Fehr's legacy: a labor winner, but shortsighted on drug testing

Donald Fehr is stepping down at age 60, handing over the reins of the Major League Baseball Players Association no earlier than next March.

It's good timing for Fehr, whose successor - almost certainly the union's general counsel, Michael Weiner, 47 - will have to navigate another collective bargaining agreement in two years, and the ongoing performance-enhancing drugs crisis.

Judged by his labor negotiations, Fehr will get decent marks. The players all seemed to "win" every labor negotiation. And Fehr had a tough job - no doubt about it. Many fans hated him for disrupting the sport, and he had to follow a legend in Marvin Miller, who essentially invented the MLBPA and is the gold standard for labor negotiations in sports.

Was Fehr good for the game? That's more difficult to say. The union made great strides, but the canceled World Series in 1994 was a low point, and Fehr saw drug-testing as a civil liberties argument rather than something that was good for the game. That was shortsighted.

Some other reaction from around baseball:

• "Overall, on balance, I think he's done a fine job. It's still one of the most solid unions you're going to find anywhere. Whenever I'm asked this, one thought that occurs to me is that Don faced some problems I never had to face. And I'm not talking about the drug issue or anything like that. When I was there, there was always a signficant cadre of players who had personal experience in how bad things were before the union -- how horrible the conditions were. That's a powerful factor in players understanding what the union means. Almost from the beginning of Don's tenure, he had a membership where not a single player had played one game of baseball without a union. That could be a challenge at times, and he faced it quite successfully." - Marvin Miller, the Players Association chief from 1969-84, to ESPN.com
• "He was wrong to see things in terms of civil liberties for the players and not in terms of the overall interests of baseball. He always said that was your responsibility [the commissioner and the owners]. But I don't want to harp on that as it is just one aspect of an outstanding career." - former commissioner Fay Vincent
• "He's helped make this the strongest union in professional sports. I also think he's done a great job the last four or five years of getting stronger testing in place. Guys are getting pegged now. That's not necessarily good for the image of the game. But it's good for the integrity and future of the game." - Braves outfielder Jeff Francoeur, to MLB.com
• "I'm confident Michael will be great at leading us through the next decade without any work stoppages.He's a really cool guy. I like him a lot. He has a good relationship with the players and their agents and he carries a lot of respect." - Rangers pitcher C.J. Wilson, to MLB.com