Donald Fehr - Twenty-five years of beating the owners

NEW YORK -- He is known for his perpetual scowl, the man who says "no" to all the owners who want changes that would slow baseball's spiraling salaries.

Yet, according to his chief lieutenant, union head Donald Fehr is not the humorless ogre that management portrays.

"When he's away from it, he may not be David Letterman, or S.J. Perelman, but his sense of humor is good enough -- and in fact above par for the labor lawyer community," said Gene Orza, the union's No. 2 official.

It was on Aug. 1, 1977, that Marvin Miller hired Fehr to replace Dick Moss as the general counsel of the Major League Baseball Players Association. The 25th anniversary was marked by a brief celebration at the union's offices overlooking St. Patrick's Cathedral, with Orza bringing in a bottle of 1985 champagne for the toasts.

Coincidentally, 1985 was the union's first work stoppage with Fehr as the boss. He led players through that summer's two-day strike, 1990's 32-day spring training lockout and 1994-95's 232-day strike.

Unless Fehr strikes a deal by Friday, baseball will have its ninth work stoppage since 1972.

Fehr knows he is vilified by owners and fears every word he says will be scrutinized by management officials seeking anything to use against him. He doesn't even like to talk about himself.

"Just write, 'He didn't want to cooperate,"' he said. He also didn't want it mentioned that he kvells over family accomplishments, worrying that some "wacko" might go after his four children.

Management officials are just as reticent to say anything about Fehr, worried that he might react to a comment.

"Don's strong points are a remarkable intelligence, integrity, honesty, diligence, judgment, first-class legal skill," former commissioner Fay Vincent said. "I think his only liability is scope. He see things the way they've been. I think the challenge for baseball is to see things the way they ought to be. He does not see the future of baseball as his issue."

The 54-year-old Fehr often seems an unlikely leader of the baseball players. In contrast to Orza, a baseball historian and bon vivant with a vast knowledge of Broadway shows, wines, restaurants, theater and music, Fehr reads Scientific American for relaxation and is as comfortable with entropy theory as he is with waiver rules.

A bookworm who read through the World Book Encyclopedia before he was 13, Fehr grew up in Marion, Ind., is a 1970 graduate of Indiana University and got a law degree three years later from the University of Missouri at Kansas City. After clerking for U.S. District Judge Elmo B. Hunter, he went to work for a Kansas City law firm used by the steelworkers.

He owes his career in baseball to the owners. When teams sued to overturn arbitrator Peter Seitz's 1975 decision striking down the reserve clause, they chose Kansas City as the venue.

"It was really all an accident," Fehr said just before the 1985 work stoppage. "Marvin and Dick both came out of the steelworkers, so they went to our firm."

About a year later, after the arbitrator's decision in the Andy Messersmith-Dave McNally case was upheld, Moss left the union to become an agent and Miller asked Fehr to replace him. Fehr's wife, Stephanie, had her purse stolen from a Manhattan restaurant when he came to interview for the job.

"I had become fascinated with baseball labor-management relations during the Messersmith case and decided to take the job and move to New York," Fehr said.

Miller retired after the 1981 strike and was replaced by Kenneth Moffet, who had been the mediator. Two years later, the players fired Moffet, viewed as too conciliatory, and replaced him with Fehr.

While Miller unified the players and led them to freedom, Fehr has kept them together and achieved even greater fortunes for them.

The average salary was $19,000 in 1967, Miller's first full year as head of the union, and $186,000 in 1981, when he led players through a work stoppage for the final time. It is now $2.38 million.

While Miller was an economist before becoming a union boss, Fehr was a litigator. Miller had a more folksy manner with players, while Fehr sounds more like an educator.

"It's the difference between Socrates and Aristotle," Orza said. "There are fewer Socrateses, so you seldom come across people like Marvin."

Moss puts it in simpler terms.

"Marvin had this great talent of explaining complicated issues to players in very simple and understandable terms," he said. "Don sometimes explains very simple issues in complicated terms."

Players take his advice.

"He's articulate, and he's been doing this for so long, and his mentor is Marvin Miller," Yankees reliever Mike Stanton said. "When you put that all together, he really only had one way to go: to the top."

Fehr can be persuaded to change his mind, according to those he deals with. In 1996, he never wanted to agree to the luxury tax that the union eventually accepted, finally relenting after lobbying by others on the staff.

"How can you describe someone as intractable when you have revenue sharing in effect?" Miller said. "How can you describe someone as intractable when you had a ... luxury tax in effect for three years? That's the opposite of intractable -- that's too tractable."