PHOENIX - Following last week’s reports of grand jury admissions of steroid use, baseball players were planning to start their annual executive board meeting later Monday.

“Obviously, the steroids issue is something that was going to come up in our board meeting,” union head Donald Fehr said. “That would have been the case quite apart from this.”

The meetings come at a time when baseball is reeling from reported admissions of steroid use by Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield. The union is sure to face some pressure to modify its current testing agreement with the league.

“These articles say baseball is reeling from these allegations,” New York Mets pitcher Tom Glavine, a players’ association leader, said Sunday. “To me, there is nothing new. People have been talking about the steroid issue for several years now. What’s coming out of the grand jury testimony, I don’t think there’s anything surprising. Yes, it’s a big story. It absolutely needs to be addressed. But it shouldn’t be surprising or earth-shattering to anybody.”

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Publicly, the union has shown a willingness only to discuss changes, not to make them. But Gene Orza, the union’s chief operating officer, and Rob Manfred, executive vice president of labor relations in the commissioner’s office, have met several times since May to discuss commissioner Bud Selig’s call for more frequent testing and harsher penalties.

“We’ve had ongoing discussions with the union,” Manfred said. “We feel a great sense of urgency to complete the discussions, and we hope the union has the same sense.”

Selig wants players to agree to more frequent testing before the current labor contract expires in December 2006.

Already convicted in the court of public opinion, the players who testified before a federal grand jury are protected from discipline because steroids weren’t banned by major league baseball until Sept. 30, 2002, previously undetectable THG wasn’t prohibited until last March, and Human Growth Hormone still isn’t blacklisted.

Although baseball’s labor contract calls for penalties for positive tests and criminal convictions, there’s no discipline specified for fessing up to past use.

Testing with penalties for steroid use began only this year, with each player tested once between the start of spring training and the end of the regular season. The penalty for a first positive test is counseling, and a second positive test could result only in a 15-day suspension. It would take five positive tests before Selig could ban a player for a year.

Even if a player is convicted for the use of a prohibited substance, baseball’s labor contract allows a suspension of only 15 to 30 days for first-time offenders.

Critics say year-round testing is needed, along with stiffer penalties. U.S. Sen. John McCain threatened to introduce legislation to override baseball’s labor contract. Even if enacted, there’s a good chance his idea would be thrown out in court as contrary to federal labor law.

“It sounds great, or it sounds tough,” Glavine said. “I’m not even sure if that can be done. I’m sure it was designed to be, ‘Oh my God, we had to do something’.”

In any event, baseball lawyers said news reports of grand jury testimony aren’t sufficient to discipline players; baseball itself would have to have the actual sealed statements.

No major leaguer ever has been suspended for steroids.

“The only thing that’s come out of the grand jury is Jason Giambi admitted to it, but nobody’s surprised by it,” Glavine said. “In Barry’s case, the cloud remains as to whether he knew he was doing it or didn’t. It kind of puts it back on the front page and it becomes a hot-button issue that everyone is talking about.

“People forget that in terms of this agreement, it’s only been in place a short period of time and the first period was just a testing phase. We’ve really been though only one year of mandatory testing. I think the program we had last year had some effect on guys. Did it go far enough and what steps can be taken to totally eliminate the suspicion, both from player to player and fan to player? We’ll continue to tweak and look at it.”

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