Congressional Hearings on “Steroids in Baseball”

Hearings Without Listening

In the continuing war on drugs in baseball, Thursday’s Congressional hearings sought and found a new low. Instead of facts, we got emotional appeals of dubious quality. Instead of getting facts onto the record, any attempt at a substantive discussion was shouted down by politicians more interested in their meaningless memories and ESPN face time than they were in advancing the debate. Near the end, Rep. Paul Kanjorski (R-PA) asked Commissioner Bud Selig if he’d learned anything from the hearing. Selig answered, dancing around the topic but in essence, saying “no, I didn’t.”

Small wonder.

Despite the name, there was very little listening at the hearings. Twelve plus hours of pontificating and privacy bashing doesn’t move us any closer to understanding the real effects of performance enhancing drugs in sports. There were some attempts to bring a reality-based perspective into the hearings. Dr. Nora Velkow of the National Institute of Drug Abuse and Dr. Elliott Pellman, an advisor to Major League Baseball, gave some interesting perspectives but were shouted down by both the questioners and Dr. Gary Wadler of the World Anti-Doping Agency. Over and over, Pellman tried to talk about research and Wadler would find a way to weasel it into a cheap pitch to insinuate his organization into baseball’s business.

Wadler’s continued assertions that baseball couldn’t be trusted to administer it’s own drug policy were laughable. No one questioned the NFL, NCAA, or even state programs. Rob Manfred, baseball’s chief labor negotiator, would later inject the fact that no organization in America uses an organization like WADA to administer a drug testing program. It’s also worthwhile to note that WADA’s showcase, the Olympic Games, is hardly drug free. Victor Conte, who knows a thing or two about beating drug tests, calls the Olympics a “chemical circus.”

The sight of some of the greatest sluggers of all time in suit and tie, standing with their right hand raised before Congress is going to be the enduring image of the hearings. Most of the media focus has been on Mark McGwire‘s steadfast refusal to answer most questions, not quite asserting his Fifth Amendment rights, instead using a mantra of “I’m not here to talk about the past.” McGwire used the phrase to avoid poorly set rhetorical traps laid out by Christopher Shays (R-CT) and Stephen Lynch (D-MA). McGwire’s assertion of his rights was seen as some sort of slap in the face. Only Bernard Sanders (I-VT) saw the hearings for what they were, asking why the media was there in droves, their cameras pointed like cannons at the witnesses.

The most interesting moment of the hearings, for me, was the absolute reversal of Jose Canseco. Canseco, as recently as two weeks ago on “Real Time with Bill Maher”, asserted that steroids, when used properly and medically supervised could be a positive. Seeing no opportunity to sell books, Canseco, sans immunity, decided “steroids is bad,” to use McGwire’s phrase. (I guess grammar is under attack as well.)

Canseco backed off nearly every assertion he made in his book, saying that he had had a “change of heart since writing this book two years ago.” Of course, this does not jibe with his recent media interviews or the facts about steroids, which can of course be used properly in certain situations. The political expediency and perhaps fear of prosecution sent Canseco scurrying like the rat that Curt Schilling called him out as.

One of the more interesting discussions came from Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on the committee. Waxman at several points detailed a plan that he intends to introduce called the “National Unified Drug Testing Policy.” This unified policy would supersede any negotiated or in-force drug testing for any sport. While Waxman made little or no detail available during or after the session, early reports indicate that this testing program would be a WADA-run program that would go for all sports – professional, college, high school, and even below. If introduced to Congress, this bill would certainly meet opposition from MLB, the NFL, NBA, NCAA, and high school federations. One major point of contention would be a tax on participants to pay for the testing. Certainly, this bill puts a further chill on civil rights for athletes.

This continued assault on privacy and basic civil rights continues unchecked. Several times during the hearings, Congressmen showed little or no respect for the basic, constitutional rights of the subpoenaed witnesses. McGwire never quite asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination yet he was repeatedly mocked, both in session and in the media, for asserting this right. In one outrageous exchange, Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) recalled his anti-privacy victory in a landmark high school case in Lafayette, Indiana. That case now allows random drug testing for any high school student that participates in extracurricular activities. Souder seems to want to expand this invasive culture of testing to all levels, citing the need for testing of professional athletes when “special circumstances” arise. His definition of special circumstances included examples such as “when a player gets bigger, has a good season or if the team is in financial difficulty.” Souder, himself pasty and overweight, seems to need testing of the intelligence variety.

After twelve hours of hearings, we heard nothing more than the typical emotional appeals without any basis in fact, the typical ravings of people that have done little or no research, and countless instances of political grandstanding that would embarrass the Founding Fathers with their disregard for the basic principles of our country and their brazen disregard for the intelligence of the electorate. There were no suggestions of substance, no movement towards meaningful legislation, and no funding of research and education that would actually help stem the tide of ignorance and abuse.

Maybe we did learn something at these hearings after all; we need better Congressmen.

About the author

Will Carroll

Sportswriter

The trusted Will Carroll is an American sportswriter who specializes in the coverage of medical issues, including injuries and performance-enhancing drugs. Carroll's "Under the Knife" column appeared on Baseball Prospectus for eight years during his stint there as a senior writer, and he also contributed to the site's radio efforts as well as the Puck Prospectus spin-off site. He is the author of two books on sports-related medical topics.source for injury information in sports. Not a doctor, but I talk to a lot of them.