It’s nearly Opening Day — or this year Opening Night because the Baltimore Orioles have been tabbed for the Sunday night ESPN national opener this year against the Boston Red Sox — and I am getting everything I need for the big night.
I’ve got my baseball writer’s card, my reporter’s notebooks, my tape recorder, my pens and pencils. …
And my specimen cups and rubber gloves.
It’s a new world for sportswriters these days. It isn’t enough to ask questions and take notes and be generally obnoxious. Now we have to be lab technicians. We have to be able to offer sports analysis and urinalysis.
The steroid controversy has created this atmosphere where writers are approaching players asking if they would be tested, and players are responding to accusations of steroid use by claiming they would be tested anytime, anyplace, and by anyone.
It started last year, when Sports Illustrated’s Rick Reilly confronted Chicago Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa, asking if he would take a drug test for him. Sosa declined, but who knew that Reilly missed the real story by not asking if his bats could be tested instead.
But it has escalated with the BALCO probe in San Francisco, where Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield were among the athletes called to testify before a grand jury investigating the sale and distribution of steroids to athletes. Since then, the call for testing has escalated. Tougher drug testing calls are coming from players themselves, such as Atlanta Braves pitcher John Smoltz.
Earlier this spring, Sheffield dared reporters to test him but backed down when one was willing to take him up on it. Then several weeks ago in the NBA, Portland Trail Blazers guard Damon Stoudamire took a drug test (not for steroids but for marijuana, for which Stoudamire had been arrested on various charges three times) for a newspaper columnist. In fact, Portland coach Maurice Cheeks held the lavatory door open so there would be no question about the testing.
So in these strange times, I’m worried that a ballplayer may approach me in the clubhouse and say, “Hey, wanna test me?”
For one thing, I don’t know if such testing is allowed under the Major League Baseball media regulations. The regulations spell out when the clubhouse is open and closed to the media and that the food in the clubhouse is supplied solely for the players (a wise policy, if you want any food left to feed the players). But there is nothing about taking a drug test from a player.
“It is more of a union issue,” said Matt Gould, spokesman for Major League Baseball. “It is not the procedure outlined in the collective bargaining agreement, so it would not fall under the program testing in place.”
So will I get in trouble with the Players Association? Greg Bouris, spokesman for the union, said he would not comment on “hypothetical” situations. “But any player is free to go to his own physician to test for anything,” he said.
The NBA Players Association criticized the Stoudamire drug testing, calling it a violation of the collective bargaining agreement and saying it wasn’t a good idea for players to be engaging in “publicity driven freelance drug testing.” If I give a ballplayer a drug test, does that mean I have to listen to union mouthpiece Gene Orza pontificate about the rights of the downtrodden ballplayers being violated?
Then there is the test itself. What’s the proper method for taking a drug test? How soon do I have to get the specimen to a lab for testing? What’s the best specimen cup to use? Should I use 4 ounce or 6 ounce cups? Screw top or snap on? Do I need a temperature monitor? Do I need some sort of urinalysis certificate? Does the International Correspondence School offer a mail order course in urinalysis?
What happens if a player wants to give a specimen after a game, and I have a story to finish? Do I miss deadline to get the sample to a lab, or humor the player, take the sample, finish my story, tell the player he is clean and then sell it on EBay? These are the practical and moral issues facing our profession going into the 2004 baseball season.
Of course, we wouldn’t have these problems if there were legitimate testing for steroids in baseball. There is speculation that the players union might be receptive to drug testing by Olympic guidelines so its members could take part in a proposed World Cup tournament before the 2005 season.
Until that happens, though, it may be up to the sportswriters of America to clean up the game and restore its integrity.
Baseball is worse off than anyone could have imagined.
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