Bud Selig on Manny Ramirez’s drug case: ‘No one is above the law’

The 50-game suspension of Manny Ramirez proves that baseball’s drug policy is working, Commissioner Bud Selig said Thursday.

“No one is above the law,” Selig said at a news conference after the owners’ meetings in New York.

Selig, commenting on the issue for the first time since Ramirez was suspended two weeks ago, said baseball had administered more than 1,000 drug tests this season.

“We’ve had one positive,” he told reporters. “What the Manny Ramirez situation proved is that no one can miss. We have a tough program that is working. Anybody who didn’t draw that conclusion doesn’t want to draw that conclusion.”

Ramirez tested positive for significantly elevated levels of testosterone, and the subsequent investigation uncovered a prescription for another banned substance, HCG.

Ramirez accepted the suspension based on the indisputable evidence of the prescription.

He has not spoken publicly about the matter beyond a statement that noted the suspension was for “a medication, not a steroid” for a “personal health issue.” Anti-doping experts say HCG is often taken to raise testosterone levels after a cycle of steroids.

Ramirez would not have been subject to another 50-game suspension had he lost an appeal of the positive test, as the matter was evaluated as one case rather than for the possible evidence of two banned substances, according to a source familiar with the proceedings but not authorized to speak publicly about them.

Before baseball officials discovered the prescription in his medical files, Ramirez and his representatives had been prepared to argue that the positive test could have been triggered by DHEA, a substance classified as a steroid and banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency but not forbidden under baseball’s drug policy or restricted by the federal government.

Selig would not say whether he believed the government should classify DHEA as a controlled substance, the Associated Press reported. Such classification would result in the immediate addition of DHEA to baseball’s list of banned substances.

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bill.shaikin@latimes.com