http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/news/drug_policy.jsp?content=timeline

quote:

---

June 18, 2002: At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., Senators Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and John McCain (R-Ariz) tell Commissioner Bud Selig and MLB Players Association executive director Don Fehr that a strict drug testing program at the Major League level must be negotiated during collective bargaining for a new Basic Agreement, which is about to expire. Up to this point, no MLB player can be tested for drug use without probable cause. Fehr tells the committee that the Congress should enact laws to ban over-the-counter sales of performance-enhancing substances.

---

quote:

---

August 30, 2002: MLB and the union unveil Major League Baseball's Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program as an addendum to the new Basic Agreement, which is bargained at the 11th hour just as the players are about to go out on strike. The new policy calls for "Survey Testing" in 2003 to gauge the use of steroids among players on the 40-man rosters of each club. The tests will be anonymous and no one will be punished.

---

quote:

---

March 1, 2003: Drug testing begins in Major League Spring Training camps. Some teams, including the Chicago White Sox, consider balking at taking the tests to skew the results. A refusal to participate in the "Survey" phase is considered a positive test. That first year, all MLB players on the 40-man rosters are subject to be randomly tested once. In addition, MLB had the right to retest up to 240 players a second time by the end of the season. All players ultimately complied and took the tests.

---

quote:

---

Nov. 13, 2003: MLB announced that 5-to-7 percent of 1,438 tests were positive during the 2003 season, well above the threshold, setting in motion mandatory testing for performance-enhancing drugs with punishments for the first time in Major League history. The first positive test put a player on a medical track that includes treatment and further testing. Otherwise, there's no punitive for a first positive test.

---

Probably because they thought there wouldn't be enough players dumb enough to actually test positive which would trigger mandatory testing. They thought wrong.

but did the MLBPA not have all the leverage in the 2002 negotiation?

after holding out so long against mandatory, random testing, why'd they give an inch?

It was Congress. Everybody knew they were using steroids and people were mad. Congress was getting involved in labor resolutions and steroid issue. Baseball didn't want them around, so it made the deal.

And yes, that is exactly right. MLB players union set a ridiculously easy hurdle to avoid testing. But they were too stupid to pass the open book test, thus escalating the testing.

quote:

---

Everybody knew they were using steroids and people were mad.

---

were they mad? i can't remember.

the balco raid wasn't until 2003.

i just remember this being a popular talking point:

http://static.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/stark_jayson/1449183.html

quote:

---

SAN FRANCISCO -- Just when you thought this World Series couldn't get any wilder, now it's turned into an Oliver Stone movie.

But what should we call it? "Nine Innings in October?" . . . "Rocketball Street?" . . . "There's Something About Rawlings?"

Feel free to submit your suggestions. Because all of a sudden, the conspiracy theorists were combing Pac Bell Park on Monday, looking for signs that the official World Series baseball has been mysteriously altered.

We're not sure how this happened. All we know is, one minute, we were enjoying a laid-back, Steinbrenner-free postseason. The next minute, long balls were flying all over Anaheim, an 11-10 World Series game was breaking out, and Angels pitchers were sitting around their clubhouse, sawing baseballs in half.

"I can't tell you the explanation for this," said Angels closer Troy Percival, in the hours after the second-highest-scoring one-run game in World Series history. "But this ball is way harder than any ball I've ever thrown. This is the hardest ball I've ever seen."

---

lol

quote:

---

Just when you thought this World Series couldn't get any wilder, now it's turned into an Oliver Stone movie.

But what should we call it? "Nine Innings in October?" . . . "Rocketball Street?" . . . "There's Something About Rawlings?"

---

I still remember the HR in that series that Bonds hit into outer space off of Perceval. It was one of the most ridiculous things in sports I've ever seen. I don't think that ball has landed yet.

Because a majority of players don't use and they want the sport clean.

Exactly, most do not want to have to cheat in order to compete at The Game's highest level.

so the MLBPA agreed to a survey year in order to clean up the sport?

I think they knew it would fail. Many teams and players almost boycotted to get counted as a failure to skew the results.

so if they knew it would fail and wanted to clean up the game, why all the pretense?

why not go fully mandatory with severe penalties at that negotiation?

why wait for game of shadows and the mitchell report and all the rest?

I'm with birdman. They had to do something due to the pressure from Congress and the public eye overall, so they took a shot at an avenue where they could have said "See, it's not a problem" and continued to ignore it (or at least taken a token approach). But they ****ed it up when they failed it anyway.

If a majority of players wanted the sport clean, they would have gotten right down to it and agreed to implementing a permanent, thorough program from the get-go.

[This message has been edited by DannyDuberstein (edited 1/15/2014 12:20p).]

what was Congress going to do to the MLBPA?

Probably nothing directly. But indirectly, I think they could have done a fair amount of damage to the game's earning power - and the league's earning power being damaged means the player's wallets end up damaged.

fascinating, in retrospect

quote:

---

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Several U.S. Senators put pressure on the Major League Baseball Players Association on Tuesday morning to accept some kind of drug testing program that would prohibit the use of steroids and over-the-counter bodybuilding drugs.
That pointed position was elucidated by U.S. Senators Byron Dorgan (D-N.D) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) and was directed at players union Executive Director Don Fehr during a two-hour subcommittee hearing investigating the use of steroids in baseball, in particular, and amateur sports, in general.

Noting that the National Basketball Association and the National Football League already have such drug-testing programs, McCain told Fehr and representatives of Major League Baseball and the players that, "We'd like to see an agreement between the (baseball) players and owners, and we want it done in a reasonable period of time."

Bob DuPuy, baseball's president and chief operating officer, sat in the gallery Tuesday and said the hearing put the proper focus on the problem. Baseball players are currently not barred from using steroids or over-the-counter bodybuilding drugs even though use of steroids is prohibited in the U.S. unless prescribed by a physician.

"Everybody in this room, with the exception of one person, (publicly) favors a testing program," said DuPuy, who did not give testimony. "You didn't hear much opposition. There was just one abstention."

DuPuy was speaking about Fehr, who was non-committal in his testimony about reaching such an agreement with the owners during the current collective bargaining sessions that resume in New York on Wednesday. Fehr told the subcommittee that even though use of bodybuilding substances is wrong, "successful collective bargaining is not likely to take place in public, even before a Senate committee."

"There's an issue there, and it's going to have to be dealt with," Fehr said in an interview after the hearing. "We'll bargain an agreement, and we'll see what the agreement is. But I'm not going to get into anything that would come up in bargaining in that regard."

Fehr gave testimony at the hearing along with Rob Manfred, MLB's vice president of labor relations and human resources, and Jerry Colangelo, the managing general partner of MLB's Arizona Diamondbacks and the NBA's Phoenix Suns.

Manfred told the subcommittee that baseball was ready to move forward on unannounced drug-testing of Major League players for steroids three times a year, a program that was implemented in the minor leagues last season. He also said MLB has spent more than $1 million on a minor league drug testing program that provides treatment for first-time offenders and discipline for repeat offenders.

Confidentially is a strict component of that program, Manfred said.

"We made a similar proposal to the union in March on this issue, and they still haven't responded," Manfred said in an interview after the hearing. "Our attention to the issue in baseball speaks for itself."

Colangelo said he was shocked to learn that baseball didn't have a steroid drug-testing program similar to the NBA's when he became owner of the expansion Diamondbacks in 1998. The NBA collectively bargained such a program in 1999. That league also tests for the use of illegal recreational drugs such as marijuana and cocaine.

"It's important that all the players be thrown into the same hopper," Colangelo said in a post-hearing interview. "To put in a program that bans these substances is not only for their individual health, but it's for the health of the industry and the game. It's the credibility. It's the impact on young kids. It's everything you heard in there today."

Steroid use also has serious medical downsides, Dr. Bernard Greisemer told the subcommittee. It elevates the body's testosterone level to increase muscle mass, but the drug can cause strokes, heart and/or liver damage, elevated cholesterol levels and aggressive behavior. Over-the-counter drugs, such as androstenedione, also raise testosterone levels. The Senators were also concerned that baseball address the list of those substances in any mandatory testing program.

"The list of organ systems in young athletes that potentially can suffer adverse effects includes nearly every organ system in the human body," Greisemer said.

The hearing was called by Dorgan upon the insistence of McCain after two ex-players estimated last month in a Sports Illustrated article that about half of all baseball players currently use steroids or some kind of muscle-enhancing drug.

Former third baseman Ken Caminiti told SI that he used steroids while playing for the San Diego Padres in 1996, the year he was named National League Most Valuable Player.

In the same article, Caminiti and former outfielder Chad Curtis said that 50 percent of the players currently in the Major Leagues are using some form of steroids. Jose Canseco, who retired this season, said he would talk about steroid use in an upcoming book about his career.

Dorgan is chairman of the Consumer Affairs, Foreign Commerce and Tourism subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee. The subcommittee has legislative jurisdiction from the Senate to oversee sports in the U.S. on both professional and amateur levels.

The subcommittee can make recommendations to the full Senate to adopt new laws or restrictions regarding the sale of over-the-counter bodybuilding drugs. In fact, both Manfred and Fehr urged the Senate to ban such legal over-the-counter drugs as andro, a substance Mark McGwire acknowledged using in 1998, the year he hit 70 home runs to break Roger Maris' 37-year-old record.

Dorgan said the subcommittee would take that request under advisement, though it made no formal recommendations during Tuesday's hearing. The subcommittee primarily attempted to pressure baseball into cleaning up its own environment.

The MLBPA, like many labor unions, has resisted drug testing as an invasion of privacy, particularly when the test is conducted without cause. A program of drug testing based on reasonable cause that a player has engaged in misconduct exists in baseball today, Fehr told the committee.

Colangelo, though, said privacy shouldn't be the issue that thwarts mandatory drug testing.

"You can deal with that," he said. "In the NBA, there was recognition there was a problem. The union agreed to address it. And we did. We have to do the same thing in this sport."

---

i still don't understand what sort of pressure Congress was threatening to bring down on baseball. i mean, the anti-trust exemption is the nuclear option, so there's always that. how were they going to impact the league otherwise, when the drug testing protocols were a matter of the CBA?

quote:

---

i still don't understand what sort of pressure Congress was threatening to bring down on baseball

---

By this time, I'm pretty sure NFL, NBA, and NHL all had drug testing programs. PED use was getting more attention than ever, and it looked bad for MLB that they didn't have something. And no one enjoys having Congress on their ass and having to go to Congressional hearings. Once it reaches that point, you do something if for no other season that just to get Congress out of your hair. You cannot completely dismiss or ignore congress, especially once its all happening out in public, b/c like you said that brings nuclear options like anti-trust exemption to the table.

So they budged the minimum amount. They said let's test for a year to see if there's even an issue. Remember their position was what steroids, we don't have them, this isn't a problem. They set the bar ridiculously low so that it was pretty impossible to trigger full testing. What they didn't account for was 5-7% of their union being dumb enough to test positive when it was announced from the mountaintops in August 2002 "HEY GUYS, THERE'S GOING TO BE TESTING STARTING NEXT YEAR. YES IT STARTS IN 2003 so 4 MONTHS FROM NOW. YEAH, SO WHATEVER YOU'RE ON, NOW MIGHT BE A GOOD TIME TO START CYCLING OFF BEFORE JANUARY GETS HERE".

The plan was to get the survey results, show less than 1 or 2% of players were on roids, then mandatory testing doesn't get triggered and they get to have their old status quo back.

But there were enough dumbass players who ruined the plan, still failed for PEDs anyway, and triggered the testing. L-O-L.

quote:

---

i still don't understand what sort of pressure Congress was threatening to bring down on baseball

---

Doesn't Congress have the power to revoke the anti-trust clause that was given to baseball stating that it was not a monopoly?

quote:

---

Doesn't Congress have the power to revoke the anti-trust clause

---

Yes they do, and just the threat of it is usually enough to get baseball's attention and get off the can.

Anti-trust is always the nuclear option, but I don't think the players necessarily caved because they were worried about anti-trust. I just think at some point, you grow tired of being called on the carpet and made a fool of in front of your fanbase (which can hurt your wallet). And as as seen with Bonds, Clemens, etc, if you keep getting called in front of the feds and put under oath, it can get very painful, expensive, and risky to maintain the lie. And as long as the MLBPA didn't cooperate to some level of testing, that was going to keep happening. In general, you run a higher risk of the feds deciding it's worth their while to stick their nose in the player's business if they don't think MLB is going to do anything about it. And in the end, that means potentially harsher penalties than what you could negotiate with MLB in a testing agreement.

[This message has been edited by DannyDuberstein (edited 1/16/2014 5:06p).]

congress was going to put a drug testing program in place if MLB didn't. thats why one was done.

that wasn't at all obvious or explicit from the articles I found

do you have a link? under what authority did they have to install a mandatory drug testing program into the CBA?

and, of course, they did have a drug testing program in 2001

it just had no teeth compared to the other leagues. and that was due to the union's relative power, from what I can tell.

their authority to do so came from the stick of the threat to limit the antitrust exemption.


Having that exemption is important enough to the owners that they got in line.

thanks for the reply.

the owners clearly want Congress happy. but why'd the union cave and help them out?

I guess as it's been pointed out that the union probably thought they could get a win-win with the survey year: placate Congress to avoid upsetting the status quo and keep the relatively tame steroid enforcement in place.

and then they f'ed themselves.

of course, if a strike had occurred then the owners would have leaked that the impasse was about steroids, which would have crushed the union's public support.

Players were scared because of the unknown. The system in place paid them a lot of money.

Congress might upset the apple cart and players had no idea what new system might be. It might shut down the league and they get nothing for awhile. Or the new system might have hard and fast salary cap.

Or Congress could have strong armed them into mandatory testing along the lines of Olympians. They are role models. They're using public funds for stadiums. And so on.