Tell Todd that Bettman is the hero, not Fehr

Jack Todd’s take on sports as he delves into its many characters and characteristics has its moments. I admire his tenacity and steadfastness when attacking something he strongly believes in, but he is way off the mark by relentlessly attacking NHL commissioner Gary Bettman in multiple columns.

In Todd’s most recent rant (Gazette, Dec. 10, “Time for Bettman to get down to business with Fehr”), he correctly points out that the NHL has lost more games to labour disruptions than the NBA, NFL and MLB combined. But I wonder if Todd remembers who the Major League Baseball Players Association executive director was when we lost the 1994 baseball season due to a work stoppage. This happened to be a season when our own Montreal Expos had the best record in baseball. Many believe this stoppage marked the beginning of the fall of professional baseball in Montreal. You would think that Todd, being a current Montrealer, would remember that the players’ leader at that time was his hero, Donald Fehr.

With no salary cap and ridiculous discrepancies in team payrolls (the New York Yankees’ $220 million vs. the Tampa Bay Rays’ $64 million, for example), baseball has become a joke. Fehr made sure to keep the salary cap out of baseball and, in doing so, ensured MLB’s demise. Todd quotes player agent Allan Walsh, who says baseball learned the hard way that it couldn’t crack Fehr and that the best approach for all is to work with him. I say God forbid.

I propose that the single most productive and bravest action taken by a professional sports commissioner in the past quarter century was when Gary Bettman won the salary cap for the NHL, believing so much in the concept that he shut down the league for an entire season to accomplish his goal. The salary cap was a huge win for fans, players, owners and the league. The NHL is a far superior league now compared to what it was before Bettman took the courageous action he did.

Bettman is a tough, arrogant, stubborn, egotistical commissioner, but he is the most impressive commissioner I have seen in my lifetime. When his tenure in the NHL is over, I hope he will consider succeeding the wimp who presides over MLB. In a perfect world, Fehr will go back into retirement and take his good friend Todd with him.

Steven Besner Dollard des Ormeaux