NEW YORK -- During one of his last public appearances as his health precipitously declined, Michael Weiner told a group of reporters how he viewed life during his battle with non-operable brain cancer.
'What I look for every day is beauty, meaning and joy. And if I can find beauty, meaning and joy, then that's a good day,' the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association said in the hours leading up to the 2013 All-Star Game at Citi Field. 'I'll live each day for those things. And I'll live each day looking for those things. Because I don't know how much time I'll have.'
With his family by his side at his home, Weiner lost his battle with gliobastoma on Thursday, the union said. He was 51. Wheelchair-bound and paralyzed on his right side because of the affects of the tumor, Weiner never lost hope. He underwent months of chemotherapy and radiation following his diagnosis in August 2012 and when those remedies were deemed unhelpful, he went on to an experimental regimen prescribed by his oncologists at New York's Columbia University Medical Center that he said taxed his body and sapped his energy.
Nevertheless, Weiner worked on union issues until he was incapable of doing so, having a firm hand in MLB's Biogenesis investigation involving performance-enhancing drug use, a prominent subject during the more-than-four-year tenure of Weiner and that before him of Don Fehr, now the executive director of the National Hockey League Players Association.
The erudite Weiner openly spoke about his illness, appearing publicly at All-Star events and the next day at a golf tournament to provide relief for the victims of last year's Superstorm Sandy that devastated the East Coast.
Weiner practiced the advice he gave others suffering through debilitating diseases.
'It's corny, but it works. Stay positive,' he said in March 2013 as he concluded the union's exhaustive schedule of visiting with all 30 clubs during Spring Training. 'I tell everybody this: I don't fear whatever is going to happen to me. Medically, I'm either going to have good results or I'm going to have bad results. And once you don't have fear of that, you can go on living life to the fullest. If you're afraid every time you turn around the corner, it's pretty hard to enjoy life. So I tell people, 'Try to get over whatever fear you have. Do what you have to do medically and do what you can to fight it. And then go on and enjoy life the best you can.''
Weiner was elected the union's fifth executive director on Oct. 2, 2009, replacing Fehr, who gave notice earlier that year of his intention to retire in March 2010. When the players voted to approve Weiner's rise to the post, they did so by a margin of 1,055-4. The players embraced Weiner and marveled at his courage and posture as he battled a type of tumor that is 99-percent fatal.
'Michael has been at my side during all the battles we have fought over the last 20 years and has been a major part of our successes,' Fehr said at the time of Weiner's election.
Weiner, a 1986 graduate of Harvard Law School, had been with the Players Association since 1988. He originally was the staff counsel, with the primary responsibility of administering and enforcing the Basic Agreement. Named general counsel in 2004, he was placed in charge of all legal matters involving the association.
Weiner, Fehr, chief operating officer Gene Orza and Steve Fehr, Don's brother, had formed the backbone of the union for years, following Marvin Miller's longtime tenure as union leader, as the the players and owners fought through three work stoppages and the average salary for players rose from $289,000 in 1983 to more than $3.3 million.
There has been relative labor peace since 1995, though that group is now all gone. Orza is retired and Steve Fehr followed his brother to the NHLPA.
As the previous Basic Agreement was approaching its expiration in December 2011, and Weiner led the union into an intricate line-by-line review and rewriting of the document, which took a good part of that year. The Joint Drug Agreement, which was implemented in 2002, has been reopened, reviewed and adjusted a number of times under Weiner's auspices. The Basic Agreement signed that year runs through 2016, ensuring at least 21 consecutive years of labor peace.
There is a yearly review of the program and Weiner had said that the current PED penalties for an analytical positive test -- a 50-game loss of salary and suspension for the first offense, 100-game salary loss and suspension for a second offense, and a lifetime suspension for a third -- were open to revision.
Weiner, born in Paterson, N.J., earned his undergraduate degree in political economy from Williams College in 1983, and after graduating from Harvard Law School three years later, spent 1986-88 as a clerk for a federal judge in Newark, N.J.
Barry M. Bloom is national reporter for MLB.com and writes an MLBlog, Boomskie on Baseball. Follow @boomskie on Twitter. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
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