MLB: Seizures threatened testing

The case could wind up at the Supreme Court.

NEW YORK (AP) — Baseball’s drug-testing program was threatened when federal prosecutors seized player records and samples four years ago, baseball commissioner Bud Selig and union head Donald Fehr said in letters to Congress released Thursday.

The seizure of the 2003 test results as part of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative drug investigation contributed to a delay in the start of testing in 2004, Selig and Fehr told Reps. Henry Waxman and Tom Davis, leaders of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

The delay lasted until July. Rob Manfred, Major League Baseball’s executive vice president for labor relation, had told drug investigator George Mitchell that the stoppage was for a “short period,” a description that could become a matter of contention with the committee.

“Major League players faced the realistic prospect of criminal prosecution based on evidence from a drug test that they were promised would be anonymous,” Selig wrote in his June 27 letter, which was hand-delivered to the committee. “The seizure undermined representations made to players that drug testing records generally would be confidential. ... It is no exaggeration to say that the seizure threatened the continued viability of the entire drug-testing program.”

The legality of the government seizures remain in dispute. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco largely upheld the government’s actions in January, reaffirming a decision it made in December 2006. But the entire 9th Circuit has been asked to rehear the case, which could wind up at the Supreme Court.

“It is true that at this time that the MLBPA considered whether it was proper under the circumstances to go forward with the testing program,” Fehr wrote Wednesday. “After all, as a result of the searches and subpoenas, we could not assure the players that the fundamental promise of confidentiality made to them in the [drug agreement] would be, or even could be, honored. But the MLBPA decided not to pursue that position at that time, but instead to litigate the cases and then deal with the aftermath in bargaining.”