Gwen Knapp wants an open and documented drug testing process:
Many news outlets reported that Braun won his appeal because his urine sample was not sent to the lab on the same day, as required. Braun apparently became the first major-leaguer to file a successful grievance since MLB started penalizing performance-enhancing drug use in 2004.
We don’t know if either piece of information is true. MLB and the players union committed to a veiled grievance process, on the theory that confidentiality protects the players. For all we know, the testing protocol has failed repeatedly, and arbitrators have overturned dozens of suspensions.
With Olympic-style transparency, we’d know whether a grievance had ever revealed that a courier took a sample home and stuck it in the fridge between half-eaten cans of dog food and leftover kung pao chicken. There would be a public archive of cases, like the one assembled by the international Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Both systems have strengths and weaknesses. As Knapp points out later in the article, you can go through the Olympic archives and see the cases in which athletes were wronged. As we see in the Braun case, however, just the accusation carries weight toward guilt or innocence. If the secret system breaks down due to leaks, however, the transparent system would be preferable to the selective leaks we’ve seen in the Braun case.
Good point. Perhaps media outlets will be slower to publish items leaked by “anonymous sources” in the future. I wonder if this turns the reporters, who should be uninterested observers, INTO the story?
Given that the idiots in the BBWAA have decided to withhold votes from players who have never even been credibly accused of PED usage (ie, Bagwell), the players union would be insane to give the go-ahead to an open process that would give the Idiot Knights of the Keyboard more ammunition to use against players who are accused, but ultimately acquitted of PED usage. I’ve been critical of the union’s role in stonewalling PED reform, but between the government getting its hands on supposedly anonymous tests that weren’t anonymous after all, and Braun’s test problems being leaked to the media, I’ve changed my mind–this is an issue worth going to the mattresses over if MLB can’t live up to its obligations of secrecy under solemn agreements with the union.