Baseball’s Drug-Testing Plan: Results Negative : No Decision on Voluntary Program That Ueberroth Hoped Would Begin Today

Today, opening day of the World Series, is the day that Commissioner Peter Ueberroth said three weeks ago should mark the establishment of a comprehensive program of voluntary drug testing for major league baseball players.

But no such program has been agreed upon, and officials monitoring the progress of talks between representatives of the owners and the Major League Players Assn. say none is likely in the immediate future.

Some close observers of the situation say it will be December at the earliest--after management and the union hold their separate annual meetings--before anything happens.

Barry Rona, management’s negotiator, said this week that he had detected no signs yet that the union had budged from its position of general opposition to comprehensive testing. “There is no particular reason to be optimistic,” he said.

The acting union leader, Donald Fehr, said Friday that there had been no talks on the matter in the last week, since Rona, representing Ueberroth as well as the owners in the negotiations, put a proposal on the table that would reportedly allow the union to have a major role in administering a testing program.

Fehr was noncommittal on prospects for a change in the union position, which has opposed testing as a violation of the players’ civil liberties.

It is known, however, that Fehr has been traveling the country, meeting with the union’s player representatives on each of the major league teams, and the drug-testing question has been high on the agenda. “The union has been examining the issue seriously,” one player said Friday. “They have been going into it in depth at these meetings.”

Marvin Miller, the retired but still influential union leader, had a heart attack last week and his illness may delay consideration of the issue. Miller has been strongly opposed to testing.

On Sept. 24, Ueberroth proposed that the 650 major league players commit themselves one way or another on voluntary testing within three days. But all the commissioner got for his pains was a complaint by the union that he had sought to bypass it. Most players said that the matter should be referred to the union.

Two days after his first statement, Ueberroth backed down and said he was agreeable to implementing his proposal through the union. He called for discussions to begin with the union “at the earliest possible date so that a program can be established by the start of the World Series on Oct. 19.”

Friday, Rich Levin, a spokesman for Ueberroth, said that the commissioner would have nothing to say on the passage of his deadline. “Nothing is happening,” Levin said of the negotiations.

Although the union leaders accused Ueberroth of trying to bypass them, it has been confirmed that the commissioner tried to get their approval on a testing plan before he went public, but they turned him down.

Under Ueberroth’s proposal, players who volunteer would undergo urinalysis three times a year at times randomly selected by a drug-testing team working for management. Players testing positive would be offered rehabilitation, but there would be no punishment, and they would not be publicly identified.