Panel throws heat at MLB

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) offered a glimpse of how sternly he will deal with baseball’s steroid abuse scandal, calling Tuesday for a Justice Department investigation into whether a former American League Most Valuable Player lied to Congress.

Waxman’s call for a deeper probe into Miguel Tejada’s testimony to lawmakers in 2005, announced in the first few minutes of a hearing into the doping controversy, hinted that the more dramatic moments in the congressional investigation will come when the players cited in last month’s Mitchell report appear as witnesses.

{mosads}That will be when New York Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens and his former trainer, Brian McNamee, testify on Feb. 13. Clemens, a seven-time Cy Young award winner, is among the game’s biggest stars accused of using steroids in the report. McNamee told former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (D-Maine) that he injected Clemens with steroids, an accusation Clemens denies.

On Tuesday the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee focused on Tejada before moving on to the hearing featuring testimony from Mitchell — the author of the report — as well as Major League Baseball (MLB) Commissioner Bud Selig and players’ union leader Donald Fehr.

Waxman and the panel’s ranking member, Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey asking him to look into whether Tejada told the truth the last time the committee spoke to him.

Having interviewed the former Baltimore Oriole as part of the earlier investigation, Waxman said the player’s testimony was never made public out of respect for his privacy. “The conflict is stark and fundamental to the committee’s 2005 investigation,” he said about the contrast between Tejada’s testimony and Mitchell’s report.

According to Mitchell’s report, Tejada was provided with steroids through former Oakland Athletics teammate Adam Piatt. But in testimony from 2005, now made public by Waxman’s and Davis’s letter to Mukasey, the shortstop flatly denied ever using a performance-enhancing drug.

Mitchell answered questions about his report’s methodology and its reliance on McNamee and former New York Mets clubhouse employee Kirk Radomski.

The ex-senator said he interviewed McNamee three times and was confident in the former trainer’s honesty. “I told him at the outset of each interview that I wanted nothing but the truth, no exaggeration, no minimizing. Just tell the truth,” said Mitchell. McNamee had a strong incentive to speak the truth as well, being under pressure from prosecutors to speak to Mitchell.

Lawmakers pushed Selig and Fehr to admit that baseball’s steroids problem grew on their watch.

“We didn’t pay enough attention to it soon enough,” said Fehr.

In addition, members said the league’s stars served as poor role models for the country’s youth, among whom use of performance-enhancing drugs has become more prevalent.

“I don’t worry about the players, because they’re millionaires. I worry about the kids,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.).

Some members were hesitant to step between the league and the players’ association and joked the hearing was more about publicity than policy.

Representatives for MLB and the players’ union have already begun discussing how best to implement the changes recommended in Mitchell’s report, while Selig has already finalized some of the ex-senator’s suggestions, such as establishing an investigative department, on his own accord.

Mitchell implored lawmakers to focus more on the future in fixing the steroids problem instead of taking punitive action. Meanwhile, Selig said he was looking into the allegations from the ex-senator’s report on a “case-by-case basis.”

Those on the witness stand and behind the dais credited the 2005 probe by the same panel as the reason why baseball has taken a tougher stance against steroids. Instead of following through on broad legislation, lawmakers resorted to pressure via hearings. MLB responded by instituting a tougher testing regime for performance-enhancing drugs after amending its collective bargaining agreement with the players’ association in 2005.

Both Selig and Fehr said Mitchell’s report found no steroids abuse over the past two years since those amendments were put in the place. The newest challenge for the league, however, is Human Growth Hormone (HGH), whose use many believe is on the rise among players.

Several lawmakers have proposed legislation to deal with HGH, and Selig said the league supports that approach. Nevertheless, an accurate test has not been created for the drug as of yet. In a partnership with the National Football League, MLB is funding research to help develop a urine test.

Advocates for both the league and the players’ union saw the meeting as an opportunity to tell their side of the story, and left pleasantly surprised by the first round.

“Our hearings have not always been an easy experience to go through,” said Lucy Calautti, MLB’s head of governmental relations at Baker Hostetler. “We did everything Congress asked for. They knew that, and it showed.”

“We’ve made a tremendous amount of progress, and the committee deserves a lot of credit for that,” said Joel Johnson, a partner at the Glover Park Group who lobbies for the players’ union.

Both Calautti and Johnson have more time to prepare for Congress’s next hearing as well. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) has postponed a hearing planned for next week that he was to lead, at which Mitchell was also expected to testify about his report.