Steroid abuse in baseball examined

With baseball season on the horizon, the focus has not been on team statistics and World Series victory dreams, but rather the problem of steroid abuse within the league. To help clarify and answer questions about the steroids issue pervading national news, Glenn Wong, UMass professor and BC Law '77, spoke to a group of law students about the problems of steroids in major league baseball.

Wong is an attorney of sports law and professor in the sports management department of UMass Amherst.

In addition to steroid use, he spoke to the small group about the problems with the major league collective bargaining agreement and the intervention of Congress.

The purpose of the talk was to inform people about the issues behind steroids, what the agreements mean to different groups, and the problems with getting compromises signed.

Wong divided the audience into thirds, saying one side was Congress pressing for tougher penalties and regulations because steroids pose a tough issue in the country.

The second side represented Major League Baseball (MLB) as a whole, including people like Commissioner Bud Selig who want Congress to stay away from this issue, and are willing to concede to its demands about testing if it will keep Congress out.

He characterized the final group as the Players' Union, headed by Donald Fehr, which fears that abundant testing will strike at their privacy and other rights.

From this example, he concluded that with three groups fighting about the same issue, it will be hard to come to a clear and fair decision for all sides.

Wong left little doubt that the problem will not go away easily.

"Going backwards is a much murkier issue," he said. "Baseball overall is going to have a hard time because they cannot go back and test people now."

The main points to investigate concerning a drug testing policy, according to Wong, are what type of testing is being done, what drugs are being looked for, the penalty guidelines, and whether the testing is only done in-season or all year. Determining these issues will help someone determine the worth of the testing program and whether it actually works.

The International Olympic Committee currently has the harshest policy toward steroids, where a first time positive test result is punished with a two-year suspension and a second offense results in a lifetime ban from the games.

MLB's new collective bargaining agreement calls for a 10 day suspension following the first positive test result for steroids, 30 days for the second, 60 days for a third, one year for a fourth, and a commissioner's decision for a fifth. Congress is currently pressing for the MLB's adoption of the Olympic standards.

The problems with government intervention lies within the history of all professional major leagues being left alone by government, especially in their anti-trust agreements that allow for their television contracts to exist.

Selig and the owners fear that if the government passes legislation on steroids, the anti-trust agreement is next to fall.

While Wong kept many of his own opinions to himself about what should be done, he opened up the debate for how the past should be dealt with in baseball.

He said that former St. Louis Cardinal Mark McGwire's recent silence at the Congressional hearings has raised questions about his records and place in Cooperstown.

Wong wondered whether the records of this time will be marked with an asterisk or whether any of these players will even make the Hall of Fame.