MLB to begin testing minor-league players for HGH

Major League Baseball will immediately start testing minor-league players' blood for human growth hormone, becoming the first professional league to do so.

Commissioner Bud Selig, who announced the move in a statement Thursday afternoon, has the ability to unilaterally institute a blood-testing program at the minor-league level without collective bargaining because the majority of players are not represented by the Players Association.

The Players Association has long been against the notion of blood testing. Executive director Mike Weiner said in March that he considers drawing blood a potential safety issue. "The demands on baseball players really are different than the demands on athletes anywhere else in the world," he said at the time, "because of the daily requirements they have."

In response to Selig's announcement, Weiner said in a statement yesterday, "The union's position on HGH testing remains unchanged; when a test is available that is scientifically validated and that can be administered safely and without interfering with the players' ability to compete, it will be considered.''

Baseball and its union have long preferred a urine test - consistent with their testing of all other performance-enhancing drugs - but scientists who were funded by the league to develop such a test for HGH ran into significant hurdles and have said they still are several years away.

The blood test for human growth hormone, meanwhile, has been used on Olympic athletes since 2008 and notched its first positive test earlier this year. A British rugby player responded to his positive test by admitting his HGH use, which drug-testing experts viewed as a watershed moment for the test.

Still, players are apprehensive.

"We're still waiting 100 percent for the most accurate of all tests,'' Yankees player representative Curtis Granderson said. "We don't want to do anything to put anybody, or their career, livelihood, in jeopardy when a couple years down the line, 'Oh, this wasn't the most accurate thing' or 'Actually, it was a false positive.' All those different things you want to go ahead and try to eliminate as best as possible.''

One of the reasons baseball officials are implementing a blood- testing plan in the minors is to help build its case to implement it on the major-league level when the current collective-bargaining agreement expires after the 2011 season. Rob Manfred, baseball's executive vice president responsible for collective bargaining, said earlier this year: "When we make a change, for example go to blood testing, I think it allows us to say to the union, 'Look, we're doing this in the minor leagues. The world hasn't come to an end.' "

According to baseball's statement, blood samples will be collected after games "from the non-dominant arms" of players. That's an important distinction; the Players Association is concerned about the potential negative effect that taking blood can have on a player during a 162-game season.

"Asking to draw a player's blood before he has to go play on a summer night in St. Louis is a lot different than asking them to provide a urine sample before he has to go play on a summer night in St. Louis," Weiner said in March.

The minor-leaguers' blood samples will be shipped to the Sports Medicine Research and Testing Laboratory in Salt Lake City.

With Cody Derespina