Baseball’s Doping Crisis and New Anti-Doping Program / James A.R. Nafziger. – (International Sports Law Journal (2006) 1-2 : p. 10-13)
Content:
1.) Baseball’s Doping Crisis
2.) Major League Baseball’s Response to the Crisis and Its Significance
2a.) MLB’s Response
2a-1.) The 2002 Program
2a-2.) Public Opinion
2a-3.) The 2005 Program
2b.) The Significance of MLB’s Response in the Process of Globalization
The most significant issue confronting professional baseball has been the use by players of performance-enhancing drugs. The widespread use of steroids, in particular, led to a doping crisis in the sport and irresistible pressures for reform emanating from congressional hearings in the United States on the crisis.
As a result, MLB first accepted minimum testing procedures and sanctions against doping in 2002 and then, under continuing public and congressional pressures, rapidly instituted a respectable program of testing and sanctions in 2005. Frontier issues involving difficult-to-detect and undetectable drugs remain to be resolved in the future. What may be particularly significant about baseball’s new program is not simply its rapid development under pressure but its growing conformity with the standards and procedures of international sports law-a significant development, given the independent role of player contracts and collective bargaining in professional baseball.
This study first summarizes baseball’s doping crisis, then discusses MLB’s response to it and the significance of the response in the context of international sports law and the globalizing process.
