The first step

Players have agreed to testing, now the real work begins

This is a start. It is nothing more and nothing less.

When Major League Baseball players submitted a proposal Wednesday that outlines how players should be tested for steroids use, it was hailed as a major breakthrough. For decades, the powerful players' union had resisted drug tests on the grounds they are an invasion of privacy.

Now, though, the players have relented. In the middle of a contentious labor dispute that may result in the game's ninth work stoppage in the last 30 years, the players have agreed to mandatory testing for steroids, beginning next season.

Baseball fans, supposedly, can rest easy. The integrity of the game is intact.

But this is only a beginning.

To say that the players' proposal will wipe out the scourge of steroids in the game -- if, indeed, it has become a scourge -- is to ignore facts. This proposal is just that: A jumping-off point in a negotiation about something so complex that neither the players nor the owners have a firm handle on it yet.

Will it clean up the game?

"I think it will flush out some … I think [the game] will be cleaner for it," Dr. Gary Wadler, a professor of clinical medicine at New York University's School of Medicine and a fellow at the American College of Sports Medicine said Thursday. "But will it be as clean as it might be if they did it properly? No."

There are a lot of issues that have to be banged out before a negotiated steroids testing policy is approved and implemented. The owners are scheduled to come back with their proposal Friday. After that, it's anyone's guess as to what the final policy will be. Or how effective it will be.

The players propose that, in 2003, all players be tested for illegal anabolic steroids, the muscle-pumping drugs that former National League MVP Ken Caminiti told Sports Illustrated that half of baseball is using.

Under the players' proposal, if testing suggests that fewer than 5 percent of players are using, a second round of testing will be done in 2004. If, in either year, more than 5 percent of players are found to be using, unannounced testing would take place for two years.

The owners, on the other side, originally called for three tests each year for performance-enhancing drugs (like steroids) and one for recreational drugs (like cocaine).

They are two pretty different plans.

The players don't propose testing for recreational drugs. They don't propose testing for androstenedione, the steroid-like legal "supplement" that former slugger Mark McGwire used in 1998 and later abandoned.

They don't even address what would be done to those found to be using. The owners' original proposal called for treatment programs for first-time offenders and discipline (reportedly including fines or suspension) for repeat offenders.

All that still will have to be worked out. And that's the easy part. Finding a way to make it work will be the real stickler.

The players propose that a four-man committee, split evenly between player and management representatives, will oversee the day-to-day administration of the drug plan.

Wadler, who also is a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency, says that the administration of the program should be left to independent labs. He finds the notion that baseball can run an effective drug-testing program by itself absurd.

"It is an inordinately complex thing. That's what’s kind of disparaging, is the simple notion of how to solve this problem," says Wadler. "It's kind of naïve, and a little disingenuous, frankly."

Nailing a steroids user is not easy, Wadler says. Many have become so sophisticated that only the most advanced testing methods can detect the use of steroids.

With no offseason testing proposed by the players, it may be nearly impossible.

"If they had a month [notice before testing] and were taking short-acting [steroids], they may or may not get picked up," says Wadler, who rips the part of the players' plan that calls for 5 percent of the players testing positive to trigger more testing. He believes there should be zero tolerance for steroids use.

"They can be taking and working out and then stop, knowing when the tester was going to be knocking on the door. Then they can have the benefits long after the substance is out of their system.

"You have to do it unannounced, year-round."

The players and owners have scored a major public relations win in coming so close to an agreement on steroids testing. The players' union deserves credit for recognizing -- finally -- the harm of steroids use, both to the game's credibility and, perhaps, to the health of its players.

Agreeing that steroids testing must be done, though, is the easy part.

It is only the start.

John Donovan is a senior writer for CNNSI.com. Comments? To e-mail Donovan, click here.

 

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