I think your 100% right. The only concern that I felt at the time was that I didn't trust the Commissioners office or the Players Association to really implement any real change unless tests were shared with the public. In the current climate, I think this is certainly much less of a concern.

Still wishing this would all just go away.

JC Bradbury (over at www.sabernomics.com) proposes that the testing be conducted and enforced by the player's union. Frankly, this seems like the best way to do it, since it is almost certainly in the best interest of players to not feel pressured to use performance enhancers. While Bonds and Clemens may be big names, it seems to me that a lot of the steroid users mentioned in the Mitchell report (as well as those caught and suspended by MLB) tended to be fringy guys trying to get that "extra boost". Assuming they're not disproportionately represented for some reason, it would seem to me that MLB players would have better job security if these fringy guys weren't getting "unnatural" boosts. So it seems to me that the the players themselves would certainly have an incentive to have a testing policy with strong (if not necessarily public) punishments.

That said, the biggest obstacle to a union-controlled testing arrangement is the lack of trust between the public and the union. I'm not sure how much trust there is between the public and Selig, but I would guess it's more than there is between the public and the union.

Owners have had the ability to test for probable cause. Are you surprised that no owner ever blew the whistle on their own players?

Just think...we could have avoided all of this, as the union and MLB were on the right track in 1984..
Allen Barra interviewing Marvin Miller

http://www.salon.com/news/sports/col/barra/2002/06/20/miller/

If I'm not mistaken, the Players Association and Major League Baseball spent a lot of time trying to work out a drug policy some time in the mid-'80s. What happened?

Well, we did work out a drug policy in 1984, or at least I thought we had one worked out. Peter Ueberroth, the commissioner of baseball at the time, obviously changed his mind after the fact. We agreed on a neutral panel of three doctors who were experts on the subjects of drugs and drug testing, and agreed on a policy of revolving examination. In the spring, everyone would be tested; that part was fairly uniform, and in fact it was standard to have spring checks of athletes before drugs even became an issue. Beyond that, players would be tested only if there was reason to believe that there was drug use. Things were to be handled pretty much in the way that legal matters regarding drugs were handled in the outside world. In the outside world, if police have reason to suspect lawbreaking, they go before a judge and ask for a right to search.

But who would be the "judge" in a question of drug use for ballplayers?

Our three doctors. Once both sides agreed on who the doctors would be, they had the authority to order testing.

Under what circumstances were they empowered to impose such a test?

If a player collapsed or was seemingly ill from drug use, if his behavior fit the symptoms, management could ask the panel to test and they would quickly decide if the evidence merited examination. If the player was arrested for drug use, or, of course, if he confessed to drug use, then there was no problem with testing.

We're talking, of course, about what's generally referred to as "recreational" drugs -- cocaine, amphetamines, marijuana. There were some publicized cases at the time involving some well-known players. Everyone remembers Keith Hernandez, Dave Parker and Dale Berra. But there was also a case which involved four players on the Kansas City Royals.

And both the union and the owners agreed that this was a workable procedure?

Yes. When Ueberroth came into office the next year, he started talking about how his priorities would be to wipe out drugs. When he was asked how he was going to do it, what his program was based on, he was vague. He said something like "It's built on trust and players helping players" -- which sounds suspiciously like it was based on getting players to snitch on other players. Anyway, we had what both sides seemed to regard as a humane and largely successful program, one that did not include mandatory and random drug testing. And then, one day in 1985 Ueberroth astonished both Don Fehr [who succeeded Miller as head of the players union] and myself by going on television during a national telecast and announced that he was voiding the existing drug program because it didn't have mandatory testing. Don Fehr told him, in essence, to go to hell.

Ueberroth was so arrogant he didn't seem to understand that he was undermining any possibility of instigating a drug program by tossing out the window what we had achieved through collective bargaining. Incredibly, in 1986, he tried again. Without even bothering to consult the union, he sent a letter to every major league player urging them to submit to voluntary drug tests. The test results, he said, would be "totally confidential" -- and free of penalties -- which made us wonder what he hoped to gain. Don suggested to the players that they simply toss the commissioner's letter in the garbage. When they finally got together, Ueberroth asked Fehr if the union would agree to testing "even if it was just for the sake of public relations." Don told me his jaw dropped; when he told me, mine dropped.

Was there ever any follow-up on the issue from Ueberroth?

No, but Ueberroth did impose the plan on minor league players who have no union and therefore no defense against arbitrary exercises of power.

--

So any trust in drug testing was destroyed - then came collusion and the collusion settlements, then came the 1994-95 strike..by that time it was too late.

Submitting to a drug test isn't a benefit. Today Dana Stubblefield pled guilty to lying to investigators. One of the counts was lying about using EPO because a Balco screening test showed he used EPO. He may have pled to something he didn't do (along with something he did) just to get the agreement. I can't think of why a football player would take EPO, which can cause excessive internal bleeding following an impact and so is very much a health risk to a football player. And there's very little benefit to offset this possible consequence. He certainly wasn't training for a marathon.

HGH, like EPO, is a naturally occuring analyte level test very susceptible to false positives. Multiple samples (over time) would be required and compared for it to work efficiently without high risk of false positive.

The government probably used 95% confidence as a positive (2 standard deviations, if you know what I'm saying), which means that even if the test were perfect, 5% would test positive by definition.

These tests can end up getting players in all kinds of trouble with the overzealousness of law enforcement and the media on this issue.