Photo credit: AP | Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig speaks before Game 4 of baseball's World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Texas Rangers . (Oct. 23, 2011)
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Baseball's new collective-bargaining agreement, set to be announced Tuesday, will feature blood testing for human growth hormone, a person with knowledge of the situation confirmed.
The New York Times first reported the players' concession on HGH, for which there is no reliable urine test. The Players Association previously objected to the more intrusive nature of blood testing.
The agreement marks a coup for commissioner Bud Selig , who took a great deal of grief earlier in his tenure for the sport's failure to control illegal performance-enhancing drug use. Selig and the union quietly made this leap, whereas the National Football League has boasted of adding HGH testing but has been unable to actually do so.
The HGH blood test's effectiveness had been questioned throughout the sports world, but baseball scored public-relations points in August when former Met Mike Jacobs drew a 50- game suspension for testing positive for the drug as a minor-leaguer. Major-league players who test positive for HGH are expected to be suspended for 50 games, as is the case for first-time offenders in steroid testing.
The collective-bargaining agreement appears to include some major concessions by both sides. The amateur draft will be subject to a luxury tax, meaning that players just turning professional won't earn as much, but draft compensation on free agents will be relaxed, opening that more lucrative market.
In return for agreeing to tougher drug testing, the players could get breaks on issues such as the luxury tax and revenue sharing, which would ease the restrictions on big-spending teams such as the Yankees and Phillies .
The additional wild card in each league and the Houston Astros ' switch from the National League to the American League , both already announced, also will be part of the new CBA.
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