By T.J. Quinn, The (N.Y.) Daily News

	Under baseball's amphetamines policy, which went into effect last season, players are not publicly identified for a first positive test. Brad Mangin/SI

Sources said Sweeney, a first baseman/outfielder, first heard about the test when Gene Orza, the chief operating officer of the players association, called to say the player's name had been dragged into the controversy.

Orza told Sweeney that if he had anything troublesome in his locker, he should remove it and that he should not be sharing substances with other players. Sweeney told Orza that there was nothing in his locker that would be of concern, sources said.

Axelrod would not comment on the conversation between Orza and Sweeney. Orza also refused to comment on what he said to Sweeney or about Bonds' failed test, but added, "I can say unequivocally in my 22 years I've known Barry Bonds he has never blamed anyone for anything."

Sweeney apparently confronted Bonds, and Bonds told him that Orza had misunderstood, that he had not intended to implicate his teammate.

Bonds has been in the doping spotlight since September 2003, when federal agents raided the BALCO lab and the home of Bonds' personal trainer, Greg Anderson. Bonds testified before a grand jury in the steroid-trafficking case that he had taken substances identified by the government as steroids, but that he believed they were legal supplements. A Daily News reporter overheard part of his testimony that day admitting he had unknowingly used steroids, and a year later the San Francisco Chronicle published extended excerpts from the grand jury transcripts.

The leaks about Bonds' steroid use were not sufficient evidence to allow MLB to test Bonds for cause, but the failed amphetamine test is.

BALCO founder Victor Conte, Anderson and three other men served prison sentences for their parts in the trafficking ring, and Bonds has been under investigation for perjury and tax evasion for more than two years. Anderson is in prison on a contempt charge for refusing to testify against his longtime friend.

Long before steroids took hold in clubhouses in the early 1990s, amphetamines were the performance-enhancer of choice in baseball.

Even when baseball first adopted a steroids policy in 2003, amphetamines were not specifically banned or tested for, although many are illegal without a prescription.

Bill Madden also contributed to this report.