Selig: Drug-testing working, but integrity questions must end

Selig: Drug-testing working, but integrity questions must end

By RONALD BLUM, AP Sports Writer
May 12, 2005
NEW YORK (AP) -- Bud Selig wants to stop the steroids debate in baseball.

While he insisted the sport's current drug-testing program was working, the baseball commissioner said he proposed even tougher rules last month in order to end suspicion.

``Just the impugning of one's integrity and the sport's integrity is something that we just can't allow,'' Selig said Wednesday after owners unanimously endorsed his plan. ``Is it unfair? Yeah, I believe it is unfair, but we have to do something about it so we quit talking about it.''


Selig's steroids proposal, made to the union last month, calls for a 50-game ban for first-time offenders, a 100-game penalty for second-time offenders and a lifetime ban for a third positive test. It also would penalize the use of amphetamines and have an outside expert run the program.

``This became fairly or unfairly an integrity issue, an integrity issue of everybody in the sport, starting with the commissioner. And that, frankly, is what has driven me,'' Selig said. ``Whether the program is working today is not the issue because I think we would agree with the players' association it is working. That isn't the issue because the integrity issue transcends that.''

Management and the union agreed to toughened rules in January that included 10-day suspensions for first-time offenders starting this year. But Selig decided even stricter rules were necessary and made his proposal to the union April 25.

``The only variable that really changed was Jose Canseco,'' Selig said. ``As a result of all that, there's been a lot of comment. And whether I think it's fair or unfair is irrelevant.''

In an autobiography released in February, Canseco detailed his allegations of widespread steroid use in baseball, and many players denied his charges. He repeated some of them at a congressional hearing on March 17, when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were among several past and present stars to testify.

Several congressmen have called for legislation on steroid testing. Several have proposed that baseball appoint an investigator to examine what occurred over the years.

``It's been a subject of ongoing discussion,'' Selig said.

Union head Donald Fehr, who said he would discuss Selig's proposal with management, declined comment after Selig's news conference.

In other matters:

-- Major league baseball and the players' association said they will go ahead with a 16-nation World Baseball Classic in March, an event that has been in the planning stages for several years. Agreements remain incomplete, and major league baseball hopes to have a formal launch of the tournament at the All-Star game in July.

-- New controlling owners were unanimously approved for the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Colorado Rockies. Ken Kendrick, Arizona's new controlling owner, took over after Jerry Colangelo was forced out last year. Charlie Monfort, Colorado's controlling owner, replaced Jerry McMorris as the team's chairman and chief executive officer in March 2003.

-- Selig hopes major league baseball's sale process of the Washington Nationals concludes the ``sooner the better.'' The franchise, then the Montreal Expos, was bought by the other 29 teams before the 2002 season.

Following the end of the quarterly meeting, Selig said he was bothered by accusations that owners turned a blind eye toward steroid use in the 1990s, calling that revisionist history.

``I keep reading and hearing ... that owners must have known and so on and so forth,'' he said. ``I've spent a lot of time talking to general managers, scouts, trainers, a lot of people, and of course they take umbrage to that, as do I.''

``I think everybody's been besmirched, starting with me,'' he said.

He said he made the proposal to ban amphetamines because ``we need to put an end to all whispers. This sport is too good to allow itself to be subjected to whispers when they can do something about it and clean it up.''

``There's a lot of anecdotal stuff that's gone on,'' he said. ``I was a young kid who walked into the Milwaukee Braves clubhouse and I heard about it, and that was 1958, so that's 47 years ago. You can talk to people that go four, five and six decades back.''

As for the international tournament, the commissioner's office is in the process of issuing invitations. Baseball will invite Cuba and is working with the U.S. State Department. The commissioner's office hopes both current Cuban players and defectors will be on a Cuban team.

``We're hoping people can lay politics aside,'' said Tim Brosnan, baseball's executive vice president for business. ``The basis for this event is the best players in the world, period. Political affiliation, etc., not a consideration.''

Baseball hopes to stage the tournament again in 2009 and every four years after that.



Updated on Thursday, May 12, 2005 2:42 am EDT