Baseball makes testing changes

MLB still won’t let an outside agency handle its drug tests.

NEW YORK (AP) — Baseball players and owners agreed Friday to more frequent drug testing and increased — but not total — authority for the program’s outside administrator.

All players implicated in December’s Mitchell Report on performance-enhancing drugs were given amnesty as part of the agreement, which toughens baseball’s drug rules for the third time since the program began in 2002.

Thus, the deal eliminated 15-day suspensions assessed against Jose Guillen and Jay Gibbons.

The independent administrator, a position created in November 2005, will be given an initial three-year term and can be removed only if an arbitrator finds cause. Until now, he could be fired at any time by either side.

But baseball did not heed advice from the World Anti-Doping Agency and turn drug testing over to an outside agency.

In addition, the decision over whether a player can be subjected to reasonable-cause testing will remain with management and the union, with any disagreement decided by the sport’s regular arbitrator. Also, a joint management-union body called the Treatment Board will supervise the part of the program relating to drugs of abuse, such as cocaine.

Reps. Henry Waxman and Tom Davis, leaders of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that has held hearings on drug use, said in a joint statement they were “pleased that Major League Baseball has taken steps to strengthen its drug-testing policy.”

Yet the changes were not enough for Dr. Gary Wadler, chairman of committee that determines the World Anti-Doping Agency’s banned-substances list.

“It’s another incremental step. It’s better than it was but not where it needs to be,” said Wadler, who faulted baseball for not adding blood testing for human growth hormone and for not turning testing over to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

“This still falls significantly short of the mark, no matter what internal bureaucracy they’ve patched together,” Wadler said.

As part of the agreement, players will join Major League Baseball’s efforts to educate youth about performance-enhancing drugs, and their union will contribute $200,000 to an anti-drug organization.

In exchange for those two provisions, baseball commissioner Bud Selig agreed not to discipline players implicated by Mitchell during his 11‚Ñ2-year investigation.

“We are gratified that Commissioner Selig chose to accept Sen. Mitchell’s recommendation that no further punishment of players is warranted,” union head Donald Fehr said. “In many instances the naming of players was punishment enough; in others it may have been unfair.”

Guillen and Gibbons were suspended in December following media reports linking them to performance-enhancing drugs. Those penalties were put on hold just before opening day as negotiators neared an agreement.

“It is time for the game to move forward,” Selig said. “There is little to be gained at this point in debating dated misconduct and enduring numerous disciplinary proceedings.”

The sides agreed that in future investigations, allegations against players won’t be made public unless discipline is imposed, and that a player will be given the allegations and evidence against him before any investigatory interview.

While the sides agreed that records of negative tests be kept for two years, they did not agree to keep the actual urine samples.

Players and owners reached their first joint drug agreement in August 2002, then under pressure amended it in January 2005 and instituted a 10-day penalty for first offenses.

After Congress pushed for more changes, they amended it a second time in November 2005, changing the first offense to a 50-game suspension, banning amphetamines and creating the independent program administrator, who shared power with a management-union Health Policy Advisory Committee.