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ONE ON ONE with Donald Fehr.(director of Major League Baseball Players Association)(Brief Article)
Baseball's collective-bargaining agreement is set to expire this fall, which means Donald Fehr again will become one of baseball's central figures. TSN senior writer Ken Rosenthal explores the mindset of the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association.
TSN: How do you view the state of the game?
Fehr: When I look back five years and look at where we are now, the kind of attendance figures we've had, the new TV contracts, new stadiums from one end of the country to the other--the general level of excitement--you've got to feel pretty good about it.
The raw numbers are just very encouraging.
TSN: How legitimate are the concerns about disparity that have been raised by commissioner Bud Selig?
Fehr: While it's an issue that I know the owners are going to raise in bargaining--and clearly, we're prepared to sit down, hear them out, discuss it with them and look at their concerns in a lot of detail--it's pretty difficult in advance to say much more about it.
If we went back 10 or 12 years and tried to figure out what the terrible, no-hope franchises were, they would be Cleveland, Atlanta, Seattle and San Francisco, among others. Needless to say, their fortunes have changed a little bit.