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Baseball union to help its members with doping probe

The Major League Baseball players' union will offer advice but said it was the choice of each individual whether to cooperate with the league's probe into doping.

"We haven't made any comment about the ... investigation specifically," union head Donald Fehr said on Monday.

"What you should expect, however, is that any time any player has an issue with that or something arises, then we will give them whatever our best advice is under the circumstances, and then players make their individual decisions," Fehr said.

Former US Senate majority leader George Mitchell, hired by MLB commissioner Bud Selig just before the start of last year's season, warned club owners last month that a lack of cooperation with his investigation into steroid use would "significantly increase" the chances of government involvement.

Fehr, starting his annual spring training tour by meeting with the Arizona Diamondbacks, said Mitchell's comments were unnecessary and that important individual rights were involved.

"I don't think there's anything productive for us to engage in a war," Fehr said.

On another doping-related issue, Fehr said that the union would "take a hard look" at any verified test to detect human growth hormone. The drug cannot be detected by a urine test, and a blood test is in its early stages of use.

"So far as I know it hasn't been peer reviewed by anybody," he said. "Nobody knows the details. We'll take a hard look at whatever it becomes when and if it becomes."

He said MLB's current anti-drug rules, strengthened under pressure from Congress, "are working pretty well."
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