to the Major League mix, most experts forecast that MLB and the PA, or the government will be back at the drawing board adding that in at a future date.
"In development I think you need some latitude to try and figure out what the most successful approach is for a particular individual," said Rickey. "At the bottom of this process you have baseball players who are family members and teammates. At the Triple-A level we've seen organizations step forward in collaboration with the PCL to take steps - corrective, remedial, educational - to try and guide somebody back into the right habits and right approaches."
Where you address the substance issue is also crucial to the success of turning around a player.
"An organization is in better position to implement something that has fully built into it educational components. Because it's not in the policy don't suspect it doesn't get done."
"Every organization I've been with has a guy who comes in and talks about drugs and why not to use them," Kester said. "(Boston) has Gary Crites who's like a counselor and who says if you have a problem, call me and we'll see what's going on. He tries to help players and that's going to help the organization.
The Los Angeles Dodgers use Sweet Lou Johnson. His clutch play on the 1965 World Series team landed him a coveted championship ring. By 1971, problems with drugs and alcohol led him to use the ring as collateral with a Seattle drug dealer. Thirty-one years later, the ring resurfaced on the internet. The Dodgers bought it back for Johnson, who now works for the Dodgers’ Community Relations Department counseling players on substance abuse issues.
"You need to give the players information,” said Pawtucket's Greg Barajas, who while with High Desert was voted the 2001 California League Trainer of the Year. “They need to be informed of everything that they're doing to their body, or possibly could be doing, and hopefully they make the correct decisions.”
It is hard though, to look at a player like Jose Canseco, one of the few self-admitted steroid users, who eked a nice $50+ million living out of baseball using performance enhancers to carve out more of the career pie, and not think about throwing caution to the wind.
"It would be nice if they made these changes on their own and said 'We don't want our lives or baseball to go in this way.'” said Barajas, “but the kids ultimately are looking at the big dollar signs and they're saying 'Hey, I'm a fringe guy and maybe if I do this …
"The point is… temptation is tough."
Continued...
