Fewer positive tests make Selig optimistic

The commissioner predicted virtual elimination this season.
MESA, Ariz. (AP) -- The number of positive tests for steroids in major league baseball dropped to between 1 and 2 percent last season, commissioner Bud Selig said Saturday, and he predicted the virtual elimination of the drug from the sport this year.
The new figures, based on just under 1,200 tests, compare with 5 to 7 percent positive results in 2003, the first season that major league players were tested.
Selig said the test results "startled me and a lot of other people."
"I am very confident that we will effectively rid our sport of steroids in this coming season," he said at a news conference.
The tests in 2003-04 were done under the 2002 collective bargaining agreement adhering to a program far less stringent than the one adopted by major league baseball and the players' union this year. The new program implemented this week includes an unannounced test of every player, other random testing and tests in the off-season.
Major decline in minors, too
"I'm comfortable in telling you that we've not only dealt with our problem, but we will finish what we started," Selig said. "There always will be some exceptions, but I'm very comfortable with what we've done."
Selig also said the minor league testing program has dropped from 11 percent or tests being positive in 2001 to 1.7 percent last season.
The commissioner emphatically refuted the notion that baseball owners looked the other way from the steroid problem because they loved the popularity of the home-run binge of the late 1990s. He said he had never heard an owner, manager, player or anyone else involved in the sport voice that feeling.
"Do I wish that I knew in 1995 or 1996 what I know today about this after all the hours I've spent?" Selig said. "Of course I do. I would be less than honest if I didn't say that. We're just learning a lot of things now. But we've hired the best people we have, we've gone to Olympic labs. And I think our programs are as consistently good as anybody else.
"But the facts speak for themselves."
House committee hearing
A House committee plans hearings on the use of steroids in baseball, and Selig has been invited to testify, along with several former and current players. Selig would not say whether he would accept the invitation.
"I don't know. We're going to monitor that whole thing. Frankly, it's just come up," he said.
If current players are subpoenaed to testify, Selig said, "the only thing I'm going to say is I'm very protective of players and we'll just have to work our way through all of that."
Rob Manfred, executive vice president for labor relations in the commissioner's office and baseball's point man in the steroid program, said that last year's testing program was as unpredictable as possible, given its limitations.
"The testing was not as predictable last year as some people seem to have in their heads," he said. "Some testing was done at home, some testing was done on the road. Players were randomly selected for testing. We did not do entire rosters at one time."
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