Baseball Players Association

WASHINGTON - Pressure mounted on baseball to toughen its steroid-testing regimen, as the White House yesterday urged "strong steps" to combat the drugs and a well-placed senator said it was time for the players union to end its history of "stonewalling." "The president has made it very clear that he believes Major League Baseball needs to act to address the problem," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said at his daily press briefing. "Players who use drugs undermine the efforts of parents and coaches to send the right message to our children.

WASHINGTON - Last March, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain warned baseball to get serious about drug testing. "Your failure to address these issues straight on will motivate this committee to search for legislative remedies," the Republican senator from Arizona told leaders of the sport and its players union. Nine months later - with baseball still not having acted - McCain issued a second, sterner warning last weekend. This time, according to sports lawyers, marketers and Capitol Hill staff, the senator's coaxing has a better chance of achieving the desired results.

New York Yankees slugger Jason Giambi became the new face of baseball's steroid scandal yesterday, when a published report revealed his admission, in grand jury testimony, that he took steroids provided by the personal trainer of San Francisco Giants star Barry Bonds. Giambi, 33, had publicly denied using steroids, but the San Francisco Chronicle obtained his testimony in the federal inquiry in the BALCO labs case from December 2003, in which he describes using a syringe to inject human growth hormone into his stomach and testosterone into his buttocks.

A report that the Montreal Expos will likely be relocated to the Washington area for the 2005 season was met with surprise yesterday from officials of the two groups seeking to bring the club to the capital region. ESPN.com, citing sources familiar with the relocation process, said that Major League Baseball Players Association leaders Donald Fehr and Gene Orza met Wednesday with two Montreal player representatives and told them that there is an overwhelming probability that they will wind up in either Washington or Northern Virginia.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Orioles right fielder Jay Gibbons has taken over as the team's player representative this season, making him a point man for all matters concerning the Major League Baseball Players Association, but that wasn't the reason reporters kept approaching his locker yesterday. The latest news in baseball's steroid scandal had hit, with a report in the San Francisco Chronicle saying All-Star sluggers Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield allegedly had received steroids distributed by a Bay Area nutritional supplement lab. That could only mean more scrutiny for the rest of baseball, and as the Orioles' resident strongman, Gibbons could see the questions coming like 95-mph fastballs aimed directly at his Popeye-sized forearms.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - In this, baseball's steroid spring, it was only a matter of time before somebody started naming names. Superstars Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield were among a group of professional athletes who allegedly received illegal steroids and human growth hormone from one of the figures indicted in the BALCO grand jury investigation, according to information given to federal investigators and obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle....

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - The Seattle Mariners and Oakland Athletics were scheduled to leave to open the regular season with a two-game series in Japan, but Major League Baseball decided late yesterday to cancel the trip because of the impending war in Iraq. Baseball commissioner Bud Selig had been in contact much of the past two days with the State Department and government security agencies to discuss the appropriateness of a highly visible - and perhaps vulnerable - international event at a time when the United States is on a heightened homeland security alert.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - From all preliminary indications, the vagabond Montreal Expos will be very well-received when they play 22 games in San Juan, Puerto Rico, this season, and that could mean even more games there next year. There has been speculation that Major League Baseball and the players union could agree to stage half of the Expos home schedule in Puerto Rico in 2004 if no decision has been made on relocating the franchise permanently to Washington or another site. "You're open-minded," Major League Baseball Players Association executive director Donald Fehr said on Thursday.

VERO BEACH, Fla. - Two weeks into his annual information tour through spring training camps, Major League Baseball Players Association director Donald Fehr is still playing defense. Baseball owners have used the heatstroke death of Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler to justify a new effort to restrict the use of products that contain the weight-loss aid and stimulant ephedrine. The Senate, which held hearings last June to examine claims of widespread steroid use in Major League Baseball, is pondering a new inquiry to take a similar look at the way professional sports deals with ephedrine and other potentially harmful legal supplements.