Baseball to start testing Latin American players

NEW YORK (AP) -- Players in Latin America with minor league contracts will be tested for drugs by major league baseball starting next year.

"There was enough out there in terms of issues people had raised to us that the prudent thing to do from our perspective was to spend the money and find out if we have a problem," Rob Manfred, executive vice president for labor relations in the commissioner's office, said Wednesday.

The commissioner's office has been testing minor leaguers in the United States since 2001, but decided to expand its program following a series of articles in The Washington Post, which first reported baseball's decision Wednesday.

The Post reported in June that many prospects in the Dominican Republic had injected animal drugs, including steroids. Major league teams run academies in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, signing many prospects to minor league contracts.

"The real winners today are the children of families of Latin America," said Fernando Mateo, president of Hispanics Across America. "Young players in the Dominican Republic and across Latin America will now enjoy the safeguards against dangerous steroids that they deserve."

Players with minor league contracts undergo up to three random tests per year under baseball's policy.

There is a different policy for players with major league contracts, who are represented by the Major League Baseball Players Association.

Under a drug-testing agreement that began this year -- the first covering the major leagues since 1985 -- each player was given two announced tests for illegal steroids as part of a survey.

If more than 5 percent test positive for steroids, "program" testing starts in 2004 and continues until less than 2.5 percent test positive in two consecutive years combined. If there is program testing in 2004, owners can conduct up to 240 additional random tests.

Players with major league contracts are not tested randomly for drugs of abuse such as cocaine, LSD, marijuana and opiates.