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Congress
Exposes the Truth about Baseball and Steroids and Wields a Big Stick
by Jonathan Leshanski
March 20, 2005
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“Over the past century, baseball has been
part of our social fabric. It helped restore normalcy after war,
provided the playing field where black athletes like Jackie Robinson
broke the color barrier, and inspired civic pride in communities
across the country. Now America is asking baseball for integrity.
An unequivocal statement against cheating. An unimpeachable policy.
And a reason for all of us to have faith in the sport again.''
- Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.
Congress is very good at what it does when it calls a hearing. It
exposes the truth - a lot of it, in all its ugliness. And the baseball
hearings on steroids were ugly, very ugly. There weren’t a
lot of good guys once Congress probed Major League Baseball. On
the plus side were Curt Schilling and Frank Thomas who were asked
to chair an anti-steroid committee, Rafael Palmiero and Sammy Sosa
who swore vehemently and eloquently that they never used steroids
- one of them was believable.
After that it went downhill fast as “Big Mac” Mark McGwire
ducked a question about his personal knowledge of the harm steroids
could do. Jose Canseco was drubbed by his own words and the antipathy
of all the other players or ex-players who were there.
In those opening rounds baseball introduced a copy of MLB’s
new “drug” policy that wasn’t worth the paper it
was printed (or “misprinted”) on as the case may be. It
was a laughable document and it contained an equally laughable attempt
at a drug policy - one that was to be lambasted by lawmakers throughout
the day.
Baseball’s new drug policy turned out to be even more of a
sham than we previously thought. That’s not all that surprising
when you consider that it was a policy that was not really negotiated,
but “allowed” by Union President Donald Fehr and his pet
negotiator Gene Orza. It was not negotiated because the owners for
the first time weren’t forced to yield concessions, rather
a change was dictated by the players themselves after their disgust
at steroid revelations following last year’s World Series.
Somehow I don’t think that what Fehr and Orza negotiated is
what the players were thinking about when they demanded that their
Union leaders assist in forming a real drug policy to protect the
game. Congress didn’t think so either and they gave an admonishment
to both Fehr and Commissioner Selig, especially about provisions
that made the agreement null and void in case of a government investigation,
as well as supposed “errors”, omissions, and “sloppy”
legalese, fines instead of suspensions, lack of disclosure, and
policy administration. It almost sounded as if the policy had been
written about 2 hours before the hearing began.
Congress saved the brunt of their anger and disbelief for the last
part of the day as they spent roughly four hours grilling Selig
and Fehr in addition to the head of baseball operations Sandy Alderson,
and Rob Manfred who is MLB’s vice president of labor relations.
Things became especially heated when any of the four claimed that
they were bringing baseball’s steroid problem under control.
Lawmakers didn’t seem to know whether they should laugh or
cry every time any of the four pointed to the drug policy.
But Congress asked the important questions. Did any of the four
believe that using steroids was not cheating? Why didn’t they
even attempt to address the use of other drugs in their policy?
Why is there not an independent body running the testing program?
They constantly asked brutally direct statements: “Would Selig
have a problem removing this clause from the policy?” “Would
Fehr?” Selig claimed that his ideal policy would be much harsher
but when they threw that ball to Donald Fehr he attempted to dodge
that and all similar questions, especially following his statement
"We are committed to dispelling any notion that the route
to becoming a major league athlete somehow includes the taking of
unlawful performance-enhancing substances."
Fehr wasn’t the only one dancing though. Difficult questions
asked of Selig, Alderson, and Manfred kept them squirming too -
especially Manfred who apparently neglected to turn over the requested
documents long before the inquiry began. MLB’s team seemed
disorganized, off-kilter and just plain incompetent at times. More
importantly they appeared to be in denial of the problem - a blindness
that seems to be endemic to anyone making decisions at that level.
When it was all said and done however lawmakers basically told MLB
and the Union to get it’s act together and come up with a real
policy or that they would have to force one, either by threatening
baseball’s anti-trust exemption, legislating a change to labor
law, or by creating a national steroid policy.
So it seems as if this is baseball’s last chance to get its
act together and both Congress and many fans have their doubts.
In the words of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) "Why should we
believe that the baseball commissioner and the baseball union will
want to do something when we have a 30-year record of them not responding
to this problem?"
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