The Return of Congressional Baseball Hearings: Because They Worked So Well the First Time

Before any human being could have possibly read the entire Mitchell Report after its release on Thursday – factoring in the number of naps and coffee breaks it would take to get through the mind-numbingly boring document – politicians were already making headlines by demanding new hearings on Capitol Hill about Major League Baseball’s steroid problem. Astoundingly, in a time when we can’t get Congress to agree on virtually anything from health care to education to the war in Iraq, our Democrat and Republican lawmakers took the time to patch things up long enough to agree on one major point for our country: multimillionaires who play a game for a living should not be taking drugs.

Glad we could clear that up.

The two main proponents of new hearings, Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California and Republic Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, were also the two main proponents of the original hearing in 2005; you remember, that was the hearing where Rafael Palmeiro angrily asserted "I have never used steroids," but in an understandable flub, forgot to add "in the Capitol Building" at the end, the hearing where Mark McGwire revealed a serious dislike of history (I’m guessing he didn’t take the tour of the Capitol during his visit to D.C.), and the hearing where the English-speaking part of Sammy Sosa’s brain had a sudden and complete meltdown, which was, thankfully, contained without any major radiation leaks.

Yeah, that’s definitely something we ought to do again.

Granted, this time, Congress doesn’t appear to be all that interested in further testimony by players, but rather, in MLB Commissioner Bud Selig and MLB Player’s Association head Donald Fehr, not that it is really any better, and not nearly as entertaining. The real question is why Congress is wasting taxpayer time and money holding hearings on a game in the first place, given that I can think of – I’ll just throw out a random number, here – 31,249 more important issues on which we could be spending each Representative’s $165,000 salary.

Don’t get me wrong: professional athletes using performance-enhancing substances is clearly a problem, and one that Major League Baseball has done a terrible job of dealing with in the past two decades. Aside from the obvious issues of cheating, there is also the fact that most of the substances in question are illegal. However, that is what police and prosecutors are for. If there is enough evidence that a player has violated the law, the player should be prosecuted as any other person would be. If there isn’t enough evidence to take through the legal system, it falls to Major League Baseball’s rules and mechanisms to deal with the player as the MLB sees fit. Regardless of whether the MLB has done a lousy job of policing itself in the eyes of me, Congress, the fans, or anyone else, it is ultimately the prerogative of the MLB to decide how to deal with players who are not formally accused of any crime. If Major League Baseball decided – as they more or less did for the past 20 years – to do nothing, well, it might make the MLB a dirty, rotten, scoundrel of an organization, but it is certainly well within their rights to do so.

Personally, I’m a huge baseball fan, and I understand the sport’s historical importance to the United States as a country, and its role as our National Pastime. However, none of that is a good reason for Congress to be holding pointless hearings on the alleged drug use of private citizens in one particular organization; if there was rampant drug by doctors in the American Medical Association, I might buy that Congressional hearings would be worthwhile. But grown men playing a game? Not so much. Congress might as well hold hearings on rampant drug use in the Screen Actors Guild. Think about it: Lindsay Lohan and Robert Downey Jr. both testifying before Congress. It might be the only time in the history of the Capitol Building where someone testifying before Congress could answer "I don’t recall" to every question, and probably be telling the truth.

There is no doubt that Major League Baseball needs to clean itself up. For the sake of their game and business, the MLB player’s union (MLBPA) needs to step up and stop obfuscating on the steroids issue, and agree to stricter and more regular drug testing for players, and Bud Selig needs to work with the player’s union to get a system in place to do that. There will never be a way to catch all cheaters; even now, there is no good test for Human Growth Hormone (HGH) aside from Internet trails leading to unlicensed dentists, and there are undoubtedly plenty of other drug cocktails in the works designed specifically to evade testing. Nobody’s asking Major League Baseball to do the impossible and catch every cheater. An honest system that at least tries to catch people, however, sure would be nice.

As for Congress: we elect and pay you to do a lot of things, but I don’t think baseball is one of them. Hey, I love the game too, and I’m as concerned about the rampant cheating in the game as any fan. However, I don’t plan on holding any day-long meetings at work to get to the bottom of Roger Clemens’ alleged steroids use.

Somehow, I think my employer would frown on that.