Opposites Attract Over Steroid Policy

Seldom have baseball management and the players’ union been more united. The widespread criticism of their steroid-testing program has forged a backs-to-the-wall link between these strange bedfellows.

They also clearly share the realization that they can’t regress.

Having put a steroid plan in place -- no matter the flaws and critical reception -- they’re hooked. They can’t go back to a see-no-evil era of no program at all when the current bargaining agreement expires after the 2006 season.

The union, of course, won’t publicly commit to testing beyond 2006 because to do so would be sacrificing a powerful bargaining chip in the next negotiations. However, a union lawyer acknowledged that flak jackets might be necessary if it were announced that the next agreement made no provision for testing.

Said Rob Manfred, baseball’s executive vice president of labor relations:

“That’s three years down the line, but my directive from the commissioner is to make a continuing effort to reduce and eliminate performance-enhancing drugs in the future. I can’t believe we would retreat from that.”

As it stands, for the first time, there will be a more stringent program of random testing in 2004 and 2005.

If the positive tests in those two years equal more than 2.5%, the same testing will continue in 2006. If the number is less than 2.5%, the program reverts to survey testing in ‘06, the 2003 procedure that produced 5-7% positive tests, surpassing the 5% threshold and triggering the tougher program in the next two years.

Of course, “tougher” and “more stringent” are in the eye of the beholder, and baseball has been taking a beating for a program that many steroid experts insist is not nearly tough or stringent enough.

Dick Pound, a Montreal lawyer who is president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, hasn’t let up, insisting baseball’s methodology is flawed and the discipline a joke.

Pound has characterized the baseball program as an insult to the anti-doping movement, and in a conversation with Times colleague Alan Abrahamson the other day, he said:

“The difference seems to be that in an entertainment sport [the category in which he puts baseball] it doesn’t matter what the gladiators do or are willing to do to get out there [on the field]. But in the real Olympic sports, we don’t think cheating is right. And we’re trying to do something about it.”

Certainly, that’s a good thing. It’s easier to sleep knowing that there’s no cheating in those “real Olympic sports” such as rhythmic gymnastics, team handball and curling.

Pound’s criticism is devalued by baseball.

“If I was Dick Pound and could pass whatever set of rules I wanted, our program would probably look different as well,” Manfred said.

“We have a union, and the situation is what it is. It’s more difficult and complicated to get where you want to be in a collective bargaining environment.”

Said Gene Orza, the union’s associate general counsel, “All of this posturing and moral superiority is just nuts.”

For one thing, he said, you can’t compare baseball to the Olympics.

“Olympic athletes are instrumentalities of their event,” Orza said. “The IOC doesn’t give a ... about privacy.

“They own you. It wouldn’t be that way if their athletes were unionized. It’s doubtful there would even be an Olympics if they had that attitude.”

Collective bargaining may be a fact of life in baseball, but isn’t that an apologist’s approach for failing to come up with the strongest program possible at a time of public skepticism about bulked-up players and possibly tainted records?

United now in the face of criticism, neither side can be absolved from the delays in initiating a program and the weaknesses in the one finally implemented.

Management turned its head, thinking fans had welcomed the offensive boom.

The union rapped on as always about privacy rights.

No year-round testing? No identification and discipline of first-time offenders?

The NFL, for example, incorporates both in a program that was also collectively bargained.

Of course, no union in the country is stronger than baseball’s, and Orza takes the position that in this country, you’re innocent until proven guilty.

“We’ve never said to the players that we’ll back them if they use steroids,” Orza said. “If 5% to 7% means that somewhere between 43 and 85 players tested positive, that’s 43 to 85 too many. We want to find the guilty players but we want to do it in a way that’s consistent with the principles of the country.”

That does not mean testing in a player’s home on Thanksgiving Day, Orza said, or testing throughout the year.

It means two tests within a five- to seven-day period for every player at some point between March 2 and Sept. 28. If those tests are negative, the player doesn’t have to worry about using again until the following year.

Too lenient? Well, why should players be different from any other segment of the population, Orza asks. There have to be guidelines.

“It amazes me that these critics never draw any kind of analogy,” he said.

“I mean, it’s safe to say that driving under the influence of alcohol is a far bigger threat to society than ballplayers taking steroids.

“But would we ask every citizen to take a Breathalyzer test ... before getting in their car?

“No one would stand for that because it’s too intrusive. But players don’t matter, don’t count, because they make a lot of money. They’re supposed to sacrifice rights that you and I keep, and the union gets accused of protecting cheaters.

“We think we’re protecting the players’ rights and interests. If that makes us publicly unpopular, unions have never been about popularity but about democracy in the workplace.”

Baseball’s management and union have often battled over how much democracy should be allowed in the workplace.

How strange now to find them comrades in a verbal battle against those claiming they needed to be more totalitarian when it came to steroids.