Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live Today

Baseball Players Agree to be Tested for Illegal Steroid Use

Aired August 08, 2002 - 10:01   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Up first this morning on CNN, something of a surprise to most of us, a historic pitch in Major League Baseball to talk about this morning. After decades of opposition, baseball players have now agreed to be tested for illegal steroid use beginning next year.

Now on deck is a counterproposal from the owners, and that could come as early as today.

CNN sports reporter Josie Karp is covering this developing story.

Let's check in with her now from New York and get the very latest.

Josie, what's the word on this?

JOSIE KARP, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Leon.

Yesterday was when the player's union actually made its formal proposal as a counterproposal to what the Major League owners had offered back in February in terms of testing for illegal steroids. And it was a significant proposal, because for the first time in history, the union said it will agree to random, unannounced tests. They never said that before.

Just to give you some perspective, in terms of how significant this really is, the owners and players are trying to negotiate a new labor agreement. It has really heated up, those negotiations, the past two weeks. So everyday you hear from both sides. And you never hear one side get too excited about a proposal from the other. But if you listen to Rob Manford, who is baseball's lead negotiators for the owners, talk about the union proposal when it came to illegal steroid testing, he almost sounded giddy, he was so excited. He called the proposal forthcoming. You can read into the fact there is a chance the owners could make a counterproposal today. That shows just how excited they are over the union proposal.

And to answer the question of why now, why would the union start accepting random, unannounced testing for steroids now, you have to go back it Ken Caminiti, who came out a couple months ago and said, that when he won the MVP Award, he used steroids in 1996, and then he speculated that about half his peers also used steroids. Add on the fact that Jose Conseco, another former player, came out and said that there is rampant use of steroids at the Major League level. Players knew that their accomplishments were being questioned, guys like Barry Bonds, who set the home run record last year, and is on the verge of hitting his 600th home run, knows people are wondering whether he is using steroids. There was a highly publicized incident with Sammy Sosa a couple weeks ago that that just heightened the speculation about hey, who else at the Major League level is using steroids. Players seem to feel like whether or not they believe it is a widespread problem, they know the public is wondering whether it as widespread problem, and they want to address that fact, maybe put to rest a lot of this speculation -- Leon.

HARRIS: Along with the speculation, there is truly some abusive language being traded back and forth about this whole thing. Ken Caminiti was getting abused by a lot of his buddies and former colleagues in baseball and all of this. Let me ask you real quickly about all of this, number one, is this the kind of thing that could break the logjam over whether or not there will a strike coming in the next two weeks. And number two, how does it work? Are they going to be given, I guess, a time period, to get themselves clean before they test, or what?

KARP: Just to answer the first part of your question, it is significant. But in terms of the entire labor agreement that is being negotiated, it's only one small part. There is a huge issue with the revenue sharing, that the players and owners have addressed.

But biggest sticking point right now is the question of a competitive balance tax or a luxury tax. That's one thing that both sides haven't addressed aggressively, and that probably the one thing that will go the furthest towards determining whether or not a strike date is set, and whether or not there is actually a strike. Then you go back to your other question about how exactly it's going to work.

Remember, they are just offering proposals right now. So we have no idea, in terms of the finished product, how exactly the testing will work out. What the union initially proposed yesterday, is at least for the first two years, trying to gauge through at least one unannounced test every year how significant a problem it is, and they threw out the number of 5 percent. If the test for either year show that 5 percent come back positive, that means that 5 percent of those tests show that guys are using steroids, then the testing would continue for another couple of years. They'd reevaluate, and see how big the problem is and go from there.

A lot more to be done, but this is a huge first step.

HARRIS: It is a huge first step. This 5 percent figure is very intriguing, because some of the allegations that have made are that it's a lot more than 5 percent doing it.

Josie Karp, thanks much. Appreciate the update this morning. Talk to you soon.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com