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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
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Could Bart Giamatti have stopped steroids?
The startling admission by New York Yankee star Alex Rodriguez that he used performance-enhancing drugs during 2001-03 took me back almost 20 years to a meeting in my Department of Justice office with a former president of Yale, Bart Giamatti '60, '64PhD. Bart had recently been appointed commissioner of baseball. At the time, I was serving as attorney general in the administration of President George H. W. Bush '48. We had just successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court the Skinner case, which established the right of employers to carry out drug testing of their employees without having to obtain a search warrant and show probable cause for a "search and seizure." Heightened concern over this issue had grown out of a tragic train crash near Wilmington, Delaware, where lives were lost and the engineer was shown to have used drugs prior to the accident. Earlier, employee labor unions had convinced the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that such drug testing constituted an "unreasonable search" of employees and therefore was subject to constitutional infirmities if "probable cause" was not shown. The Supreme Court reversed that ruling in a 7-2 decision. Commissioner Giamatti, a friend, was greatly interested in the case and its implications for random drug testing of baseball players. Drug use in the majors was a matter of great concern to him following allegations of widespread cocaine abuse among players during the 1980s. Bart told me that, although random drug testing was the rule in the minor leagues, players' union opposition prevented the institution of an effective testing program in the major leagues. Moreover, he suspected that the owners were not all that enthusiastic about an effective drug testing program that might taint their high-salaried stars with scandal and diminish their box office appeal as well as their image. While I tried to put the best face on the prospects for a change in the rules for major leaguers in the wake of the outcome of our Supreme Court case, it was clear that Bart was deeply troubled by what he saw as firm opposition in important quarters to the notion of testing major leaguers for using illegal substances. He left my office with a decidedly pessimistic view of what he obviously felt deeply to be a serious threat to the integrity of the national pastime. I never saw Bart Giamatti again. After the trials and tribulations of the Pete Rose case, he was felled by a fatal heart attack later that year at the age of 51. The issue of drug testing appeared to have died with him. One can only wonder what might have been accomplished if Commissioner Giamatti, armed with a Supreme Court holding in favor of employer drug testing, had been able to initiate an effective program. It might well have prevented the disgrace of many talented major leaguers since then had he lived to pursue this matter of such obvious great concern to him. But he didn't. Baseball fans and our nation are the poorer for it. |
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