Mike Lupica: Congress Champs at Playing Politics

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Tuesday, March 15th, 2005

Commissioner Bud Selig contacted Rep. Tom Davis yesterday and officially told him that he would testify in front of Davis' Government Reform Committee about steroids in baseball. It is the first and only congressional committee that will ever be convened because of a book written by somebody who not only dated Madonna once, but bragged about it.

"I decided it was the right thing to do," Selig was saying yesterday afternoon.

The conventional wisdom, of course, was that any good citizen, or good commissioner, would jump at the chance to appear in front of a congressional committee convened because of Jose Canseco's book. If they didn't, they were chicken. Or at least hiding.

"No one pressured me," Selig said. "I made this decision on my own."

Selig will not show up in Washington and defend the recent past in baseball where steroids and performance-enhancing drugs are concerned. No one can do that. He plans to stick to his story, talk about the present and the future now that baseball finally has a drug policy in place, then let Davis and Rep. Henry Waxman, another guy who read the excerpts from Canseco's book and decided to throw the book at baseball, worry about what they can get out of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa and Jason Giambi.

Davis and Waxman want Selig to tell what he knows about steroids in baseball. They want Donald Fehr of the Players Association, the world leader in opposing any kind of drug testing in baseball, to do the same, along with McGwire and Sosa and the rest of baseball's muscle boys.
But first Davis and Waxman should tell us the real reason they have not issued a subpoena to Barry Bonds. Because if the best Davis can do is telling Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" that one of the reasons that Bonds didn't get a subpoena is because they didn't want these hearings to be about just one player, then it is Davis who looks like a ballplayer telling a cheap lie about steroid use. It is Rep. Davis who ought to think about taking the Fifth the next time somebody like Russert asks him a tough question.

You want the truth, tell the truth.

If Bonds isn't being hauled in front of the Congress of the United States because Davis and Waxman have been asked not to destroy some case against Bonds being built by the U.S. attorneys in the BALCO case, say that. If you're going to hold more hearings later with Bonds as your only witness, say that.

Davis and Waxman get what they want now. They get Bud Selig to testify in front of their committee. All the people who have been yelling for a week that Selig has to testify get their way as well. Somehow this chorus included Selig's predecessor, Fay Vincent, who only became commissioner because Bart Giamatti dropped dead after his Pete Rose investigation.

Vincent never had a drug plan for baseball, or a revenue-sharing plan, or one that involved standing up to the Players Association. He never had much of a plan for anything, outside of getting George Steinbrenner good. Now someone who once threatened Buck Showalter and Gene Michael with their baseball lives because they had the audacity to defend Steve Howe wants to sit on the sidelines and act even more like the conscience of baseball than someone from the House of Representatives.

Here is the greatest truth Vincent ever spoke as baseball commissioner, talking to one of his owners one day.

"This is the best job I ever had!" he said.

So there was no drug policy under him, and no drug policy under Selig until the last collective bargaining agreement, and even then, Fehr and Eugene Orza of the Players Association fought against meaningful testing until the bitter end.

Now we have come to this moment in baseball history, where a congressional hearing about drugs in baseball begins two weeks before Opening Day. And we will begin to see whether Congress is sincerely interested in how we got to this moment, or just getting headlines. Or bracing people like Giambi and McGwire, forcing them to take the Fifth rather than incriminate themselves.

All because of Jose Canseco's book.

Not because of what Giambi is supposed to have said under oath, according to grand jury testimony leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper. Not because of Ken Caminiti, the first real steroids whistle-blower before his heart exploded. Canseco wrote a bestseller about the drugs he said he used and the ones he said he injected into Mark McGwire, the home run king of baseball before Bonds became the home run king of baseball, and now Congress wants answers.
We have a right to get honest answers out of them, or at least as honest as any elected official is capable. We have a right to ask about Bonds, now more than ever, ask why the commissioner of baseball has to go to Washington this week and Bonds does not.

Rep. Davis and Rep. Waxman swear they want the truth. They can start by telling the truth about Barry Bonds, not some lame story about how they don't want this thing to turn into a circus. Because it makes them look like clowns.

We all want answers, the problem is that the wrong people in Washington are asking the questions.