Fehr mulls change
Union looks at steroid testing
FORT MYERS, Fla. -- The Major League Players Association would consider changes in baseball's steroid testing program, but those changes will not involve a reopening of the collective bargaining agreement, union chief Don Fehr said here yesterday.
"You always have to be willing to reexamine your agreements and understandings in light of current conditions to see if there is anything new or different that should be done, or if your initial impressions were erroneous or so on," said Fehr, who met for nearly three hours with Sox players as part of his annual spring training tour of camps.
"I would hesitate to choose the word `reopener,' " Fehr said. "Reopener connotes opening up agreements as if you didn't have them. That's a difficult thing to do in a labor contract."
Fehr recently replied to a letter sent from MLB commissioner Bud Selig asking for "constructive dialogue" on the issue, and those talks are ongoing with MLB lawyer Rob Manfred, according to Gene Orza, the union's associate counsel. Both Orza and Manfred will be accompanying the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and New York Yankees when they travel to Japan tomorrow, and Orza said he expects the two will meet then on the subject.
"The problem is people confuse the term `reopener,' " Orza said. "A reopener is like you go back to the rights you otherwise had under the basic agreement, like the right to strike or lock out. No one's contemplating that.
"But Lou Melendez [MLB lawyer] and I used to negotiate changes to the basic agreement over a cup of coffee."
The union appears to have softened its position regarding possible changes to baseball's drug testing program, which its critics have called too soft, particularly in its penalty phase, which calls for a one-year suspension only after a player fails five tests. In a telephone interview March 5, Orza said: "Nothing is going to happen. We're not going to change [the basic agreement]."
Selig has lobbied for MLB to adopt the program currently used in the minor leagues, which calls for year-round random testing and has a much stricter schedule of penalties. Selig's position was bolstered, at least in the arena of public opinion, when the Senate recently held hearings on steroid testing and admonished baseball, saying it isn't doing enough to address the problem. But a union source yesterday ruled out the possibility of players supporting such a change.
"It is easy to misread the players' mood," Orza said when asked if he had detected growing support for stricter testing among the players. "Whatever the merits or demerits of the program are, it is our program. It was the program agreed to in negotiations."
The basic agreement, struck in August 2002, is not due to expire until December 2006.
Sox pitcher Curt Schilling had raised concerns last week about the testing program, expressing distrust in MLB's administering of the program and fears regarding the possibility of inaccurate tests, as well as privacy issues. The federal grand jury that indicted four men, including Greg Anderson, the personal trainer of San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds, on charges they conspired to distribute illegal performance-enhancing drugs obtained a subpoena seeking the results of 1,438 random drug tests administered to MLB players last season (some players were tested twice).
That subpoena was quashed, but still pending is a subpoena requesting the test results of the seven players that testified before the grand jury, including Bonds, New York Yankees first baseman Jason Giambi, and Yankees right fielder Gary Sheffield. An industry source said a decision has not yet been made on whether to attempt to block that subpoena.
"Curt had his finger on a hot-button issue, protecting privacy," the industry source said. "Where his analysis was wrong was his suggestion that the commissioner's office didn't share his concern. And he knows he was wrong. But no one ever anticipated the government would subpoena ev-
erybody's results. That's never been done in the history of drug testing for any industry. So some of the changes we might think about would come in response to that." Without confidentiality safeguards, the source said, MLB understands that the players would resist any testing program.
Selig has considered invoking a commissioner's right to act in the "best interests of baseball" to implement stricter testing, but the union has dismissed that as little more than an idle threat.
"You have to be willing to look at things again in light of current or changed circumstances," Fehr said. "The program we have has built into it certain modifications that happen automatically. THG was one [it was added to the list of banned substances]. If the law changes with respect to other things, and there have been discussions about that, then you have to look at that." 