Say what you will, Selig and Fehr are no fools on the Hill

As Bud Selig and Donald Fehr, baseball’s Capitol Hill Gang, confront another drug drilling from a congressional committee today, there is the background ticking of a contractual and chronological clock.

Inevitably -- and sooner rather than later in the context of time already served -- these C-SPAN reruns will feature new and younger leaders at baseball’s helm.

Is that day imminent?

Am I suggesting that Selig, the commissioner, and Fehr, executive director of the players’ union, should be booted now -- as their sport’s substance problem gets another national airing and intrudes again on their legacies?

The answer to both questions is no.

I am merely pointing out that we have lived with Uncle Bud and Dour Don for so long that, as hard as it is to imagine anyone else’s images solemnly flickering on our flat screens, a quiet countdown has started -- at least among those owners anticipating the difficult selection of a Selig successor.

The commissioner will be 74 in July and could be starting his next-to-last year on the job. He has served since 1992 and is working with his second three-year extension, ending after the 2009 season.

No matter how the Steroids Era ultimately clings to Selig’s stature, there is this undeniable truth:

No commissioner will have introduced and supervised more changes deemed beneficial to the game and/or seen the game reach greater heights of popularity and prosperity as fans and investors ignore the alleged damage injected by so many injections.

The new year is expected to produce a fifth straight season of record attendance. Revenue, $1.2 billion in Selig’s first year, will surpass $6 billion.

His tenure has brought realignment, expanded playoffs, interleague play, widening globalization, soaring Internet revenue and a long-delayed revenue-sharing system that has contributed to unprecedented parity.

In addition, Selig and Fehr have produced an era of unprecedented labor peace. There has been no work stoppage since the 1994-95 strike, and the current bargaining agreement extends through 2011.

As testament to the new cordiality, Selig and Fehr already have amended the bargaining contract once to toughen the steroids policy and probably will do it again to incorporate recommendations made by former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell in his report on drug use in baseball.

That report, of course, was the genesis for today’s hearing in which Selig will be able to tell the committee that, unilaterally, he already has initiated two of the Mitchell recommendations: Elimination of the 24-hour notification clubs got before their players were tested and introduction of a Department of Investigations.

The Mitchell Report named about 90 former and current players as alleged users of performance-enhancing substances, and the author is also expected to appear before the House Oversight Committee today.

However, the most potentially explosive part of the hearing -- appearances by pitchers Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte, their former trainer, Brian McNamee, and a battery of dueling lawyers -- was rescheduled for Feb. 13.

Whether Clemens used performance-enhancing substances, which he denies and McNamee alleged in the Mitchell Report, the extent to which the Steroids Era shadows Selig and Fehr into retirement, the extent to which they are held responsible for failing to act more quickly and emphatically to a spreading problem, ultimately rests on the test of time.

The brief and oft-chronicled history is that Selig and the owners, rebounding from cancellation of the 1994 World Series during the 232-day strike, for too long heard only the increased whirl of turnstiles as Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa reignited excitement with their home run battle in ‘98, prompting the commissioner and constituents to respond hesitantly to the widening abuse.

Similarly, with a steroid policy hinging on collective bargaining, Fehr and the union for too long fought testing, citing privacy rights, among other factors, as the non-cheaters complained that they were being sacrificed on the altar of higher salaries.

Now, Fehr says he should have responded more aggressively and is receptive to testing for human growth hormone or any banned substance if the “science is sound.”

“If you have a valid urine test and a banned substance, we ought to be tested for it,” he said by phone. “We’ve accepted that principle.”

Fehr is 61. He became general counsel of the union in 1977, executive director in 1985, and has been operating on a rollover one-year contract since the early ‘90s. At a time when unions are being devastated by corporations and conglomerates, the Major League Baseball Players Assn. remains among the nation’s strongest. The average salary during his tenure has increased from $330,000 to possibly more than $3 million this year.

During the period when management and the union were at each other’s throats every four or five years, it was often speculated that a weary Fehr would retire as soon as the latest dispute was resolved. He now says he has “no immediate plans” to step down while serving “strictly at the pleasure of the players.”

Whether Mike Weiner, the union’s general counsel, ultimately replaces Fehr, and Tim Brosnan, baseball’s executive vice president for business, ultimately replaces Selig is uncertain.

Whether the Steroids Era will forever haunt Selig and Fehr, tarnishing their legacy and undermining the integrity of statistics and performance, can only be decided by future historians.

This much is clear as they face the cameras again:

Given the overall health of the industry and its union, from owners to players, there can only be a sense of pleasure at how they have been served.