Michael Weiner, Peacemaking Leader of Baseball Union, Dies at 51
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
Published: November 21, 2013
Michael Weiner, the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, who forged agreements with the club owners that enhanced drug testing and brought years of labor peace to the game after decades of strife, died on Thursday at his home in Mansfield Township, N.J. He was 51.
Frank Franklin II/Associated Press
Michael Weiner at a news conference in 2011, the year he negotiated a five-year labor agreement with Major League Baseball.
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Mr. Weiner, whose death was announced by the players association, had brain cancer. He announced in August 2012 that he had a brain tumor but continued in his post through the union’s representation of players implicated this year in the Biogenesis drug scandal.
Tony Clark, the union’s director of player services and a former major league first baseman, was promoted to the newly created post of deputy executive director in late July, becoming the second in command, a week after Mr. Weiner held a news conference during the All-Star break to discuss the Biogenesis case and his medical condition.
He had lost the ability to walk and to use his right arm.
“What I look for each day is beauty, meaning and joy,” Mr. Weiner said, “and if I can find beauty, meaning and joy, that’s a good day.”
While undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, Mr. Weiner relinquished his second position of general counsel last February.
In November 2011, Mr. Weiner’s union and the baseball owners reached a five-year labor agreement giving Major League Baseball the most comprehensive drug-testing program of any pro sports league in North America.
An outgrowth of baseball’s steroid era, the agreement permits the blood testing of ballplayers for human growth hormone, a prescription substance that can speed recovery from injuries.
The accord was initially limited to testing during spring training, the off-season and instances of reasonable cause during the season. But labor and management agreed last January to start general unannounced testing during the regular season as well.
They also adopted a sophisticated testing regimen to detect abnormal testosterone levels in players’ bodies.
“Players want a program that is tough, scientifically accurate, backed by the latest proven scientific methods and fair,” Mr. Weiner said.
The 2011 agreement was Mr. Weiner’s third as the union’s lead negotiator. He headed the union after the long and often tumultuous tenures of Marvin Miller, a pioneering figure in the sports labor movement, and Donald Fehr, who took over the union leadership after the brief tenure of Ken Moffett, a former federal labor mediator, and retained it until retiring in December 2009.
Mr. Fehr is now the head of the N.H.L. players union.
An informal presence at the bargaining table, partial to blue jeans, flannel shirts with no necktie, and high-top Chuck Taylor All-Stars, Mr. Weiner pressed his points without a hard edge. He was known for his mastery of contract details and his willingness to listen to and consider — though not necessarily accede to — management’s arguments.
When Mr. Weiner was preparing to succeed Mr. Fehr, he remarked how “there has been a greater acceptance by the owners and by the commissioner’s office of the role the union has in the game and in the business.”
Rob Manfred, Weiner’s management counterpart as baseball’s executive vice president for labor relations, said at the time that he regarded Mr. Weiner as “tough and smart, but also fair.”
“Over the years, we have found creative ways to bridge our differences,” Mr. Manfred told The New York Times.
When Mr. Weiner called the team labor representatives together to announce he was being treated for a brain tumor, Drew Storen, the Washington Nationals pitcher and player representative, remarked, “He’s a guy who is so sharp, and he’s such a powerful person, but he’s so humble and easy to talk to.”
Barry Meister, a longtime player agent, told ESPN in 2009 that Mr. Weiner was particularly adept at marshaling his facts in salary arbitration hearings without flaunting his intellect or injecting ego into the proceedings.
“Michael is a genius,” Mr. Meister said, “but he’s a regular genius.”
Michael Weiner, Peacemaking Leader of Baseball Union, Dies at 51
Published: November 21, 2013
Michael S. Weiner was born on Dec. 21, 1961, in Paterson, N.J., where his father, Isaac, founded a construction company. The eldest of three children, he grew up in Pompton Lakes, N.J., rooting for the Yankees, and he played third base for his high school baseball team.
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He graduated from Williams College with a degree in political economy in 1983 and from Harvard Law School in 1986.
After leaving Harvard, Mr. Weiner spent two years as a clerk to Judge H. Lee Sarokin of the United States District Court in Newark. He later credited the judge’s genial demeanor in the courtroom with influencing his approach to collective bargaining, which he felt could be conducted without acrimony, notwithstanding the high stakes and often complex issues.
Mr. Weiner’s path to the players union began after Judge Sarokin introduced him to his friend Larry Fleischer, the general counsel of the N.B.A. players union and its former president. Mr. Fleischer in turn brought Mr. Weiner to the attention of Mr. Fehr, who hired him as a baseball union lawyer in September 1988.
Mr. Weiner was named the union’s general counsel in 2004, but two years before that he took the lead in negotiating a contract with ownership. He was the union’s chief negotiator as well for the labor agreements reached in 2006 and 2011.
The current agreement will assure labor peace through 2016, giving baseball uninterrupted play since the 232-day strike of 1994-95 that brought cancellation of the ’94 World Series. That walkout came after a series of strikes or lockouts dating to 1972.
Mr. Weiner’s survivors include his wife, Diane Margolin, and three daughters, Margie, Grace and Sally.
Last January, Mr. Weiner reflected on the state of baseball labor relations.
“Most of the time that I’ve been here, there’s been some kind of crisis,” he told The Star-Ledger of Newark. “Either collusion, or bargaining, or issues with the drug program, with Congress and things like that. At this point, we always have issues, but we don’t have that real crisis. And that’s something to be proud of.”
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