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The Needle and the Damage Done:

A Six-Part Look at Steroids in Major League Baseball

by Joe Cantiello

I caught you knockin' on my cellar door,
I love you, baby, could I have some more
Ohhhhhh, ohhhhhh the damage done

I hit the city and I lost my band,
I watched the needle take another man,
Ohhhhhh, ohhhhhh the damage done

I sing the song because I love the man,
I know that some of you don't understand
milk blood to keep from running out

I've seen the needle and the damage done,
a little part of it in everyone,
but every junkie's like a setting sun...

-- Neil Young

PART 1: STEROIDS DEFINED AND SOME STEROID USES:
THE GOOD, THE BAD & SOMETIMES THE UGLY FACTS

PART 2: BASEBALL AND STEROIDS -- FACTS & MISCONCEPTIONS:
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE MONEY

PART 3: THE DIRTY LITTLE SECRET:
WHO KNEW WHAT, WHEN AND WHERE

PART 4: THE UNION LEADERSHIP AND THEIR COMPLICITY:

PERPETRATING THE DIRTY LITTLE SECRET

Donald Fehr and Gene Orza played totally into Bud Selig’s simple yet clever plan all along. Bud Selig, contrary to popular belief, is not the incompetent nutty professor that he is wont to be depicted as in this steroid situation in MLB. In fact, he just may be the wisest and cleverest and most conniving one. Riddle me this: Who during the Senate House hearings was being praised by the Congressional leaders, and who was being chastised and at times excoriated?

• Selig said as chairman of the old Player Relations Committee in 1991: “I had steroids added to the commissioner's drug policy, but the union refused to agree. During 1994's ill-fated labor negotiations, the clubs made a proposal on steroid testing which the union rejected out of hand.”

• “I can't minimize the importance of making steroids part of our labor agreement in 2002,” said Selig. “People say, well, it was weak, it was flawed. To say we ignored it is totally wrong.”

• The union's opposition to testing, Selig said, was a huge road block, “but when we made steroids part of our labor agreement in 2002, it was the first time the players union agreed to testing.”

• During that negotiation, Selig relates this moment: “Andy MacPhail (Chicago Cubs president) called one day to tell me what a battle there was at the table between Peter Angelos (Baltimore Orioles owner) and Gene Orza (union official). ‘It was like nothing I've ever seen,” said Andy. The subject? Steroids.”

The whole time Selig was if nothing else consistent with the image that he was a leader in the fight against PEDs in baseball, specifically against steroids. From 1991 and on forward he is either advocating stronger drug testing or he is alluding to the fact that drug testing in MLB is being inhibited and prohibited by the Donald Fehr- and Gene Orza-led Players Association.

In fact this is a theme that is constantly reinforced by other MLB management people. John Schuerholz (Atlanta Braves GM) once told USA TODAY, “We had no authority to confront a player either because we suspected or because we wanted to help him. We were disallowed by the working regulations in our industry. I refuse to take on any of that blame.”

Tony La Russa, who managed the Oakland A's when Jose Canseco played there, told Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes that Canseco openly bragged about steroids, saying he didn't need a lot of work in a gym in order to build his strength. “... he didn’t have to, because he was, he was doing the other ‘helper'.” La Russa also said there was no point in complaining about steroid use by Canseco, or any other player, because the Players Association would come to their defense: “I think it’s fair to say that Major League Baseball could have been more hard-nosed about their approach. But it’s more fair to say that even any effort that they made, or would have made, would have been rebuffed by the Players Association.”

So the common theme is, gosh darn it, we (MLB management) always wanted to test for illegal drugs (steroids) but the union (Don Fehr and Gene Orza) was always standing in the way of any progress in that arena. The contradictory and thinly-veiled pretense for the majority of management proclamations for the most part peels away like the thin layers of an onion when we closely examine the evidence that surrounds the owners and the minions. But what of these claims and is there any validity at all to the owners claims? Despite the culpability of the owners is there any legitimacy to their protestations of our hands were tied? In a word: Yes.

One of biggest contributory roadblocks to testing in MLB has been the leadership of the Players Association. To understand the gist of the Association’s policy of fighting for the player’s privacy and so-called constitutional rights is to go back to the genesis of the initial struggles of the unionization of the players and the fight that Marvin Miller embarked upon to gain the rights that players should have had since the beginning of baseball -- a major share in the revenue streams and profits that were being generated in baseball due to the players’ abilities and skills, and the power to sell their abilities and skills to whomever they deemed was the best fit for themselves.

Whether that fit was determined by money, geographical location, strength of a particular team or any combination of the many variables that any person would use to make any employment-related decision, Marvin Miller was the driving force that won that right for the players. Miller took the players from having absolutely no rights -- neither in determining their value nor the right to enhance their marketable value in an open and free market -- to the initial beginning of the freedoms that major league players now fully enjoy. These include the vast amounts of money that no one had previously ever thought possible.

Miller fought to release the players from being nothing more than a thing that the owners could control to make money. This is the simplistic but realistic view of what MLB was like before limited free agency. And, yes I said limited free agency. Because Marvin Miller in his trade unionist wisdom and foresightedness realized that, if all players were to be given total free agency at the same time, then the market for these players’ talents would be flooded and then there would be no market at all for anyone to sell their talents. So he created a limited free agency so that small groups of players after a period of time could become free to sell their talents on an open market. And though only the elite players actually are able to attain multimillion-dollar contracts, it is a fact that players have seen their contracts rise from high-teen to low-thirty thousand dollar contracts to hundred-thousand dollar contracts and beyond. As was mentioned earlier, the starting salary for a rookie is now $400,000.

After a player’s stint as an indentured servant (during which he can go through arbitration more than once to raise his salary over that major league minimum if in fact he cannot negotiate a raise with his team), he can then enter the open market as a total free agent and negotiate for the best possible deal he desires and can receive. Marvin Miller was also the major impetus in protecting the player from all sorts of other intrusions including drug testing of any type. Miller’s reasoning was reiterated in a 2004 when he said, “No one has the right to search your car, your trunk, your garage or your house without specific legislation or convincing a judge of probable cause. So I don’t think anyone should have the right to search your bloodstream or bladder. Not when there’s so many false positives and when there’s no better way than random testing to harass an employee you don’t like, or one you have signed to an unwise contract.” What Miller identifies here are possible legitimate reasons for unregulated testing. However he does not state a rationale for any testing whatsoever in MLB.

Marvin Miller, in the words of Red Barber, former radio and television sports broadcaster and respected sometimes historian, ranks with Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson as “one of the three most important men in baseball history.” Miller was the chief economist for the United Steelworkers and was renowned as a tireless fighter for workers’ rights. In 1965 he retired as an active trade unionist. He was, however, enticed to come out of retirement by the weak and directionless Major League Baseball Players Association. For approximately the next ten years he led the once-struggling MLBPA against the owners in MLB and won countless economic concessions on issues such as salary, pensions and arbitration matters. Miller, in 1976, finally succeeded in overthrowing the reserve clause in MLB and replaced it with the previously-mentioned partial-reserve/partial free agency clause with the full approval of all the owners but one.

Charles Finley was the only owner who said the reserve clause should either exist in totality or not exist at all. Finely actually saw through Miller’s wisdom on the issue of limited free agency. Fortunately for Miller the other twenty owners disagreed with Finley. Miller had the owners exactly where he wanted them: on their heels. Miller had another vital factor working in his favor: the public approval of the fans and the media. The working fan saw Miller as striking a blow for the freedom of the worker and agreed with the initial proposal -- why shouldn’t the players have a large piece of the revenue pie they were creating for the owners. And the media knew a good social-economic awareness story when it was presented to them.

But Miller had work to do, and the biggest and most difficult task that faced Miller when he took the reins of the MLBPA was getting the players to understand that they actually needed to come together as one, as a union, and stand up for themselves. Miller himself said, “People today don't understand how beaten down the players were back then.... The players had low self-esteem, as any people in their position would have -- like baggage owned by the clubs.” Miller taught the players the rudiments of trade unionism and instilled in the players the fact that they needed to be prepared to stick together in their fight against management for their rights. Miller led the Players Association to victory in 1968 to the first collective bargaining agreement, which established players' rights to binding arbitration over salaries and grievances and the right to have agents negotiate their contracts. In 1976, the players gained the aforementioned limited right to become free agents, allowing players after a period of seven years to decide for themselves who they wanted to work for, veto power over trades and the right to bargain for, with or without an agent, the best contract they could negotiate.

Miller went on to win other major concessions for the players in regard to insurance, pensions, and medical treatment. The players union is one of the biggest success stories in sports. Baseball players are better protected by their union than any other team sport. Football, the present number one sports-revenue producer in America, does not provide guaranteed contracts. Baseball does. But the one issue that has managed to go unresolved under the leadership of Miller, under Donald Fehr and Gene Orza and the reign of five commissioners of MLB, is the absence of a workable and viable drug policy. Drug use in baseball, in particular the use of anabolic steroids, was then and is still a hot topic for the players and the owners in MLB. Steroid/PED use is now more widespread and far reaching in the sport than ever previously believed.

Understand one thing about the power of the union in MLB: it changed the dynamics of who made some of the policy decisions regarding behaviors that could and did affect how baseball was to exist in the real world. It changed what management could and could not do -- even if what they wanted to do might have been and could have been beneficial to all concerned. Even though a decision to expose certain behaviors and introduce changes on how certain player indiscretions were to be treated by baseball may have been good and correct, the power of the union for ulterior reasons of their own (usually driven by a financial basis) could determine whether that decision would become a reality or not.

Consider the question posed in the 2007 Philadelphia Daily News article “Which era was worse?” by Bill Conlin. The two eras he is talking about are the cocaine era and the steroids era. In 1985, a Pittsburgh grand jury summoned thirteen players before a panel “... and confronted them with evidence of the business they had done with former Phillies clubhouse caterer Curtis Strong and six other men charged with selling drugs to the ballplayers.” Faced with inconvertible evidence, the thirteen players were granted immunity once they agreed to give up Strong and his associates in the drug dealing business. In February of 1986, then MLB Commissioner Peter Ueberroth suspended seven of the players for their involvement in the drug case for one year.

Ueberroth, however, said his goal was not to rid the game of the players but to rid the game of baseball of the drugs themselves. Ueberroth was willing to waive the suspensions if the players agreed to donate 10% of their salaries to community drug programs, submit to random testing and do 100 hours of community service. In the real world a private citizen faced with a year’s jail time would jump at the chance to stay out of jail and continue on with his life and livelihood. Another four players who were serving sixty day suspensions were given a similar deal: their sentences would be waived if they gave 5% of their salary, did random testing and performed 100 hours community service.

All eleven players were willing and ready to give up the cash and submit to the conditions set forth by the commissioner. Ueberroth thought he had effectively dealt with a terrible scandal in a very good, decent and positive manner and that he was able to instate into baseball a comprehensive drug testing program with severe penalties for offenders. Ueberroth was wrong. Donald Fehr, then a rookie executive director of the MLBPA, came away from the situation doing his best Marvin Miller imitation and earning the right to no testing of any union player whatsoever.

The power of the union was never so well illustrated as at that very moment. In the name of the player’s rights and liberties, Donald Fehr led the fight to “protect” these players’ financial and libertarian rights no matter the consequences to baseball’s image -- nor the fact that the eleven players suffered indignities and an ultimate financial loss. The union, was safe and free from further “improper” testing and improper attachment of their wages.

It has been said about Donald Fehr that he is a cold, calculating, ruthless and efficient single-minded negotiator. The players union, led by Fehr, won battle after countless battle against the owners and hence MLB. They won, that is, until Fehr took one too many missteps and misspoke once too many times about issues surrounding PEDs and steroids. Fehr and Gene Orza underestimated the whole issue... and not by just a little bit.

The moralistic high ground that Fehr and Orza had heretofore used to their great benefit has now been eroded to nonexistence. Public opinion is a very powerful club to wield in a social-economic battle. Public opinion used correctly can change how a situation is viewed and ultimately formed and established as procedure and policy. Fehr and Orza may have lost the ability to wield that tool with impunity and with the decided advantage they once possessed because of their continued misappraisal of steroid use.

Understand this: it is all about the money once more. Because of Fehr’s and Orza’s misunderstanding of the correct analysis of the steroid issue and how it needed to be handled, players may get outed and then lose potential millions of dollars in revenue coming into their wallets in salary, advertising and endorsements. A strong union is not one that just keeps steroid use by its membership under cover and hidden away as the dirty little secret simply to maintain its place in the marketplace and continue to promote itself and its membership with huge and rewarding advertising and endorsement deals.

Can Fehr and Orza correct this situation and turn back the clock into their favor? That remains to be seen. Why? Because both of these men are still beating a drum that appears to be following in the footsteps of the one mistake that Marvin Miller made in his whole representation of the Players Association. They continue to repeat his mantras of illegal searches, that there is no proof and that steroid use is not bad or physically or psychologically debilitating to any athlete. Recently Miller vocalized the following dictates on ESPN.com.

• “I would never have agreed to any testing program in the first place. There's no evidence that's plausible to justify testing people indiscriminately. If the government wanted to do that, they'd have go to court for each player tested and say, ‘Here's evidence of probable cause that this player is a user of an illegal product.’”

• “I have a personal belief that there's no such thing as a magic pill or magic injection. I don't know that there's any scientific evidence that there's a performance-enhancing drug. Players take it because they think it does. That's a far cry from saying that it does. Where is the evidence that requires testing?”

• On the argument that steroids should be eliminated from the game because of health concerns: “Not one but two surgeons general have said that tobacco use is the worst cause of death in the United States that can be prevented -- that we lose 400,000 people a year to tobacco-related incidents and over time it runs into the millions. Yet not only do we not outlaw tobacco, but the U.S. Congress keeps giving subsidies to the tobacco industry and everybody sits back and smiles. On the other hand, there's not one single documented death from the use of steroids. So that's a hypocritical lie.”

• On the dangers of taking drug test results as gospel: “Anybody who has read about urine testing for a long time knows that quite a number of false positives come up. You get a false positive and then people are questioned in another context -- ‘were you a user?’ They say no. And then you get a news leak -- a leak of a leak, as it were -- and it turns out that you tested positive. If you said something under oath, you could go to jail and still be an innocent person.”

• On why the union didn't necessarily have to bend to the wishes of membership and agree to random drug testing. “I have no doubt that was a factor in the union agreeing to it. But leadership can't just take a poll on what membership wants. You also have to judge whether this is in the best interests of the people you represent. If the entire membership voted unanimously to disband, would you do it?”

Miller touches upon some very grave and serious violations of certain civil liberties here and some of what he say tipples on the edge of impropriety itself. Is he so pompous and self righteous to say that, if the membership of the union decides to disband, that he would fight their right to do so? And if the membership decides to cede a so-called right to protect the players who do not use drugs, then who is to say that is not their right to do so?

Miller? Fehr? Orza? Should any single person have the power to obstruct the decision of majority opinion of an organization, even a union? That is not a democratic principle that a free society supposedly thrives upon, is it?

Yes, it may set dangerous precedent as regards the owners, who in the past have never been shown to be magnanimous in sharing the profits and good fortunes that the game of baseball produces. But is Miller, and thus Fehr and Orza, to have us believe that agreeing to drug testing in the workplace will be the downfall of the union and society as we know it? Drug testing is a reality in the workplace throughout all of America. It is there for many reasons, not least of which is to protect the employer and to protect the worker from those that do use drugs in an irresponsible manner that affects the safety of the workplace and the liability of all concerned -- be it financially or physically.

Ceding this so-called right is not going to destroy the union; instead, it will enhance the union. It is time for the union to face the facts and start protecting the good guys instead of the bad guys. The fight used to be for free agency; for the players’ right in determining how he was to make a living and under what circumstances he could make that living; it was about pensions; it was about health and welfare; it was about allowing the freedom of a big spender like George Steinbrenner to spend his dollars however he wanted.

But now these two men are fighting a losing battle against an issue that every other sport is either recognizing or beginning to recognize as futile and wrong minded. When Gene Orza can say that steroids are no more hazardous than tobacco and that baseball has no place in protecting the player from himself, Orza proves himself closed minded and ignorant to the facts of scientific realities regarding steroids. He is regurgitating the company line that Miller has already stated that there is no proof of steroids’ bad health effects.

But, what proof does Orza show that says proves this? Does he bring up case after case after case history that establishes certain athletes who have used steroids and have not suffered ill health consequences? No, rather, he just says there is no proof one way or the other. Nebulous proof from his part at best, his proof is to say there is no proof when in fact there are studies galore that have been published that say otherwise. It is incumbent upon Orza to disprove these studies and not to say they don’t simply exist.

Rep. John E. Sweeney (R-NY), reacted strongly to the comments made by the union's chief operating officer, Gene Orza, by saying, “Mr. Orza's flippant remarks comparing steroids and cigarettes suggest he is sadly misinformed on this issue. Every major athletic association except baseball bans steroids and steroid precursors. The IOC routinely strips athletes of Olympic medals if they are found to have broken the rules. That's why Ben Johnson is now nothing more than the answer to a trivia question instead of a former world-record holding gold medalist. I find it sad Mr. Orza continues to protect cheaters, not the good guys who comprise the overwhelming majority of baseball players. The union needs to be reaching out, not shutting its doors. This isn't in the best interest of baseball, and it's not in the best interest of America's youth. If they won't do it, I hope the players speak up and demand that their union bosses do the right thing."

David Zirin points out many thing s that Fehr did correctly as “an unrepentant ’60s radical” and a trade unionist “who runs one of the most disciplined unions in the U.S.” Whether Zirin is right or wrong with what he lists as those categories that Fehr was correct on, it is important to note what Zirin identifies as what Fehr and the Players Association got wrong. “But Fehr INCORRECTLY [Zirin’s emphasis] never spoke to the reason why players feel such insane pressure to perform and what the union could do to ease those pressures.”

What Zirin identifies here is the crisis point the Players Association membership and its leadership had arrived at. Fehr never addressed the players who were not using PEDs, but felt pressured to do them so that they could just keep up with the competition for jobs. Fehr, and Orza, also, were so busy protecting the rights of the wrongdoers they left behind the right-doers. This created a form of alienation in the ranks. This schism is not irreparable but Fehr and Orza have to realize it isn’t the ’60s any more.

It is time to understand they have fought the good fight and for the most part have won. They did what they set out to do. Now it is time to be vigilant and avoid backsliding and take care of all the union’s members just like when they first established it with Marvin Miller as one united entity. Another point in consideration of this fact is that, as legal attorneys for the MLBPA, what are Fehr’s and Orza’s responsibilities?

The American Bar Association (ABA) GP/Solo online magazine provides a rather clear definition: “When a lawyer is representing an organization, the general rule is that the client is the organization itself.... It is apparent that from the beginning of the representation, the needs and interests of the organization are defined and communicated to the lawyer by one or more individuals acting on behalf of the entity. Although this may seem obvious in theory, the line between the organization and the individuals can sometimes be easily blurred in practice. Even when the... employee shares common interests with the entity at the outset of the representation, these interests may not stay aligned through out the representation. In fact, what began as common interests may develop into conflicting ones as the representation continues… it is the lawyer’s responsibility to put the client’s [Players Association as a whole] interests first, even when it means taking actions that are not in the interest of the individuals...”

Since it is obvious that steroids, human growth hormone, and many other performance enhancers are illegal for the most part -- and it makes no difference whether MLB banned their use or not because the fact its they were illegal -- it was and is the responsibility of Fehr and Orza as attorneys to protect the overriding economic interests of those members of the Players Association who did not use illegal performance enhancers, including steroids, HGH, etc....

It appears for all the good Miller, Fehr and Orza did and still do, they are failing in their duties regarding one very important overriding factor -- to protect the MLBPA as an entity and not just those whose rights might be violated because they purposefully broke the law and cheated the ideal of fair play in the workplace as well as on the field of play. It is a fact that players need to take responsibility for their own actions. And the players that either cheat and get caught or who eventually own up to their cheating on their own deserve not one bit of anyone’s sympathy. For the most part, they did what they did with eyes wide open. They knew what they were doing and why they were doing it.

But the players alone did not create this great steroid travesty. They were aided and abetted by Bud Selig, Donald Fehr and Gene Orza and various executives and owners; and therefore these people deserve more than a casual reprimand by Congress every so often. They also deserve some of the public ridicule and maybe even in some way they should be required to donate funding and time to various educational forums around the country that teaches all of baseball the reality of steroids.

To put it all in context, recently following the news of Rodriguez and his steroid use Fehr has made the following comments regarding steroids in MLB:

“Everybody understands that there were things which happened in the early part of the decade, which we wish hadn't, that that's not the case anymore...We fixed the problem and we need to look forward, as (commissioner) Bud (Selig) has said many times… So far as I know, there is not a hint or suggestion that there is anything inappropriate or that it's not functioning right or that it isn't doing the job in 2005, '06, '07 or '08 and somehow that gets lost in what I can basically call the sensationalism around what happened five years ago.”

Submitted 5/23/2009

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