Brian ROSS

Senior Editor
MLN Sports

MAJORBLOGS.net - OPINION - Major League Baseball (MLB), in conjunction with the MLB Players Association (the PA), announced reforms in the testing system for anti-doping that are supposed to fix the sad situation that was detailed in the Mitchell Report, a brutally honest look through league and PA imposed blinders at performance-enhancing-substances (PES).  You can read the full release on the report at MLN - The Raw Feed.  Is this ground breaking new policy, or a coat of white wash that would even make Huck Finn's mom proud? Here is what I think that they missed in today's announcement:

• The Commissioner and the PA did not unify the rules for one consistent program for both MLB and MiLB . These changes only affect MLB players and the minor leaguers protected on the forty man roster, per the statement. The MiLB program, which affects non-union players, is, politely, a joke.  As we detailed last December in "The Perfect Test" (SZ. 12.24.07), the MiLB program is highly flawed, with one player documenting how employees of the lab conducting the test were aiding players to end-run the testing.  The Mitchell Report blows up MLB's phony positive testing numbers, and shows how easy it was, and still is, to evade minor league testing.
  
  
• The announcement did not put the MiLB testing under the new drug czar, the Independent Program Administrator (IPA), Dr. Bryan Smith.  Smith, who gets a three year term,  has been tasked to keep the testing policy above-board and clean. Without MiLB under his aegis, though, doping to build up players can continue at the minor league level by working the loopholes and testing requirements of the system in place there.
  
  
• MLB and the PA offered up lots of other testing for doping variations, but left human growth hormone (HGH) conspicuosly off of the list. Testing for HGH requires a blood, not urine test.  A urine test is in development, but it may never become a reality, as former International Olympic Committee anti-doping chief Richard Pound noted in "A Pound of Cure" in SZ, last January.  The PA has been strenously against blood testing, which also picks up results on other substances that verify urine tests.  Without blood tests, HGH is here to stay.  Develop with the steroids. Stay with the HGH. If HGH is not taken out of the game, then there is no change from what we have today.
  
  
• All of the major leaguers were pardoned as long as they preach the ills of performance-enhancing substances in a community service drive. None of the minor leaguers on the list were  included  as they are not represented by the PA. What happens to them?  Do they get off, or do they get kicked out of the game, in some cases, for double positives per MLB policy? 
  
  I wish I could be a kid in that first class: "Mister ballplayer,so if I speed, or dump trash on someone's lot, or burn their house, if I came to school and tell kids why not to do it, like, would I get a do-over?" 
  
  "That depends on your batting average, kid," the ballplayer might reply.
  
  These "role models" are an embarrassment.  Letting them off the hook may have made peace enough with the PA to play ball on this whitewash job, but it sent out a bad message to the very kids that the proposal claims to want to educate: Thou shall not get caught. If thou gettest caught, thou shalt do Oprah.  Puh-leeze.
  
  
• Without unifying the major and minor league testing systems, the double-standard between the 15 players on the lower end of the forty man roster and the players not under PA contract in the minors continues to allow loopholes in the testing system that keep PES alive and well. The MLB statement noted that draftees would be tested, but made no effort to cover the massive system of minor leaguers where developmental doping largely begins.  The MiLB system is broken, but has no advocate other than the delusional Bud Light, the Commish who claims to believe the positive testing numbers put out by his office even after Mitchell burned their accuracy to the ground.
  
  
• MLB will supply trainers in 2010 and beyond. If they have no mandate by MLB to report to the IPA, then they are not any better off than the trainers, team and personal, already in the system.  Trainers are the front line of controlling steroid use. There is no incentive for them to stick their neck out, or protection for the whistle-blowers who come to Dr. Smith. Without their eyes, the program is as good as dead before the ink is dry on the agreement.
  
  
• All future reporting will be back-room, with the public not knowing which of their "stars" is legit, and which is a doped-up phony unless MLB decides that you should know.  Given their giant pardon of the Mitchell dopers, don't hold your breath that they will be letting you or the non MLB.com media, in on much of anything.
  

In theory, the release today by MLB and the PA should address the concerns of  the media and fans. In fact, without tying the whole system together, without making the trainers accountable, and with its back-room sanction system, the whole exercise, from Selig's commissioning of the report, to today's farcical finish, has been a controlled burn, a backfire to keep world-class anti-doping policy out of MLB's locker rooms.  Players will still get bigger in the minors, and, with HGH, stay that way in the majors.  MLB chose not to close the loopholes.

Drugs are here to stay.  Just keep paying your money and your mouth shut.

As far as Major League Baseball is concerned: Case closed.

There's just one problem: Can you ever look at any record, including the awfully juiced Bonds record of last season and believe a word that comes out of the mouth of any official, any player, or the Comissioner?

If the National Pastime reflects America's culture and values, what exactly does this say about us? 

Today's announcement,  the plan it announces and the new drug czar, are nothing more three vial monte. It's a hustle, a con, and we're the suckers.