FanHouse DonaldFehr

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.

Henry Waxman has gone about as far as he can go in ensuring that professional baseball players aren't using steroids. A bevy of high-profile Congressional hearings -- including the brilliant Roger Clemens castration -- should, right or wrong, be enough for any league or player to think twice about defrauding their sport. The fear of Waxman is palpable and prohibitive. Just look at that man. His moustache is pure terror.

Still, with all that in his pocket, Waxman won't let the steroid issue die. He's unhappy about "misinformation" he believes Bud Selig and Donald Fehr provided regarding the lowered number of positive steroids tests in 2004. Don't mess with The Waxman:

"It's clear that some of the information Major League Baseball and the players union gave the committee in 2005 was inaccurate," Waxman said in a written statement. "It isn't clear whether this was intentional or just reflects confusion over the testing program for 2003 and 2004. In any case, the misinformation is unacceptable."

The discrepancy is over a potential flaw in the 2004 testing which might not have properly tested players with 2003 positives. More than that, those players possibly found out about their tests ahead of time. That flaw seems like a pretty minor detail -- so a few more positive tests happened in 2004; this isn't much of a secret, nor should it be -- but if true, it speaks to Selig and Fehr's desire to wipe the whole steroids mess under the table, even as they pledged to solve it. Which is just so unlike them.

Turns out GM Kenny Williams isn't the only member of the White Sox brass that gets indignant upon hearing he could have done more to stop baseball's steroid era: team owner Jerry Reinsdorf sounded off during an interview on Comcast SportsNet, not only claiming innocence but also explicitly blaming the head of the players' union, Don Fehr:

''We would have loved to have done more, but Don Fehr wouldn't do it. People should start to realize that we could have been testing for steroids years and years ago, but Don Fehr wouldn't do it because he said it was an invasion of privacy, and the result of that is that Don Fehr is going to cost players entry into the Hall of Fame because if we could have been testing for steroids years ago, some of these guys who are now on the bubble who got themselves in trouble would have gotten off steroids. ... Steroids is strictly a Don Fehr problem and creation.''

(Reading between the lines, I think he's trying to say that Don Fehr may hold some responsibility.) I don't doubt that the players' union resisted testing, but it's a little convenient for Reinsdorf to assign 100% of the blame on them without admitting that the owners as a whole made a lot (a lot) of money on juiced up players. If this was really a point of contention among the owners, they did an amazing job keeping it a secret the entire time.

We're a scant two weeks from opening day and Barry Bonds has no home. And outside of the Rays and Tony La Russa showing some minor interest in the guy, there hasn't really been a peep out of any teams longing for his services. Poor guy. Yeah he's old and he's injury prone, but someone could use one of the greatest hitter of all-time on their squad even if it's in a reserve role, no?

Donald Fehr thinks so. And he's a bit curious with what's up.

After speaking with the Los Angeles Angels during his annual tour of spring-training camps, union head Donald Fehr said his staff will examine possible collusion against Bonds and others.

"We always look at the free-agent markets every year and make judgments about them, and if we come to the conclusion with respect to any player that there's a matter worth pursuing, we'll pursue it," he said. "But I'm not going to make any suggestions or accusations unless and until we come to that conclusion."

I wouldn't go so far as to say there's a "possible collusion" against Barry, I just think no one is willing to take a flyer on the guy because the risk certainly outweighs the reward. Let's face it, Bonds is one of the most notorious figures in sports history.

Still think he belongs somewhere in the AL as a DH. Am I the only one?