Steroid Situation Heats Up

As the question of steroid use clouded another day of spring training, the major league players’ union defended itself against charges made by an increasing number of its members that baseball’s steroid testing program is hopelessly ineffective.

“No one at the union is in favor of steroid use,” Michael Weiner, associate general counsel, said Tuesday. “We’re in favor of a fair agreement that deals with the problem and protects players’ rights, and that’s what I think we have.”

Three of baseball’s most prominent sluggers -- Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield -- received steroids illegally from Bonds’ personal trainer, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Tuesday, citing information provided to federal investigators. The Chronicle said that information did not explicitly show the players had used the substances.

Greg Anderson, the trainer, is one of four men indicted on charges of trafficking in steroids and other performance-enhancing substances through BALCO, the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, in Burlingame, Calif.

Federal authorities also were told that Anderson provided human growth hormone to Bonds and steroids to baseball players Marvin Benard, Benito Santiago and Randy Velarde and football player Bill Romanowski, the Chronicle reported. Romanowski was released Tuesday by the Oakland Raiders after failing a physical examination.

Bonds, who has denied using steroids, told reporters gathered around him Tuesday at the San Francisco Giants’ Arizona training camp to “get out of my locker.” New York Yankee teammates Sheffield and Giambi also have denied steroid use, and Sheffield told reporters at the Yankees’ Florida camp, “If you’re not guilty, why would you worry?”

At baseball’s New York headquarters, U.S. Rep. John Sweeney (R-N.Y.) announced the introduction of a bill to broaden the definition of illegal steroids and stiffen penalties for steroid distribution.

Sweeney said union “leadership chooses to ignore their own membership ... and isn’t concerned about the overriding public health issue.”

Commissioner Bud Selig, in a statement issued from his office in Milwaukee, and President Bob DuPuy pledged a commitment to “zero tolerance” of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs.

Selig reiterated that minor leaguers were subject to year-round, random testing, “and the penalties, beginning with the first offense, are meaningful.” In the major leagues, where union approval is required, Selig described the program of in-season random testing as a “first step.”

While administrators of drug testing in Olympic sports have dismissed the major league protocol as meaningless -- citing in part the absence of year-round testing and the failure to suspend players for a first offense -- a growing number of players have criticized the program as well during spring training.

“I don’t think anything is going to change,” Texas Ranger pitcher Kenny Rogers said in Tuesday’s Dallas Morning News. “Nothing. You’d have to be a complete moron to get suspended. And if you get suspended, the first time, it’s really not much more than a few extra tee times.”

The union first accepted drug testing in the 2002 collective bargaining agreement, but only after owners agreed to an initial year in which penalties would not be imposed.

After 5% to 7% of steroid tests given to major leaguers came back positive last year, a protocol was triggered in which a player would be put into treatment after a first positive test but not suspended or identified. Players could be suspended only for repeat offenses, and five offenses would be required for a one-year suspension.

“Personally, I think guys who test positive should be identified,” Angel pitcher Jarrod Washburn said. “If you’re breaking the rules and get caught, you should be penalized for that, but that’s not how it is.”

Angel pitcher Derrick Turnbow was banned from international competition for two years -- and publicly named -- after testing positive during an Olympic training camp last fall for traces of a steroid banned in the Olympics but not in major league baseball and sold legally in the United States.

Under the agreement between owners and the union, the only players subject to a two-year suspension would be those guilty of a second offense for selling or distributing drugs. A first offense for the sale or distribution of an illegal substance calls for a suspension of no longer than 90 days.

Weiner, the union official, spoke to reporters after meeting with Angel players on a routine spring training visit. He denied the union had impeded strengthening of the testing program.

Last spring, several players on the Chicago White Sox threatened to refuse to take the drug test, hoping to help trigger testing with penalties this year, since every refusal would have been counted as a positive test. The union ordered the players to cooperate. And, last week, after Sheffield volunteered to take a drug test for anyone who asked, union executive Gene Orza told him to take no tests outside the program.

“This union agreed, and these players agreed, to a testing program,” Weiner said. “There’s going to be testing for steroids of every major league player this year. I don’t think it’s fair for people to criticize that program before it’s even begun. ...

“We had a survey last year, and people said at the time that the survey is a joke, the threshold will never be met, and there won’t be any more testing. It turned out the survey was serious, the threshold was met and now we have testing individually.”

Said shortstop David Eckstein, the Angels’ player representative: “This is a first step. Let’s see how this works. If the players and the union don’t think it will work, we’ll make an adjustment.”

Weiner declined to discuss the report of players receiving steroids, noting no player has been charged with a crime or targeted in the San Francisco grand jury investigation that triggered the indictments. Anderson and the other three men have pleaded not guilty.

In a statement Tuesday, the attorney for Bonds, Michael Rains, said: “We continue to adamantly deny that Barry was provided, furnished or supplied any illegal substances at any time by Greg Anderson. This latest pronouncement is a complete disregard to the truth.”

The controversy nonetheless threatens to overshadow what should be a great season for baseball, with the Yankees and Boston Red Sox escalating their bitter rivalry, the Angels eager to show off Vladimir Guerrero and their other new players, the Astros fortified by hometown stars Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte and the Chicago Cubs in search of an elusive World Series.

But players paraded before the grand jury during the off-season to provide testimony in the federal steroids case, including Bonds, whose record performance of 73 home runs in 2001 now is enveloped in suspicion. In his State of the Union address, President Bush -- the former owner of the Rangers -- called upon baseball and other sports to eradicate steroid use. U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft personally announced the indictments of the four men charged in the federal steroid case.

The sport’s website, mlb.com, prominently featured video and audio of Tuesday’s news conference in which Sweeney and DuPuy appeared jointly. Selig has spoken out repeatedly, including in an op-ed piece in Saturday’s Chronicle and subsequently posted on mlb.com, vowing to continue the fight toward “zero tolerance” and reiterating that owners cannot act without the cooperation of the union.

“It’s standard crisis PR practice,” said Paul Swangard, managing director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon. “The owners are worried. The people who run baseball are worried.”

Swangard noted that dozens of positive tests turned up last year, although no players were identified.

“You wonder whether the fans care,” he said. “That’s the X factor. You could set foot in any baseball stadium in the country and see somebody who got caught in the testing.

“Once they rope the names in, it could have all kinds of impact on consumer behavior.”

Bonds has not been charged with any crime and has not been proven to have used steroids, but the names don’t get much bigger.

“It’s hard to say how big this story would be if it wasn’t the big guys getting accused,” Washburn said. “I’m sure it wouldn’t be a front-page national story if it was someone like me.”

Associated Press contributed to this report.

*(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

The BALCO

Chronology

Key moments of the BALCO probe:

* Sept. 3, 2003: Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO), a Northern California company specializing in nutritional supplements for high-end athletes, is raided by two government agencies.

* Oct. 16, 2003: U.S. anti-doping authorities say they have uncovered widespread use by track and field athletes of a new and previously undetected designer steroid -- tetrahydrogestrinone, or THG -- linking its development and distribution to BALCO.

* Nov. 13, 2003: Major League Baseball announces that more than 5% of random tests conducted on players last season were positive for steroid use, triggering a stricter testing regimen in 2004 that will punish offenders.

* Dec. 4, 2003: San Francisco Giant slugger Barry Bonds testifies before a federal grand jury in San Francisco investigating whether BALCO distributed steroids and other banned drugs.

* Feb. 10, 2004: The grand jury subpoenas the results of drug tests performed on all major league players last year.

* Feb. 13, 2004: BALCO founder Victor Conte, BALCO Vice President James Valente, personal trainer Greg Anderson and world-class track coach Remi Korchemny plead not guilty to distributing steroids to sports stars.

* Feb. 17, 2004: Anderson, Bonds’ personal trainer, tells federal agents he gave steroids to several baseball players, according to documents. No players are identified in the documents.

* Feb. 27, 2004: Bonds’ name appears on a document listing steroids and dosages seized by federal agents, but the slugger never took the drugs, says lawyer J. Tony Serra, who represents Anderson.