According to the first appellate ruling, the original subpoena to MLB was for the 11 BALCO players, but the subpoena to the testing centers was for all baseball players.

Are all the lawyer blogs now filled with talk of baseball as baseball blogs are currently filled with the talk of lawyers?

While all this is important stuff that does affect the game I love to follow, I am so happy that pitchers and catcher will begin reporting soon.  Talking about who is filling the fifth spot in the rotation and being excited to watch the rookie who outplayed the vet in ST will be a much needed relief.

Disclaimer: don’t do drugs, A-Rod’s a tool.  That said,

Isn’t the REAL real question why the MLBPA agreed to *any* testing mechanism for the first ‘trigger’ round that required destruction in the first place?  If the only purpose of the testing at that point was to determine if the 5 % threshold was met, why was there any linkage to PII at all?

As my friend Bill said, in 03, if someone asked you to pee in a cup with your name on it, players should have said ‘No.’ 

The union’s culpability begins and ends with agreeing to a system where this could ever happen.  The trigger round should have been completely anonymous, or it was more than a trigger round.

the players should have to ‘pee in the cup’, records of steroid use shouldn’t be destroyed and in line with most other world sports, olympics etc, players testing positive to PED’s should be banned.
For all the finger pointing at eastern bloc doping through the 70’s and 80’s, “Western” athletes (have) used and abused PED’s almost unimpeded. World sports have started to crack down (ie Cycling, swimming, track/field) and it’s time sports like baseball fell into line.  Get these drug cheat clowns out of sport ASAP. a couple of 5 year bans ought to make a few people stop and think..

I’ve been away for a couple of hours, but to address a couple of issues here:

I don’t think they should have just destroyed the non-subpoenaed samples without thought, but the fact remains that they had duties to the players and the samples as well, so merely saying “let’s hold these indefinitely and see how it plays out” was irresponsible.  True, you dance with the devil whenever you destroy anything that you could one day imagine being subpoeaned, but when presented with these two incompatible options, rather than sinmply ignore one, why couldn’t they have asked the court for guidance?

File a dec action which says (a) we have a duty to destroy these records that are not subject to the current subpoeana; (b) that said, we don’t want to get in trouble, so we’d like you, court, to determine whether or not we can destroy them.

At that point the government would have to come in and make the argument for the non-BALCO samples, which as subsequent history shows, they wouldn’t have been able too (they’ve been ruled as improperly seized and not-relevant).

Instead, MLBPA just sat on their obligations to the players out of an abundance of caution to the subpoena. The government took the initiative and seized the non-BALCO records, and then the MLBPA had to play defense instead of offense, with the consequences being the leak we just had.

Thanks God spring training is upon us.
Members of the MLBPA should summarily fire and counter-sue their leadership, past and present, for malfeasance, dereliction of duty, failure to perform, or whatever the appropriate categorization of offense might happen to be. I am sorry, but between the inactivity or directly obstructive activity of legal counsel everywhere and the ever-deeper intrusions of government into the affairs of people or businesses,  this whole baseball mess, plus the current morass of decrepitude which infects our entire legal system and our increasingly sorry excuse for a political system, disappoints the hell out of any optimist in me, and confirms my decision to resist becoming a lawyer. When the supposed “rights of the government”(read “possible evidence years down the road”) trump those of individuals or businesses, especially when there are supposed “legal conditions” (read ‘anonymity’ in that threshold PED testing process between players and their owners, union, and institution), the samples are not the most important thing to do away with… I agree with the previous points about truly anonymous meaning
NO identification, and the players employing caveat emptor—don’t pee into ANY cup which has any identification(or will have)applied to it.

Play the game, baseball. Let the lawyers fix the political system, or kill it.

I don’t play well with others?  Because I use all of my analytical skills on baseball instead of my clients’ boring legal problems?  Because my old law firm was pretty heavy into representing banks and that’s a bad racket to be in these days?  Maybe a little of all of that.

But for what it’s worth, as of next week I won’t be unemployed anymore.  Got a job working for the Ohio AG’s office.  We’ll see how that goes.