Report: Amphetamines still in play in MLB

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Report: Amphetamines still in play in MLB

BY CHRISTIAN RED AND NATHANIEL VINTON
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITERS

Friday, January 9th 2009, 8:16 PM

Bringing drug testing to baseball has been a slow process, but the results are plenty speedy.

Major League Baseball's anti-doping administrator on Friday released a summary of results from 3,486 urine samples collected last season, and the report by Dr. Bryan Smith shows amphetamine use continues in the sport despite a 2006 ban.

There were eight positive tests for Adderall, a stimulant composed of amphetamine salts that is said to enhance concentration and is commonly prescribed for Attention Deficit Disorder.

Meanwhile, 106 players filed paperwork with the league claiming to have ADD, excusing themselves from punishment if a laboratory encountered signs of Adderall in their samples.

That number is a slight increase from the previous season, when 103 players filed such paperwork, known as a therapeutic use exemption, or TUE (the number had surged from 28 in 2006, the year the amphetamine ban went into effect).

Anti-doping expert Dr. Gary Wadler said he thinks baseball needs to re-examine its TUE protocol in light of the high number of TUEs.

"It seems to me as an internist, that's a disproportionate number of adults with ADD requiring stimulants

I've seen a lot of adults (as patients) and I can count on one hand the number of people I've seen with ADD," said Wadler, who is chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency's Prohibited List and Methods Committee. "Since so many (players) received TUEs, it's crying out for close examination of the TUE process for baseball and how it stacks up against the international standard. I don't know that there's an epidemic of ADD in baseball."

Rob Manfred, baseball's executive vice president for labor relations, said that because Major League players were younger, they "probably as a group have better access to medical care" than the general population.

"Comparing us to the general population doesn't make a lot of sense," Manfred said. "Fifty years ago, they didn't diagnose people with ADD."

Manfred added that Dr. Smith, whose official title is the Independent Program Administrator of baseball's Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program, approved the TUEs only after reviewing medical records and deciding the exemptions were medically necessary.

The use of amphetamines in baseball has been common for decades, and was made notorious in Jim Bouton's 1970 tell-all "Ball Four," in which Bouton described how players had easy access to green-colored speed pills called "greenies."

There were five positives for clobenzorex, the proper name for greenies, in this most recent sampling. Only five samples were positive for muscle-building drugs, including two positives for androstenedione and one each for the steroids nandrolone, stanozolol, and testosterone.

Other TUEs were issued for hypertension (3), hypogonadism (3), post-concussion syndrome (1) and metabolic myopathy (1).

During the congressional hearing on the Mitchell Report and baseball last Jan. 15 before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) railed against Commissioner Bud Selig and union chief Don Fehr as to why the number of TUEs had skyrocketed from 28 in 2006 to 103 in 2007.

"When you see the number 28 one year go all the way to 103, it makes you think that we have a loophole here with performance-enhancing drugs," Tierney said then.

The publication of the drug-testing aggregate results was a result of a reform that Senator George Mitchell suggested in the 409-page report on drug use in baseball he delivered in December of 2007.

Jose Torres, 72, died of a heart attack on Monday. The generous and fighting heart of this popular man gave out with his wife of 48 years by his side.

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