Steroids hearing was fascinating

Thursday’s congressional hearing on the reported use of illegal steroids by major league baseball players hoping to gain a competitive edge was a fascinating diversion from watching the snow melt in anticipation of the imminent arrival of spring here in the northern climes.

The daylong session had a little of everything for snowbound baseball fans who stuck with the spectacle until even the cable television stations said the hell with it and departed in favor of their regular programming.

There were parents telling of the tragedy of having lost teenage sons to steroid-induced suicide; dueling doctors disputing each other’s testimony; present and former major leaguers contradicting one another on the extent of steroid use; and baseball bigwigs claiming things have been blown out of proportion. Plus a plethora of pandering politicians, each professing to be thinking only of the welfare of the nation’s kids who idolize and emulate professional baseball players.

The hearing constituted a shot fired across the bow of big league baseball, a warning by politicians that Congress could get involved if the sport doesn’t clean up its act following startling allegations about rampant steroid use made in a recent tell-all book by former player Jose Canseco.

Canseco, now persona non grata in major league baseball circles, was there, adroitly pushing his book every chance he got. He said he wouldn’t be able to tell the committee much because he is on probation in Florida for a minor crime and he didn’t wish to have a violation-of-probation rap hung on him for things he might say. Then it became nigh impossible to shut him up.

Not so the tight-lipped Mark McGwire, a former teammate of Conseco at Oakland, where Canseco claims they often did ‘roids together before games. McGwire, who bulked up something fierce from those days and went on to set a major league record for home runs (71) in 1998 as a St. Louis Cardinal, mostly hid behind the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. “I am not here to discuss the past,” the retired slugger repeatedly told the panel, on advice from his lawyer.

Several years ago McGwire had acknowledged using a performance-enhancing substance that was legal at the time. On Thursday he characterized Canseco as “A convicted criminal who would do and say anything about his [former] friends, just to solve his problems.”

Baltimore Oriole Sammy Sosa, who, as a Chicago Cub, had battled McGwire for the home run title in that splendiferous summer of ’98, said he had never used drugs. Ditto, teammate Ralphael Palmeiro, whom Canseco claims has been a user. Palmeiro animatedly jabbed his finger at committee members, telling them, “I have never used steroids. Period. Never. The reference to me in Mr. Canseco’s book is absolutely false.”

Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, invited to testify and serve on an anti-drug task force because he has been outspoken against the use of performance-enhancing drugs by athletes, flat-out called the “so-called author” Canseco a liar.

Conspicuous by his absence was the supremely confident San Francisco Giants slugger, Barry Bonds, who broke McGwire’s season record for home runs with 73 and is nearing the major league career record held by Hank Aaron. The muscular Bonds – who has become roughly the size of King Kong and can hit a baseball every bit as far as KK probably could have had he not devoted his career to terrorizing Fay Wray and New York City – had testified in 2003 before a Left Coast grand jury investigating a steroid distribution ring.

A highlight for baseball fans who remember the so-called national pastime when it was relatively scandal-free was the testimony of baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Bunning, now a gray-maned Republican senator from Kentucky. Bunning said baseball’s proposed penalty for steroid use is “too puny” and ought to be more in line with tougher Olympic standards or other professional sports. As well, he said, any record set while the player was on the juice should be wiped out. “It’s not their game. It’s ours, and they are just enjoying the privilege of playing it for a short time,” he said.

“Maybe I’m old-fashioned,” Bunning said. “But I remember that players did not get better as they got older…”

And so it went, well into the evening. At one point, the outspoken California Democrat, Rep. Tom Lantos, said he had “a feeling that the theater of the absurd is unfolding here.” Then he told a doctor shilling for major league baseball’s anti-drug policy, “I found your testimony pathetically unpersuasive.”

So did Canseco and many watching the proceedings, I’d guess. But probably few could have put it so eloquently.

Columnist Kent Ward’s e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net