Penalties for steroid use won’t come from baseball

NEW YORK — For all the fuss over reported admissions of steroid use by Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield, major league baseball probably won’t discipline them.

Instead of addressing the past, baseball commissioner Bud Selig is more concerned with pressuring players to agree to more frequent testing before the current labor contract expires in December 2006.

Already convicted in the court of public opinion, the players who testified before a federal grand jury are protected from discipline from baseball because steroids weren’t banned by the major leagues until Sept. 30, 2002; previously undetectable THG wasn’t prohibited until last March; and Human Growth Hormone still isn’t blacklisted.

And while baseball’s labor contract does call for penalties for positive tests and criminal convictions, there’s no discipline specified for fessing up to past use.

“These articles say baseball is reeling from these allegations,” New York Mets pitcher Tom Glavine, a players’ association leader, said Sunday. “To me, there is nothing new. People have been talking about the steroid issue for several years now. What’s coming out of the grand jury testimony, I don’t think there’s anything surprising. Yes, it’s a big story. It absolutely needs to be addressed. But it shouldn’t be surprising or earth-shattering to anybody.”

Dozens of major leaguers gather this week for the union’s annual executive board meeting, which starts today in Phoenix.

“Obviously, the steroids issue is something that was going to come up in our board meeting,” union head Donald Fehr said. “That would have been the case quite apart from this.”

Gene Orza, the union’s chief operating officer, and Rob Manfred, executive vice president of labor relations in the commissioner’s office, have met several times since May to discuss Selig’s call for more frequent testing and harsher penalties. Publicly, the union has shown a willingness only to discuss changes, not to make them.

“We’ve had ongoing discussions with the union,” Manfred said. “We feel a great sense of urgency to complete the discussions, and we hope the union has the same sense.”

Because steroid use wasn’t banned until two years ago, it’s inconceivable baseball would denote in its record book that Bonds might have used performance-enhancing drugs when he set the season home run record of 73 in 2001. And whether any revelations damage his chances to make the Hall of Fame will be determined only when the eligible baseball writers who vote make up their minds in several years.

Testing with penalties for steroid use began only this year, with each player tested once between the start of spring training and the end of the regular season.

The penalty for a first positive test is counseling, and a second positive test could result only in a 15-day suspension. It would take five positive tests before Selig could sideline a player for a year.