`Three strikes and you’re out.” Normally, when you hear that sentence in the context of Major League Baseball, it indicates that someone has failed. But when it came from Commissioner Bud Selig, it was a welcome indication that he is ready to put his sport’s conspicuous failure behind him.
In a letter to players union head Donald Fehr, Selig has proposed a much tougher policy on performance-enhancing substances, including steroids. A player’s first offense would draw an automatic suspension of 50 games, a second would mean 100 games missed. Three violations would trigger a lifetime ban. “I recognize the need for progressive discipline,” he wrote, “but a third-time offender has no place in the game.”
Apparently the commissioner is tired of having his sport’s drug testing program treated as a pathetic ruse. Not until 2004 did Major League Baseball start testing all players for steroids–something the National Football League and the National Basketball Association have been doing for years.
When the owners and players finally agreed on a testing plan, it was weak and full of holes. Players were subject to only two tests a year, and only during the season. Only this year did baseball establish off-season testing.
Under the program started this season, a first offense brings a mere 10-day suspension, and four violations trigger only a year’s ban. Not until the fifth violation is the commissioner allowed–though not required–to impose permanent exile on an incorrigible offender.
The sanctions haven’t been much of a deterrent: Just a month into the season, five players have already been suspended.
Besides strengthening penalties, Selig wants to increase the frequency of drug testing and outlaw amphetamines, which are currently absent from the list of forbidden substances. Under his proposal, players inclined to cheat would be forced to clean up their acts. “That would get it out of the game–in a heartbeat,” Kansas City Royals pitcher Brian Anderson said.
Now it’s up to the players union to decide whether to confront the problem aggressively, something it has resisted in the past. In a letter to Selig, Fehr indicated that he is willing to discuss an increase in the penalties.
The existing program is demonstrably inadequate, and fans shouldn’t have to wait months or years for a better one. Neither should players–who are the people most at risk from the absence of strong safeguards against performance-enhancing substances. The apparent spread of steroid use puts strong pressure on all players to cheat, even if it means exposing themselves to serious health dangers. Most players undoubtedly would prefer honest competition, and the union ought to be working to bring that about at the earliest possible date.
In the end, as Selig said, this issue should not be seen as a battle between owners and players but a cause “on which we find a way to work together to restore the faith of our fans in the integrity of the competition on the field and in the integrity of our great institution.” If the union blocks that effort, players will lose, and so will everyone else.
