Mandatory Drug Tests: Two Wrongs Wouldn’t Make a Bill of Rights

Almost everyone agrees that drug abuse is a critical problem in American society today. Maybe there’s a solution.

Why not have mandatory drug tests for everyone ?

Let’s clean this thing up once and for all. Throw all the offenders in jail or in drug rehab centers or maybe just kick ‘em out of the country. Isn’t it time to stop pussy-footing around on this issue?

OK. Maybe that’s not the answer. But tell me this: What’s the difference between requiring you and me and Joe Average Citizen to take drug tests and requiring Fernando Valenzuela, Jerry Reuss and the rest of the Dodgers to take them?

That’s what it comes down to, after all. Does anyone have the right to make you submit to periodic drug tests? Not unless we suspend the Bill of Rights, which an increasing number of people seem willing to do.

Drugs are a societal problem, not merely a baseball problem. There’s no evidence to indicate that baseball players abuse drugs more often than other members of the community. The difference is that baseball players get written about when they get caught.

Sure, some baseball players use drugs, and so do some airline pilots and some surgeons and some lawyers and some plumbers and even the occasional sportswriter. Where do you suppose the greater urgency lies--with a surgeon using drugs or a baseball player?

Dodger owner Peter O’Malley can’t do anything about doctors. He thought he could do something about baseball players, however, and wrote mandatory drug-testing into contracts of several of his players. It’s hard to fault his motives. He wants a drug-clean team. The Dodgers have worked very hard to build their image, and they don’t want it destroyed by a few players.

And, yes, the average fan has a right to expect drug-free performances from the players on his favorite team.

He also has the right to expect a drug-free performance from the person managing his favorite team. And from the man in charge of making the trades that affect his favorite team. Do we test managers, general managers, owners, trainers, batboys? Where do we stop?

And why stop at drugs?

Alcohol has been a problem in society from the time of the first grape, and in baseball from the first pitch.

Drinking has long been part of popular baseball lore. No doubt you have read stories about Babe Ruth and his legendary sprees. They say he used to drink a fifth of vodka for breakfast. And there was Grover Cleveland Alexander, the Hall of Famer, who, supposedly while under the influence, struck out Tony Lazzeri to save the 1926 World Series.

Back a few years ago when I covered the Dodgers, there was a player who was drunk much of the time. It was a team joke, and everyone, from the manager to the owner, knew about it. Once, I came back to a New York hotel after a night on the town and found this player sitting--obviously dazed--on some luggage in the lobby. Eventually, he made his way to the front desk, put his key on the counter and asked the clerk what room he was in. They told him what room the key indicated and he stumbled to the elevator in search.

The next day, he slept on the team bus on the way to the ballpark, looking in no condition to play. But when he got his turn to hit, he lined a single to left. Everyone thought it was hilarious.

The call for testing seems to show little concern for the morality or even legality of drug use. The Dodgers didn’t turn Steve Howe into the police after all. But if it’s a matter of the athletes’ fitness, as it certainly must be, then drug abuse is no more a threat to the integrity of the game than alcohol abuse. So, if we demand testing for drugs, do we test for alcohol next?

There is nothing even remotely funny, of course, about drug abuse. The Steve Howe story is an American tragedy that could be told only in the final quarter of the 20th Century, a story of easy money and time on your hands and the availability of drugs and the need for the drug-induced rush that some people crave. The John Belushi story isn’t too pretty either.

We don’t like our heroes using drugs. They’re not good models for our youth and they take away from the game. But all athletes do not use drugs. In fact, from all evidence, the great majority of athletes do not use drugs.

Drug abuse is an important issue to baseball, but it is not so important an issue that we change society’s rules to deal with it. Baseball players and owners had negotiated their own system for dealing with drug abuse. O’Malley tried to implement his own system. What happens if a player refuses to submit to a contract with such a provision? Where does he go? There isn’t some other baseball league waiting for him.

That’s the real issue here--citizen’s rights. Baseball players have the same rights that everyone else in America enjoys. They are liable to the same penalties, too. And that’s just how it should be.