In another business you might question the cost efficiency of traveling halfway around the planet to meet with someone whose offices are 10 minutes away in New York.
But given baseball logic, it makes perfect sense for Major League Baseball officials and leaders of the players union to take their dialogue on increased testing for steroids to Tokyo.
After all, they have found minimal common ground over the last 35 years in North America. Might as well try making nice over sushi and sake.
While it was the 2004 season-opening series that took Commissioner Bud Selig and staffers from the MLB Players Association to Japan last weekend, the most significant developments were taking place in hotel suites, not the Tokyo Dome.
According to the Associated Press, there have been productive meetings between the union’s Gene Orza and MLB labor lawyer Rob Manfred on steroid testing for a World Cup tournament next year.
If the event is to be held, the players must agree to steroid testing along Olympic guidelines, which would be far stricter than any ever used in baseball. Expect some type of announcement in the next couple of days.
“I think we can accomplish something that is acceptable to the IBAF,” Orza said, referring to the International Baseball Federation. “There is a different level of [voluntary nature] in participating in the World Cup over playing in the regular season. No one is forced to play in the World Cup. No one is forced to play in the Olympics.”
Orza appears to be saying MLB should not read too much into any concessions for the World Cup. The union still could maintain its opposition to stricter testing procedures before 2006, when the current labor agreement expires.
But MLB officials have indicated they would be highly encouraged by movement from the union to facilitate the World Cup. It apparently would end any threat of Selig using his “best interests of baseball” powers unilaterally to impose a system including year-round testing and suspensions for the first offense.
Should talks break down on the World Cup, it would mean the union is willing to find out if Selig is bluffing. Either the commissioner takes a stand that he knows will be popular with fans but challenged–successfully, according to most analysts–in court by the union or he tries to retreat gracefully on an issue he believes is about right and wrong, not the leverage normally associated with collective bargaining.
Selig believes the union needs to acknowledge the health risks inherent with performance-enhancing substances, most notably steroids.
“There are going to be some tragedies,” Selig was quoted as saying this spring. “It may be sooner rather than later. I could never forgive myself if I knew we had a problem and didn’t do anything.”
In Japan, Selig said there could be no World Cup without American major-leaguers following the anti-doping guidelines of other countries’ federations.
“You either have a policy that bans steroids or you don’t,” Selig said at a Tokyo news conference. “To have a World Cup, you need that policy in place. To get a World Cup, we have to have the same drug policy that the Olympics has and everyone else, and that’s step one.”
Time is running out to accomplish the goal of having a 2005 World Cup, which would apparently be played in February and March at sites in North America. It would involve eight to 16 countries, with major-leaguers representing their native countries.
The concept has been tremendously popular with players from Latin America, especially the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. It remains to be seen if it would be embraced by American big-leaguers, but it would have a chance if it spares them from some of the drudgery of spring training.
Based on their comments, there’s little doubt that most major-leaguers would embrace steroid testing, both to clear their names and end their worries about the competitive advantage others may be gaining. It’s up to the union leaders to join Selig in trying to do the right thing.
