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MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin : Major League Baseball club owners have given unanimous Baseball: Major League Baseball club owners approve tougher doping policy procedures final approval to tougher doping policy procedures that were negotiated last month with the league's players union.
Players are in the process of ratifying the third amending of the policy in the past four years, each time under the threat of action from US lawmakers if the national pastime did not tighten the rules to patrol dope cheats.
More random tests and a more powerful administrator overseeing the program are among the major new changes, although the move falls short of the fully independent oversight former US Senator George Mitchell recommended after his probe into major league doping ended last December.
"Senator Mitchell's recommendations have all been accepted," major league commissioner Bud Selig said. "We finished up what we started.
"When you think of where we were and where we are today, it's remarkable. We have really tightened things up."
Under terms of the deal reached, there will be no suspensions or fines of players identified in the Mitchell Report, but those involved will perform anti-doping youth-related community service.
Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, two of baseball's top performers over the past decade, are each facing federal pressure regarding their possible taking of performance-enhancing drugs.
Bonds, US baseball's all-time home run leader with 762, was charged Tuesday with 14 counts of perjury and one of obstructing justice for allegedly lying to a grand jury when denying he knowingly took performance-enhancing drugs.
Clemens, a 354-game winner who is second on the all-time strikeout list with 4,672, is being investigated by the FBI for possibly lying under oath to a US Congressional committee at a February hearing.
- AFP /ls
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