I really appreciate the ability to question past proclamations. I'm not sure where I stand on the whole drug testing athletes (the problem seems to be so rampant now what options are there really?) but when it starts spilling over to the secretaries and ticket takers, we've crossed a real line.

p.s.: Love the shout-out to Andrew!

I have long thought that drug testing in the workplace for non-safety reasons was unreasonable, and I have long refused to take such tests. If it's a condition of employment, then I'm not willing to work there. Period.

Here's a possible solution for baseball: No mandatory testing without due suspicion, but a lifetime ban if you're caught.

That might settle both civil liberty and record book issues.

Or not.

By the way, the use of anabolic steroids is illegal. Why aren't those players who test positive, such as Rafael Palmeiro, doing time? Or do the drug laws just apply to regular guys who like the occasional joint while watching SportsCenter?

Charlie

I got a feeling that when I have kids and send them to high school, they will have to piss in a cup to participate in football (or band, or flag group, or choir, or the school play). That's just where our society is going. Kinda sucks, if they did that to my team when I played...

Who is going to be the guy who makes it his life's mission to keep players from being tested? That guy will have trouble finding work, let alone walking down the street - walking past D.A.R.E. officers.

I'm okay with testing adults at their place of employment (yes, even if they aren't rocket scientists). If you're an adult who enjoys substances more than a paycheck and insurance, then it is an employers right to find that out before it hurts their bottom line.

Again, how lucky are we to have a role model as divine as Ken Griffey Jr?

Answer: truely blessed.

There are lots of HS programs that require random testing in order to participate. If you refuse you are kicked out of the program. But that's better than the non jocks e.g. an ordinary student, you are kicked out of school if you refuse, or suspended or whatever goes for education nowadays.

The problem with waiting until a lab is busted before subsequently "named" athletes are "caught" is that it's simply too random to be fair. So athlete "A" has a relationship with a lab that gets busted for whatever reason and goes down in flames, while athlete "B" has relationship with a lab that doesn't get busted...so goes off scott free.

It reminds me of the instances where the course of justice is altered because someone writes a book or a song about a wrongly convicted criminal, and the case gets reopened and reexamined.

And I'm sure that the mailroom guy who tokes up on Saturday and gets randomly tested on Monday will only get a multi-day suspension.

Not likely.

My stand on random or universal pissing into bottles is firm and non-negotiable. When it includes the Senate, House of Representatives, and Whitehouse, I'll take my place in line.

Nicely done, King. There are very few writers with brains and integrity out there.

King, I agree with you that we should stop random testing and institute a policy of 100% testing when reasonable suspicion is aroused.

Sudden, dramatic increase in performance or sudden, dramatic change in physique can be cause for reasonable suspicion. There will be cases where someone who improve dramatically through hard work, and those people should pass their whiz quizzes with no problem. Those that are cheating will get caught.

For it to be effective, though, the testing has to be done during the season--when the player who averaged 20 homers a year is on pace to hit 40 or 50 a third of the way through the year, test them then, not at the end of the year, when they've probabably stopped taking them.

I see the potential for a lot of good to come out of the cheating scandals in sports---I think people may get so fed up with the situation that the importance of sports will shrink back to a more reasonable level.

This country was built on cheating and swindling.

I'm not talkin' political correctness, here, but probable cause. The same thing the cops have to have before they can search you (and a "search is, after all, what a drug test actually is).

An exception has been carved out for certain public safety circumstances. You can also consent in advance as part of your employment contract, which is how most workplace testing is done.

Unions all over the place have rolled over on the consent issue, and there's no reason that the players' association should get all "rights of the workers" indignant when your plumber has to piss in a cup to make sure you can piss in a "drug free" urinal. If the customers, the folks who ultimately make it possible for a sub-.200 utility infielder to cash a $1.2M a year paycheck, start to stop buying the product because they think everybody's a cheat, the players' noble stance on personal freedoms will start to crumble.

The issue for me is whether the government will be able to get ahold of the test results without having to jump through some pretty high hurdles.

Is there any other sports forum in the world that can generate this kind of dialogue? Jeez - I don't think I've ever thought about the perameters of probable cause in a sports related conversation before. You're the best, King. And you can check my previous posts for consistency. As for the ticket takers peeing in a cup - its so totally bogus. But then, we've always known that Bud Selig has the morals of a rat and the vision of a turtle.

It's a hallmark of the surveillance society that we have allowed the execrable drug warriors to stick their noses into our pee. (If I could, I'd have them stick their noses into my shit too, really deeply.) The whole drug hysteria is a royal pain in the ass and serves only the anti-drug fanatic nutjobs who are obsessed with "purity." The drug warriors are the soulmates of crazies like Gen Jack Ripper in "Dr. Strangelove," when he was obsessing about the communists "polluting Americas' precious bodily fluids."

The urine snooping is a drug war component that is driven by folks who make a pretty buck from stoking fear and spreading lies. It was a favorite nazi trick to put the screws to people and turn them into informers to spy on people and report them to the police. The drug war has created a country full of armed SWAT teams running hup-hup-hup to break down people's doors in the night, and of snitches, informers, and others who would benefit from a good knee-capping, or worse. I will never, ever, support the drug war and I wouldn't become an informer for the police. That's something for low-life parasites.