by single-elimination contests -- so it's hard for me to imagine that it's suddenly going to be on par with the Summer Olympics or the soccer World Cup anytime soon, if ever.

Indeed, it's only real appeal, at least to me, is that it puts baseball games that actually mean something on the schedule a few weeks before the start of the MLB season, a time of year when I usually find myself fixing hard for some baseball.