Baseball: Most Samples Were Discarded

More than 80% of the samples from Major League Baseball’s anonymous drug testing last year have been discarded and cannot be turned over to federal prosecutors investigating whether some of the game’s biggest stars used steroids, a baseball official said Monday.

Approximately 1,100 players were tested at random in 2003, some twice, with each test involving samples taken on two days. Of the roughly 2,900 samples, about 2,400 were thrown out before a federal subpoena was issued, said Rob Manfred, baseball’s executive vice president of labor.

A federal grand jury in San Francisco requested results for seven players recently called to testify, including Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield and Jason Giambi.

The deadline was set for Thursday, but it was unclear if results from any of those players are among the 500 vials still in storage.

The players union could file a motion to quash the subpoena, but union officials declined to comment on their plans.

The union could focus its argument on confidentiality issues surrounding the league’s effort to gauge steroid use. Players were told beforehand the results would remain anonymous.

Even when it was announced last fall that more than 5% of the results came back positive, no players were identified.

Manfred said there is a list matching players to the numbered vials but that baseball officials had not seen the names.

The federal subpoena is part of the larger BALCO case and was served on two outside contractors: Comprehensive Drug Testing of Long Beach, which administered the tests, and Quest Diagnostics of Teterboro, N.J., which analyzed the samples.

Gary Samuels, a Quest Diagnostics spokesman, declined to comment on the case but said: “Frankly, we get the samples and do the testing. I think the administration was done by the other firm.”

Executives from Comprehensive Drug Testing did not return calls.

In the meantime, baseball officials said they would not retest the samples for presence of THG, a designer steroid whose existence was not known at the time of the testing.

THG is at the heart of the federal case. The U.S. attorney’s office has charged four men with conspiracy to distribute the steroid, along with other performance-enhancing drugs, to dozens of professional baseball and football players and Olympic athletes. Bonds, Sheffield and Giambi have denied using steroids.

Jeremy Giambi, Benito Santiago, Armando Rios and Bobby Estalella were also called to testify before a San Francisco grand jury in the case.