MLBPA Receives Favorable Court Ruling on “The List” – for Now

I like the “Sports on My Mind” site because it presents opinions on a variety of issues in a large number of different sports.

I chose to read the article titled, “MLBPA Receives Favorable Court Ruling on “The List” — for Now.”

First off, the whole steroid situation surrounding baseball is a mess, and it has been for a number of years now. This specific issue, however, is one of the few in that mess where I side with the players.

The said list from 2003 that implicated over 100 positive tests was never meant to be released to the public. Major League Baseball intended for the testing to be anonymous — to use the results to get an idea of how widespread the use of performance-enhancing drugs was — and thus come up with the corresponding punishments that are now in place. (ie: first offense: 50 games, second offense: 100 games, third: lifetime ban)

This intention was made clear to the players at the time of the initial testing, but since then the list has been anything but anonymous. Many of the positive tests on the list were also “false positives,” meaning they took a substance that produced a positive result, but that substance was not a performance-enhancing drug.

The 9^th circuit of court appeals ruled that the raid that produced the list was unconstitutional. However, that ruling may be bumped up to the Supreme Court.

I think it’s unfair that the names of these players were released. Unfortunately, with the fact that more and more names continue to come out frequently, it might be best to just release the rest of the names all at once.

Otherwise, MLB has to deal with a new name coming out seemingly every couple of months and overshadowing everything that is actually important — the game of baseball.

I am very interested to see whether the case makes it to the Supreme Court or not.