Donald Fehr, the legendary – some would say infamous – executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association announced his retirement Monday. If you are one of the three regular readers of this page, then you would expect to see some rejoicing right now.

We here at Brushbackpitch.com have been extremely critical of Fehr. He is one of the five or six people in baseball most responsible for the financial inequities of the game. His attitudes begat Scott Boras, which is an absolutely unforgivable sin. And although baseball now has a comprehensive drug testing policy – or at least that’s what Bud Selig says – Fehr has fought the idea of drug testing at every stop.

From illegal narcotics to steroids, Fehr has consistently maintained that drug testing is an invasion of privacy. If Fehr had had his way throughout his 25-plus year tenure, baseball players today would resemble the Looney Tune Monstars from Michael Jordan’s mid-90’s movie Space Jam. They’d be ‘roided up beyond belief, hitting 861 ft. home runs and sliding head first when they stole a base so as to not break the vials of cocaine in their back pockets.

To me Fehr will always be the man who killed the 1994 World Series. He led the players into a strike in August of ’94 because MLB owners were demanding a salary cap. To Fehr, it was as if ownership was asking for the right to keep the players in little cages. The idea wasn’t only out of the question, but it was insulting and inhumane.

He dug in. He wouldn’t budge. He knew that the owners wouldn’t be as unified as the players, so he engineered a seven-and-a-half month work stoppage. Over and over again that winter, Fehr would talk to the media about salary caps being unconstitutional, and that he would never allow something to artificially slow the growth of player’s salaries.

In truth, the owners were looking for protection from themselves, and a salary cap was the only way that was going to happen. Fehr knew it. He also knew if he held the players out long enough, the owners would turn on themselves. Never mind that the average baseball fan would have supported a salary cap of some kind because it would have provided a little more continuity on rosters, and it would have allowed “small market” teams to at least keep their own home grown players (think about how much a salary cap would have helped the Montreal Expos in 1994).

He was smarmy, self righteous and smug. But he was right about ownership, and he won. Fifteen years later, Major League Baseball remains the only professional American sports league without some form of a salary cap. Fehr is an evil genius, and the perfect man for his job. He’s done everything he can to protect the rights of professional baseball players, with no plausible regard for the fans or the game, and with sometimes open disdain for management.

So why do I have a nagging feeling that his retirement is a bad thing for baseball, at least in the short term?

Well, first, I think it’s because Bud Selig isn’t going with him. Baseball needs new leadership across the board. We can’t be much clearer about that than we have on this site. Fehr, his sidekick and MLBPA Chief Operating Officer Gene Orza and Commissioner Selig have all outlived their usefulness. New ideas are in pretty short supply at the top of the baseball food chain, but they are desperately needed. If Fehr really is going to leave before the end of March, he really needs to drag those other two bozos with him.

But that’s not what’s bugging me. The problem I really see on the horizon is the current collective bargaining agreement, which expires at the end of December 2011. For all of his many, many (many, many, many, many) faults, it seems like Fehr has softened some, or at least developed a little bit of common sense in the last few years.

Yes, he opposed re-opening the CBA in 2004 and 2005 to allow for stronger drug testing in reaction to steroids, but he could have slammed his fist on the table, declared new drug testing to be an impossibility and stopped the reform that has happened dead in its tracks.

Any drug testing program has to have his initials on it. He put his personal misgivings aside and allowed it.

Even more impressive, though, is his quiet understanding of the damage he did to the game in 1994. In 2002 the MLBPA and Major League Baseball came to agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement, and there wasn’t a work stoppage. This was unprecedented in the La-La land that is MLB. It was the first time a CBA had been agreed upon without a strike since 1972.

In 2006 the CBA was in place a full two months before the old one expired. Somehow Fehr and Selig had found some common ground. They may be making some terrible mistakes in their stewardship of the game, but at least these guys have learned to play nice. They’ve learned how to keep the game going.

So now, we’ll have a new Executive Director, most likely Michael Weiner who has held the number three position with the MLBPA for years. There are ringing endorsements for him from Fehr and MLB team representatives alike. The 2011 CBA negotiations will be his first real opportunity to prove himself to the rank and file members of the union.

Meanwhile, there are new rumblings among the owners for a salary cap. A new, freshly scrubbed Executive Director will have the standards set by Fehr and Marvin Miller to live up to. And anyone who ascends to that position will undoubtedly be looking for a fight.

We’ve had sixteen years of labor peace, in part thanks to Donald Fehr, but that could change.

Expect to hear talk of a strike next season, and pray for the 2011 baseball playoffs.