Baseball Drug Test Results Are Seized

Federal agents have seized results and specimens from drug tests taken last year by several major league players, an official of the laboratory holding those materials said Friday.

The search warrant served on Quest Diagnostics was “limited in scope” and consistent with a subpoena that sought test results from San Francisco Giant slugger Barry Bonds and about a dozen other players, Quest Vice President Gary Samuels said. Samuels declined to identify any of the players or say how many there were.

The raid took place Thursday, the deadline for the two laboratories that oversaw baseball’s drug testing program to respond to the subpoena and the day the major league players’ union filed a motion to quash that subpoena.

Comprehensive Drug Testing of Long Beach collected the samples and sent them to Quest, a New Jersey firm, for analysis. Samuels said that agents provided the codes from Comprehensive Drug Testing that enabled Quest to match players to specific specimens.

When the major league drug testing program began last year, players and owners agreed that all results from the first year would remain confidential, used only to determine a collective amount of steroid use. More than 5% of those tests turned up positive, triggering a policy that includes random testing with the possibility of individual identification and punishment.

In February, however, the San Francisco grand jury that had indicted four men on charges of illegal steroid distribution -- including Bonds’ personal trainer -- issued an initial subpoena seeking test results for every major leaguer. The grand jury subsequently issued a revised subpoena, limiting its inquiry to results for players somehow linked to the federal investigation.

Bonds and New York Yankee stars Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield were among seven players who testified before the grand jury. The players have denied using steroids.

David Ross, the Dodgers’ incoming player representative, said he expected to discuss the matter with union officials shortly. Players are concerned, he said, that anonymity might no longer exist as promised and that specimens could be used in ways not agreed upon by players and owners.

“There’s not much you can do when the government steps in, but that’s not what we signed up for,” Ross said. “It’s kind of scary when we sign something and they can come in and say, we want that anyway.”