In the aftermath of a contentious 11-hour House committee hearing into baseball's steroid policy, lawmakers took their first exploratory steps yesterday toward forcing tougher testing standards on the game, while league officials said they welcomed, in principle, a tougher program.
In effect, this left the ball in the court of baseball's union, which yesterday had nothing to say on the matter.
Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, left, and MLB President Robert DuPuy listen to testimony during Thursday's House committee hearing on steroids.
(Jason Reed -- Reuters)
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Baseball and union leaders were still reeling from Thursday's hearing before the House Committee on Government Reform, during which committee members took turns blasting the sport for what they see as an inadequate, loophole-filled steroid policy. The criticism did not wane a day later.
"I sat there for 11 hours yesterday waiting to be convinced that baseball can deal with this problem," Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) said. "And they basically showed me otherwise. Their policy facilitates steroid abuse. It doesn't abuse it."
Lynch said he is one of a "handful" of committee members -- also including committee vice chairman Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), Rep. Mark Edward Souder (R-Ind.) and Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.) -- who are prepared to start planning legislation to force a drug policy on baseball, based on the model of the Olympics, which is considered the strictest in sports.
Meantime, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, chaired by Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), also is considering further hearings on baseball's drug-testing policy with the goal of proposing legislation to force baseball to toughen its standards, a source close to the committee said.
Rep. John E. Sweeney (R-N.Y.) phoned league and union leaders yesterday and said in a telephone interview that those officials should be given a chance to reopen their collective bargaining agreement to make the requested changes themselves, with the understanding that failure to do so would provoke legislative action.
"I'm calling on Commissioner [Bud] Selig and his people and [union chief] Don Fehr and urging them to work hard to get where they need to go," said Sweeney, who authored anti-steroid legislation in the House. "If they don't I think we all should be ready to take action."
The White House took a wait-and-see approach.
"Baseball has taken important steps to respond to concerns that have been expressed about the use of steroids," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters aboard Air Force One. McClellan said President Bush, who has spoken out against steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs in sports, watched parts of Thursday's hearing. "It's important for baseball to continue to take steps to confront the problem," McClellan said.
As they did Thursday -- to the ire of the committee -- Major League Baseball officials continued to defend their current policy, which replaced the sport's initial program that had been instituted for the 2003 season. The new policy has been in effect since March 3 even as it awaits formal ratification from the players union.
"We believe . . . that this agreement will work to eradicate steroid use in Major League Baseball," said MLB President and Chief Operating Officer Robert DuPuy. "While I understand the criticism and accept some of the criticism, every new policy becomes a work in progress. We believe this agreement will work if given the chance."
Still, DuPuy added, Selig "has said he is not opposed to federal legislation [of a steroid policy] that would be applied evenhandedly across all sports and presumably would be stricter than the one in baseball. He also indicated if he had his druthers, he would have had a tougher policy but for the collective bargaining aspects of it."
Any voluntary change to baseball's policy would have to be bargained with the union, and union officials have not said whether they would be willing to do that. Baseball's current collective bargaining agreement expires after the 2006 season. Fehr said during Thursday's hearing that he would be willing to consult the union's membership about the matter.
