Talking Baseball

Major League Baseball and its Player’s Association ratified a new drug testing agreement earlier this week.

It is by far the toughest drug testing policy in professional sports. Baseball, along with the four other major sports in this country, has needed some type of drug testing for its players for quite a while now.

 Players have been using and abusing steroids and HGH for almost two decades and have helped inflate the free agent market in terms of contract length and money while also jacking up the number of home runs hit per season.

Using steroids not only aids an athlete in giving them a competitive edge but it also harms them physically. Many players don’t care about the physical problems because all they are worried about is cashing in on a large contract.

With the new testing program the league’s players and owners agreed to a higher frequency of testing and to have an outside administrator run the testing program.

Here are some of the new features of the agreement:

• 3,600 test per year (up from the previous 3,000)
• Top 200 high school and college draft prospects are subject to testing (if they decline then they cannot be selected in the draft)
• The administrator will issue a yearly report detailing who tested positive and how many exemptions were granted for therapeutic use.

This new program will help to weed out steroid use not only in the majors but also in the minors, in high school and in college. Some states already submit their high school athletes to random drug testing when the playoffs roll around and now this is even more of an incentive to not use steroids…especially with the risk of not being selected in the amateur draft.

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