Baseball fans take odd joy in criticizing game

To believe some of the nastier rebukes directed at Donald Fehr during the outgoing union chief's long career would be to assume that he played a significant role in damaging baseball.

Except that baseball is doing very well by almost every standard. Even the welcome onset of steroids fatigue among most fans is a sign that the game is recovering from its self-inflicted wounds.

Oddly enough, an optimistic perspective is not always favored by the people who speak for and about the game.

Attendance might be down during the summer of America's financial ruin, but you'd expect that to happen. Yet when you factor in cable, satellite television and the Internet, baseball has never reached more people.

You wouldn't know how well baseball is doing, though, to hear the caterwauling of critics who claim to be the biggest fans yet spend half their time tearing down the big-league enterprise.

This constant need for so many in and out of the media to pick at scabs is bemusing. Is there something about the makeup of baseball fans that encourages masochism?

The NFL suffers its own publicized embarrassments - violent crimes, trials, imprisonments and suspensions - but pro football's media magpies, as well as fans, almost unfailingly overlook the awkward and ugly moments to blithely accentuate the positive.

Baseball would benefit from that sort of buoyant spirit.

Instead, the announcement of Fehr's retirement gives the disgruntled another excuse to gnaw at baseball's hide.

As head of the players' association, Fehr made enemies by being too good at his job. Over the past quarter century, the average player salary rose from just under $300,000 to a little less than $3 million. And baseball still has no salary cap.

Is this bad for the game? It is for fans who must absorb the cost of rising payrolls by paying more for tickets and concessions. The players often catch flak for their princely rewards, but is the union really to blame? It's the owners, isn't it, who ultimately, willingly and greedily make the decisions that lead to wildly escalating salaries.

Off base is any criticism of Fehr that assumes he held a responsibility to the franchises and their fans. That never was his job.

Even the worst indictment of his administration - that it failed to deal with steroids - must be shared by the owners and Bud Selig, and everyone else who turned a blind eye to the issue.

Labor problems that surfaced under Fehr - three work stoppages, the cancellation of the 1994 World Series - are all but forgotten now, eclipsed by the shadow of steroids.

Fehr opposed testing players until 2002. He considered testing a violation of civil liberties. He now admits that he was slow to come around to what was happening, but he had a lot of company. And while he was never able to paint a pretty face on the privacy issue, making him out to be the villain is just too convenient.

What about the personal responsibility of the players themselves? What about the owners, who never really pushed as hard for drug testing as they did for ways to make more money?

At any rate, it's perfectly predictable that the Debbie Downers would seize on Fehr's departure to once again drag baseball through a great dismal swamp of recriminations and regret.

There may be no crying in baseball, but the whining never stops.

Bob Molinaro, (757) 446-2373, bob.molinaro@pilotonline.com