Donnelly Willing to Pay the Replacement Costs

There is still a little sting, Brendan Donnelly admits, when representatives from the Major League Baseball Players Assn. hand out licensing-revenue checks to players during their annual spring training meeting, and the Angel reliever is left out.

It happened again Friday when all of the Angels on the 40-man roster -- except Donnelly -- received checks for about $20,000 from union chief Donald Fehr. Donnelly, a 33-year-old right-hander, is not eligible for union financial benefits because he participated in spring training games as a replacement player in 1995.

Though he admits to being ignorant of the labor issues involved in the 1994-95 work stoppage and accepts the stigma attached to those who crossed picket lines to play, Donnelly does not regret his decision to sign with the Cincinnati Reds in the spring of 1995.

Had he not played, he probably wouldn’t be where he is today: an established major league set-up man, a 2003 All-Star and a member of the Angels’ 2002 World Series championship team.

“I was a bouncer in a bar in Albuquerque, thinking I might go back to school -- I was basically a softball player off the street -- when the Reds offered me $5,000 and a guaranteed one-year minor league contract,” Donnelly said.

“I bought an engagement ring for my wife, a gold chain for myself and started the journey that got me here. I thought my career was over in 1995. But that’s where my career started to take off. If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

Donnelly, who was released by the White Sox in 1993 and by the Cubs in 1994, had a breakthrough 1995 season, compiling a 1.10 earned-run average in 65 2/3 innings over 47 games for Class-A Charleston (W. Va.) and Winston-Salem (N.C.), and touched triple-A for three games at the end of the season. He spent six more years in the minor leagues before finally catching on with the Angels -- for good -- in 2002.

Donnelly’s name was omitted from the official MLB-licensed championship T-shirts in 2002, but his teammates had another T-shirt made -- with Donnelly’s name -- and presented it to him after the World Series, a gesture that began a healing process that seems complete today.

“The biggest thing is that the players understood and accepted me, and when that happened, to me, that ended everything,” said Donnelly, who is allowed to sit in on union meetings. “There were 25 guys in here who said, ‘Hey, it’s all right.’ They all know I’m one of the players here. There’s no separation.”

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Fehr said the new drug-testing policy should be finalized over the next few days and will be ratified by players next week. He is confident an “overwhelming majority” of players will vote in favor of the proposal, which will institute year-round steroid testing and stiffer penalties for those who are caught.

But will the new policy go far enough? While all illegal steroids and steroid precursors, a number of nutritional supplements and several masking agents will be banned, baseball will not test for human growth hormone, which requires a blood test that is believed to be significantly more expensive than the standard drug test, which costs about $1,000.

“I think if you’re going to test, test for everything,” Angel pitcher Jarrod Washburn said. “I understand that the human growth hormone test is more difficult and more expensive, but the Olympics test for everything. There shouldn’t be any stone unturned.

“We want to make sure everyone is on an even playing field. If you’re a better hitter, fine; a better pitcher, fine, but if you’re cheating, I don’t like that. I do think we’re moving in the right direction toward eliminating it.”

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Reserve outfielder Juan Rivera was scheduled to fly from Venezuela to the U.S. Friday and is expected to join the Angels for workouts today. Cuban refugee Kendry Morales, who hopes to compete for the designated hitter job, remains in the Dominican Republic awaiting paperwork that will allow him to travel to the U.S. ... The Angels agreed to terms on 2005 contracts with third baseman Dallas McPherson, infielders Maicer Izturis and Alberto Callaspo, pitchers Tim Bittner, Scott Dunn and Ervin Santana and catcher Jeff Mathis.