Article Discusses Baseball Doping in Latin America
David P. Fidler, the James Louis Calamaras Professor of Law, and Arturo J. Marcano, LLM'98, M.Sc. in
Sports Management (University of Massachusetts-Amherst) and a Venezuelan attorney and sports law expert,
recently published a groundbreaking article on addressing the use of performance enhancing drugs in
the Latin American minor league operations of Major League Baseball. Their article, "Fighting Baseball
Doping in Latin America: A Critical Analysis of Major League Baseball's Drug Prevention and Treatment
Program in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela," was published in the University of Miami International
and Comparative Law Review, Volume 15, Issue 2 (Fall 2007), pp. 107-201.
In this article, Marcano and Fidler describe the seriousness of the problem of the use of performance enhancing drugs by young baseball players and prospects in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela and critically analyze the response to this problem undertaken by MLB. Marcano's and Fidler's article contains the first comprehensive analysis of MLB's drug prevention and treatment program designed for its Latin American minor league operations.
The report on the use of performance enhancing
drugs completed by former Senator George Mitchell in December 2007, and the hearings on the Mitchell
Report in Congress held in January 2008 and scheduled for February 2008, makes the Marcano and Fidler
analysis very relevant to the ongoing concern about doping in professional baseball.
Fidler observes, "The Mitchell Report is a landmark development in the fight against the use of performance enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball, but it did not give sufficient attention to this problem in MLB's two biggest markets for foreign baseball talent - the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. Baseball is a global sport, and the strategy to fight doping in baseball also has to have global scope. Our article demonstrates that MLB's approach to the problem in its Latin minor league operations has serious deficiencies that need as much, or perhaps even more, attention than whether Roger Clemens used performance enhancing drugs."
Marcano and Fidler have worked together for a decade to try to improve how MLB operates in Latin American countries. Their research has highlighted problems with MLB's policies and practices in Latin American countries and has raised awareness within the world of professional baseball and beyond of the need to address these problems more seriously. This previous work includes "The Globalization of Baseball: Major League Baseball and the Mistreatment of Latin American Baseball Talent," 6 Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 511 (1999); Stealing Lives: The Globalization of Baseball and the Tragic Story of Alexis Quiroz (Indiana University Press, 2002); and "Baseball's Exploitation of Latin Talent," North American Congress of Latin America Report on the Americas (Mar. Apr. 2004).