Baseball players and owners signed an agreement for a new labor contract on Tuesday, a deal that makes baseball the first North American professional league to start blood testing on human growth hormone (HGH) and expands the playoffs to 10 teams by 2013.
The five-year deal collective bargaining agreement announced on Tuesday makes changes owners hope will increase competitive balance by pressuring large-market teams to rein in spending on amateur draft picks and international signings.
An initial positive test for HGH would result in a 50-game suspension, the same as a first positive urine test for a performance-enhancing substance.
“This was very important to me,” baseball commissioner Bud Selig said. “This really is in everyone’s best interest.”
Random testing for HGH will take place during spring training and the offseason, but there is no agreement yet on random testing in-season. There can be testing at any time for cause.
“We’ve consulted with a lot of scientists on this, and we know there’s a difference of opinion among scientists we’ve consulted,” union head Michael Weiner said. “We are sufficiently comfortable with the science to go ahead with testing, but we have preserved the right if there is a positive test for there to be a challenge — if that’s appropriate — to the science at that point in time.”
The sides will explore in-season testing, but the union wants to make sure it’s done in a way that doesn’t interfere with players’ health and safety.
“The players want to get out and be leaders on this issue, and they want there to be a level playing field,” Weiner said.
“The realities, though, are that baseball players play virtually every single day from Feb. 20 through October. And that’s unlike any other athlete — professional or amateur — who’s subject to drug testing. We want to make sure that we’re doing everything we can on the HGH issue, but that it be consistent with not interfering with competition, and not interfering with players health and safety under those circumstances,” he added.
At a time when the NBA season is threatened by a lockout and NFL preseason was disrupted by labor strife, this deal ensures baseball will have 21 consecutive years of labor peace since the end of the 1994-1995 strike.
“Nobody back in the ’70s, ’80s and early ’90s, 1994, would ever believe that we would have 21 years of labor peace,” Selig said.
The deal, which still must be ratified by the players and owners, is the first contract since Weiner replaced Donald Fehr as union leader last year.
As for the playoffs, there will be an additional two teams starting next year or 2013 that will give baseball 10 of 30 clubs in the postseason. In the NFL, 12 of 32 teams make the playoffs. In the NBA and NHL, 16 of 30 advance.
The two wild cards in each league — the non-first place teams with the best records — will meet in a one-game playoff, and the winners will move on to the division series.
Baseball’s new labor deal will limit the use of smokeless tobacco by players, but not ban it during games, as some public health groups had sought.
A baseball union summary said that players have agreed not to carry tobacco cans in their back pockets or use tobacco during pregame or postgame interviews and at team functions.
Union head Michael Weiner said that the players understand tobacco is a dangerous product and that they can influence behavior. However, he said they did not think a full ban was appropriate.
Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said that while he would have preferred a ban at games and on camera, the restrictions represent “significant progress.”
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