Examining Fehr and loathing

It’s a lose-lose proposition. If you defend the players to the best of your ability, the fans hate you. If you don’t defend the players vigorously enough, Marvin Miller sticks pins in your voodoo doll, and you probably don’t even have to be representing baseball players.

Even people who would support classic workers’ causes in real life comfortably draw the line when it comes to showing sympathy for baseball, basketball, football, or hockey players in times of management-labor strife. Many people can’t get beyond the idea that these folks are playing a game for a living, and that they are now extremely well-paid to do so. The money is a 37-foot high left-field wall between athletes and the public.

What I’m saying is that retiring MLB players union head Donald Fehr should not expect gushing tributes from the fans.

But he should get them from the players he represented. The average salary during his tenure as executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association has risen from approximately $240,000 to the official current number of $2,824,751. The current minimum salary is $390,000.

And then comes the meal money, the benefits, the living and travel conditions, and a truly outstanding pension plan. The Players Association has done great things for its constituency. A similar case can be made for the unions representing football, basketball, and hockey players.

For most fans, sports unions are regarded as a nuisance. The big issues of the 21st century involve freedom and mobility, which are of great interest to the individual player but of fluctuating interest to the fan. Most fans say, “You pay me what they’re getting, and I’ll go anywhere and play for anyone.’’ Far more often than not, players with options wind up saying that themselves. Remember “Jerry Maguire?’’

Show me the money!

Yes, it starts with the money, but it doesn’t end there, and it never did.

Ever hear of John Montgomery Ward?

He was a player so frustrated by the onerous “reserve clause’’ that bound players to a club even upon expiration of the contract, that he led a revolt and formed an entity called the “Players League,’’ which set up shop in opposition to the National League. He succeeded in attracting approximately half the players to join him. The league folded after one year.

The year was 1890.

But it wasn’t until 76 years later that baseball had any vibrant union activity. That’s when the players hired a tough-minded economist named Marvin Miller away from the United Steelworkers of America to represent them. Miller immediately declared the baseball players to be the most oppressed workers he ever had represented. Hyperbole? You judge. The minimum salary in major league baseball in 1966 was $6,000. We had flush toilets, color TV, and automatic transmission. Even by the standards of the day, $6,000 wasn’t much money.

Now, thanks to the courts and the hard work of advocates such as Miller, each set of players enjoys some form of free agency, as well as an overall working environment that is the envy of the fans for whom they perform.

That’s the legacy inherited by Fehr’s successor, Michael Weiner, and by DeMaurice Smith (NFL), Billy Hunter (NBA), and Paul Kelly (NHL), as well. The sports unions exist for the same reason all trade union associations ever have existed: because management almost invariably wants to extract maximum work from its employees for as little money and for as few benefits as it can provide. Reliance solely on the goodwill of bosses is not a sound policy for the workers to follow.

The No. 1 asset a sports union leader must have is thick skin. He must be oblivious to public opinion. He must be dismissive of the media. His job is to represent the players to the best of his ability. Fehr did this.

But the worst trait a sports union leader can have is to be an ideologue. An ideologue digs in on principle. An ideologue sees only one way to look at a problem. An ideologue wants it his way, period. Marvin Miller was, and is, an ideologue. His steadfast devotion to his core principles worked to the general benefit of his constituency. It would be hard to argue otherwise.

Donald Fehr is another ideologue. And it has led to enormous problems. Someone less rigid and more aware, shall we say, of a global picture, might have handled the subject of drugs and drug testing differently and better. For Fehr is in danger of being remembered solely for being an obstructionist, and not for the many fine services he rendered for deserving athletes.

“He did a lot of great things for the players,’’ says one well-informed baseball analyst, “but his blind spot on the subject of drug testing cast a pall on the game.’’

The Players Association downplayed the effects of performance-enhancing drugs. The Players Association downplayed the perils of performance-enhancing drugs. The Players Association blew an opportunity to be a positive force on the game, not least by safeguarding the health of its players, and why?

It was so the players never would have to suffer the supposed indignity of “peeing in a cup,’’ as I was told repeatedly by a union source.

Fehr finally relented. We now have drug testing.

As thanks, he has 92-year-old Marvin Miller, fighting on and fighting on, railing to anyone brandishing a notebook, camera, or microphone that Fehr made a huge mistake, that Miller never would have agreed to drug testing. Weiner can look forward to the same.

Now I’m told on good authority that Michael Weiner is a good guy who always has “brought balance to the discussion.’’ He sounds like an excellent dinner companion.

But just wait till the first time he warns us that the players might have to go on strike. He’ll be as popular as the swine flu. I guarantee it.

Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist and host of Globe 10.0 on Boston.com. He can be reached at ryan@globe.com.