Everybody wins with game's new steroid policy

	Baseball announced the new plan on the same day that the Senate was scheduled to vote on a steroids bill co-sponsored by Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky. AP
	RELATED • MLB, union agree to new steroids plan
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Fifty games is a long time. It represents a lot of money, even for multi-millionaires. A 50-game suspension, the latest forced upgrading in Major League Baseball's fight against performance-enhancing drugs, is real progress.

But will the new penalties, starting with the 50-gamer for a first positive test, do the whole trick? Will the new policy wipe out the scourge of steroids? Will it help restore consumer confidence in the game?

And maybe most important: Will it get all those grandstanding congressmen off baseball's back already?

It's a funny game that baseball and politicians have been playing these many months, ever since President Bush urged professional sports leagues, in his State of the Union address in January of 2004, "to get rid of steroids now." Congress pushed the president's agenda, baseball moved a little, Congress pushed more, baseball pushed back and, finally, when Congress threatened to take the power out of baseball's hands and pass strict legislation to deal with the problem, baseball and its players' union came up with the new policy announced Tuesday. It's a much tougher, much farther-ranging policy that not only stiffens the penalties for using performance-enhancing drugs but increases testing, adds amphetamines to the list of banned substances and hands the whole testing and implementation of the policy to an outside, independent administrator.

"I really feel good today," Bud Selig, the game's commissioner, said in a conference call early Tuesday evening. "We've really come a long way in the past six months."

Of course, this is not the end of it. The documents still have to be finalized, and the union still has to make sure its players are OK with it. There's still the problem of Human Growth Hormone, not dealt with in this agreement. Other stimulants banned by, say, the Olympics will not be part of baseball's drug policy. Chemists are working, right now, on new drugs to beat new tests.

But Selig should feel good because, when it becomes baseball law, this policy will all but eliminate virtually all known steroids, and many other performance-enhancing drugs, from the game. We know that because, already, even with the wimpy 10-game penalty that was in effect for the first time during the 2005 season, steroids nearly vanished in baseball. In '05, only 12 players tested positive. With a 50-game suspension in '06 -- that's nearly a third of a season -- a player who makes $2 million a year would pay nearly $500,000 more for a positive test than he would have paid in '05. That's plenty enough to scare a steroid user straight.

The new, more stringent policy should help soothe any integrity problem the game has, too, though judging by the turnstile counts, the steroid issue never has been that big of a deal with Joe Fan. Major League Baseball set a new single-season attendance record this year, despite all that C-Span drama, by hosting more than 73 million ticket buyers.

And, yes, the stricter penalties for steroid users should calm Congress, too, even though baseball's new policy falls far short of the two-year ban that the Olympics levies for a first-time offense, the same penalty that at least a couple of bills already in Congress favored.

"I believe," the commissioner said, "that it will absolutely satisfy any concerns that they have."

Some might argue that Congress shouldn't have butted into baseball's business in the first place. I've made that argument. But it's become awfully clear over the past several months that without Congress' interference into this private enterprise, the steroids problem would have only worsened and baseball would have choked on its own inertia.

So, for now, the game between the politicians and baseball is nearing an end. Bush and Congress used their bully pulpits perfectly. Selig saw their determination and took the opportunity to clean up a problem that festered for way too long. Despite initial resistance from the players' union, the commissioner was merciless in backing union leader Don Fehr into a corner and forcing him to agree to a tougher plan that was first drafted back in April.

The best part about it all? Everybody comes out a winner. The politicians look good, Selig is happy, the players are better off, the whole game is healthier.

And even if they don't care a whit about steroids, the fans win this time, too.