2008 Woodie Awards
Congressional committee tough on Mark McGwire, baseball during steroid hearings
Matt Stearns ; Knight Ridder Newspapers
Issue date: 3/23/05 Section: News
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Major league baseball also took a beating at Thursday's hearing as members of the House Committee on Governmental Reform derided the sport's steroids policy as insufficient and ordered the game to clean up its act. Some members suggested that there should be a national ban on steroid use in all sports at all levels of competition--from high school to the pros.
"There is a cloud over the game," said committee chairman Tom Davis, R-Va. "Maybe we are late to the game in recognizing it. Maybe we are partly to blame in implicitly and wrongly sending the message that baseball's anti-trust exemption is also a public accountability exemption."
McGwire, who brought baseball back to national popularity in 1998 with a record-setting, 70 home-run season, told the committee during its hearing that he was willing to become an anti-steroids spokesman and would direct his nonprofit foundation to focus on the issue.
But when asked if he thought using steroids was cheating, McGwire said, "That's not for me to determine." Asked how he knew steroids were harmful, McGwire said: "I've accepted my attorney's advice not to comment on this issue." Asked how he got to the point in 1998 where he was using the now-illegal steroid androstenedione, McGwire said: "I'm not here to talk about the past."
Several committee members expressed frustration with McGwire's responses.
Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., wondered how Watergate would have turned out if the Nixon administration hadn't wanted to talk about the past. Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., said McGwire's remarks were entering "the theater of the absurd."
"Unless we learn from the past . . . this will be a futile endeavor," Lantos said.
The subpoenaed players who testified promised to use their influence to rid the game of steroid use and to work to prevent teenagers from using performance-enhancing drugs.