Major League Baseball and Congress moved closer to a steroids showdown yesterday.
The House Committee on Government Reform issued subpoenas to seven current and former players including Jason Giambi, Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire to appear at a steroids hearing March 17, and baseball has vowed to fight them.
The committee, which issued invitations to appear last week, decided to subpoena the players and several baseball executives yesterday after getting little response from the invitees. Curt Schilling, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro and Frank Thomas were the other players subpoenaed, along with baseball executive vice presidents Rob Manfred and Sandy Alderson, players’ association head Donald Fehr and San Diego general manager Kevin Towers.
Stanley Brand, an attorney for the baseball commissioner’s office, said the committee’s actions were not justified and criticized it for interfering with the ongoing BALCO case in California by calling on the Yankees’ Giambi, who testified before a grand jury in that case.
“The legal audacity of subpoenaing someone who has given grand jury testimony before there is even a trial is an absolutely excessive and unprecedented use of congressional power,” Brand said. “If that’s what Congress wants to do, then in my judgment, they’ve torn loose from their legislative moorings.”
Brand and Manfred said they would fight the subpoenas, which could cause the hearing to be pushed back. Brand wrote a letter Tuesday to Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), the committee’s chairman, and Rep. Henry Waxman (D.-Ca.), the ranking democrat on the committee, expressing baseball’s objections to the hearings and also informing them that Manfred and Fehr would appear at the hearing but no players would.
Davis and Waxman issued a statement saying the subpoenas to Manfred, Fehr and Canseco, who also volunteered to appear, are of a “friendly” nature.
“The remaining witnesses, however, made it clear – either by flatly rejecting the invitation to testify or by ignoring our repeated attempts to contact them – they had no intention of appearing before the Committee,” Davis and Waxman said. “They have left the Committee no alternative but to issue subpoenas.”
The subpoenas come six days after baseball’s new testing policy began, and four days after commissioner Bud Selig said 1-2 percent of players failed tests last season.
Brand questioned the committee’s jurisdiction over the matter, as well as raising privacy issues if players are compelled to testify.
In his letter to Davis and Waxman, Brand wrote, “All the players involved here see the invitation, therefore, as an effort to either embarrass them or their peers.”
Davis appeared on the television show “Cold Pizza” yesterday morning. When asked about getting the players to testify he said these players were chosen for a reason.
“Let me just say that everybody will be subpoenaed who doesn’t want to testify and we’re prepared to take this to the full House, if we have to, for contempt,” Davis said. “All of these folks have been outspoken to the press on this issue. We didn’t single out people by whim … We want Major League Baseball to come and talk about the new drug policy.”
There will be a separate hearing on steroids today conducted by the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection. Selig was invited to appear, but is sending a representative instead. There will also be representatives from the NFL and NCAA giving testimony.
