Chapter[ VI. Incidents Providing Evidence to Baseball Officials of Players’ Possession
or Use of Performance Enhancing Substances ]
Section[ Introduction ]
VI. Incidents Providing Evidence to Baseball Officials of Players’ Possession or Use of Performance Enhancing Substances
The September 2003 raid by federal agents on the offices of the Bay Area
Laboratory Co-Operative, discussed in the next chapter, marked another turning point in the
general awareness of illegal performance enhancing substance use in Major League Baseball.
Both before and after that raid, however, a number of other less prominent or unpublicized
incidents placed evidence of that conduct in front of officials in the Commissioner’s Office, the
Players Association, and some of the thirty clubs.
In some incidents, club personnel did not report evidence to the Commissioner’s
Office of a player’s possible involvement with performance enhancing substances but instead
simply disposed of the evidence. Most often, however, evidence was reported. The responses to
the incidents by the senior officials in the Commissioner’s Office who were responsible for these
issues evolved over the years from 2000 to the present. In responding to earlier incidents,
baseball officials appear to have been focused on maintaining labor peace with the Players
Association and keeping information about a player’s potential involvement with these
substances out of the press. Many of the earlier incidents were not investigated vigorously or, in
some cases, at all.
Instead, in earlier incidents during this period, over 25 players who were
implicated in the potential use of illegal drugs were subjected to informal “reasonable cause”
drug testing for performance enhancing substances. The tests – when they occurred – were
administered only after extended negotiations with the Players Association, a process that
virtually guaranteed a negative test result. No major league player ever tested positive for
steroids or any other performance enhancing substance in any of these tests. In addition, under
the informal arrangement with the Players Association under which these “reasonable cause”
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tests were administered, the Commissioner’s Office gave up the ability to interview a suspected
player in exchange for the agreement to subject that player to a “reasonable cause” test.
With few exceptions, until recently active major league players have not been
interviewed by baseball officials about the alleged use of steroids or other performance
enhancing substances. Under the Basic Agreement, the Players Association is entitled to
advance notice of any player interview.257 According to Kevin Hallinan, baseball’s director of
security for 21 years before his retirement in November 2007, the Players Association has
resisted efforts to interview players in connection with allegations about steroid use even though
it has permitted interviews of players in other contexts.
At the same time, the Commissioner’s Office rarely pressed for such interviews,
for several reasons. First, they believed that the Players Association would resist investigatory
interviews based on its reading of the Ferguson Jenkins arbitration decision. Aggressive pursuit
of evidence of illegal performance enhancing substance use might have threatened to further
destabilize already difficult relations between club owners and the Players Association. During
the decade when the use of performance enhancing substances grew dramatically in Major
League Baseball, the game was recovering from a work stoppage that shortened the 1994 season
and resulted in cancellation of the World Series. Many of the economic challenges that led to
that stoppage continued after play resumed and a new collective bargaining agreement was
signed. In this larger context, preventing the use of steroids and other illegal performance
enhancing substances in professional baseball received a lower priority than economic matters.
Second, some senior baseball officials doubted the usefulness of player
interviews. In the words of Rob Manfred, executive vice president for labor relations,
257 See, e.g., 2007 Basic Agreement Between the 30 Major League Clubs and the Major
League Baseball Players Association, Art. XII(E) (notice of interviews).
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“interviewing players is not a productive exercise – there are no rats and players are not going to
confess.” Manfred explained that “baseball is different from other industries because of the team
mentality. These guys live together for 220 days a year.” This, in Manfred’s view, is the root
cause of baseball’s clubhouse “code of silence.” It is a view shared by many of those we
interviewed in this investigation.
In the course of this investigation, examples of the “code of silence” were
abundant. A number of witnesses, for example, claimed that they knew nothing about steroids,
never saw anything involving steroids, and had never even heard the word “steroids” used in a
major league clubhouse, not even in connection with such high-profile issues as the leaked
BALCO grand jury testimony, the publicity about Barry Bonds, the March 2005 congressional
hearings, Rafael Palmeiro’s failed drug test thereafter, or the Jason Grimsley search warrant
affidavit in June 2006.
In our interview of him, one former player told of annual players-only meetings
during which teammates reminded one another that any personal information they learned during
the season needed to be kept in “the family.” He said that players understood that a failure to
abide by this unwritten rule would sound the death knell for their careers. Through his lawyer,
another former player who admitted his own use of performance enhancing substances claimed
that his career as a major league coach would be harmed “perhaps fatally” if he were required to
identify other players who had admitted to him that they had used steroids.
Interviews of non-player employees, and of other witnesses who might have
knowledge of a player’s illegal use of performance enhancing substances, are not governed by
baseball’s collective bargaining agreement (which applies only to major league players) but are
still affected by the “code of silence.” Nevertheless, in the instances in which investigations
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included interviews of such witnesses, baseball officials were able to learn important information
about the potential sources of illegal performance enhancing substances for players in Major
League Baseball.
More recently, after this investigation began, the Commissioner’s Office – with
the consent of the Players Association – has interviewed several active players who have been
mentioned in reports about law enforcement investigations relating to illegal distribution of
steroids and human growth hormone. This emerging practice, which was followed as to several
players during 2007, suggests that a new approach has developed. It is an improvement over
past practice.
Whatever the underlying reasoning, in hindsight it is likely that baseball’s less
than vigorous response to earlier incidents resulted in some missed opportunities to learn more
about the illegal use of performance enhancing substances in professional baseball and the
sources of those substances. At the same time, reviewing these incidents chronologically shows
a clear evolution in the approach followed when evidence emerged of a player’s involvement
with those substances, demonstrating an increasing responsiveness to the issue as awareness was
heightened by the BALCO investigation and subsequent law enforcement efforts.
I asked to meet with all of the players about whom allegations of their possession
or use of performance enhancing substances are discussed in this chapter in order to provide
them with information about those allegations and to give them an opportunity to respond. With
few exceptions that are noted below, none of them agreed.
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