Fehr did his job too well (cont.)

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The problem for Fehr, as goes his legacy, is that the era was too corrupt and his responsibility too great for steroids not to diminish his brilliance as a director and negotiator. Remember, owners must have taken him for a lightweight when he replaced Marvin Miller in December 1983, because it wasn't long afterward that they hatched a plan to collude on artificially suppressing salaries. Fehr nailed them on it, winning a $280 million judgment.

When that didn't work, the owners tried to unilaterally impose new working conditions in 1995 -- salary cap, replacement players and the like -- after claiming to have negotiated to impasse during a players' strike that wiped out the 1994 World Series. That didn't fly, either, thanks to a ruling from Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor, and soon Fehr whipped them again, essentially giving the owners nothing from their hardline, costly position.

Fehr regarded that post-strike CBA as his proudest achievement, saying, "It was a very satisfying end to say that the players got through it, they got through it in one piece and regardless of what it took to get there, they got a very good agreement."

Such pride sounded odd, given the strike's cost and especially considering that Fehr could have chosen the CBAs from 2002 and 2006, the only ones in baseball labor history to come about without a work stoppage, the latter without even the threat of one. Indeed, Fehr's greatest achievement is that with Bud Selig he helped bring about 16 uninterrupted years of labor peace (through 2011, when the current CBA expires), and despite the myths you have heard about Cal Ripken, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, this peace has done more to grow the game than anything else. But in the spirit of Miller's union, Fehr appreciated his war, his purple heart.

Truth is, Fehr's ballplayers don't have either the stomach or need for militancy that Miller's rank and file did. In that sense, Fehr's job has been harder. He doesn't have the hammer of history. Indeed, one could argue -- and Miller has been critical himself here of Fehr -- that the pendulum has swung again.

As Fehr leaves, the minimum salary for a major-league player is 16 percent less than what it is for an NHL player, despite baseball easily trumping hockey in total revenue. Player salaries haven't kept up with revenues, meaning players are getting a smaller slice of the revenue pie than they did a decade ago. The two highest paid players in the game this year, Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, have been identified in the past five months as drug cheats, more kindling on the bonfire of ruined reputations. Rodriguez, in fact, would have skated through his years of steroid use if his union had destroyed the 2003 test samples as quickly as possible, as was its right, before the feds got their hands on them. For the next two decades the Hall of Fame will go without inducting many of the players with the greatest statistics in the game because The Steroid Era went on too long. No wonder Fehr, at 60, is worn and tired and doesn't have the enthusiasm to negotiate another labor deal.

So giving Fehr his proper due without considering The Steroid Era is like saying the 1919 White Sox were a good team and Pete Rose was a good manager and leaving it at that. There is no distancing from it, just as there is no such relief for Selig, the owners, the players, the media and the fans.

What must be remembered, though, is that Fehr's primary responsibility, despite what fans may think, never was to be a custodian of the game. His job, as legally charged, is to represent the rights of his constituents to the best of ability. He was given amazingly wide berth, that "freedom" he talked about to do what he wished. He truly believed he was doing right by his players by letting the steroid culture run its course, by some ratio of design to ignorance (though more than a dollop of ignorance from such a smart man challenges the imagination). And by his own definition of the job, in which he was thrilled to "get to do what you think is the right thing to do," his personal responsibility is enormous.

Donald Fehr did his job very well, as history will record very well.