Sunday, March 21, 2004
Season May Be Filled with Giant Problems
Buried at the end of Ross Newhan's latest Los Angeles Times column is the news that baseball's drug testing for minor leaguers, touted by Commissioner Selig as a proposed replacement for the current major league system, doesn't work:
"In the last week, I talked to five players at different camps, each of whom had spent the last two or more years at the minor league level. All said they have never been tested during the winter.
"'We're basically knocking on doors, hoping to find people home,' baseball labor lawyer Rob Manfred acknowledged of the winter program in the minors.
"'We're trying to do the best we can with it, but locating the players is one problem, and there are obviously significant legal issues involving players who live out of the country.'
"In other words, baseball officials armed with passports and specimen cups can't simply start tracking down players in Mexico, the Dominican Republic or any other foreign country, ignoring borders and the laws of those countries.
"If there is not off-season testing of all players on a random basis, if even U.S. players can't be found and tested during the off-season, what's the point?"
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Buried at the end of Ross Newhan's latest Los Angeles Times column is the news that baseball's drug testing for minor leaguers, touted by Commissioner Selig as a proposed replacement for the current major league system, doesn't work:
"In the last week, I talked to five players at different camps, each of whom had spent the last two or more years at the minor league level. All said they have never been tested during the winter.
"'We're basically knocking on doors, hoping to find people home,' baseball labor lawyer Rob Manfred acknowledged of the winter program in the minors.
"'We're trying to do the best we can with it, but locating the players is one problem, and there are obviously significant legal issues involving players who live out of the country.'
"In other words, baseball officials armed with passports and specimen cups can't simply start tracking down players in Mexico, the Dominican Republic or any other foreign country, ignoring borders and the laws of those countries.
"If there is not off-season testing of all players on a random basis, if even U.S. players can't be found and tested during the off-season, what's the point?"
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