TAMPA – Where’s Barry? Seven subpoenas were issued yesterday to past and present players to testify next week before a congressional committee investigating baseball’s steroids scandal. Not one of them was issued to Barry Lamar Bonds.
Jose Canseco, Jason Giambi, Mark McGwire and four other players were served. But not having Bonds appear before the House Government Reform Committee on March 17 in Washington makes a mockery of the whole proceedings. It’s like not requesting Tony Soprano to a discussion on organized crime in New Jersey. Without subpoenaing Bonds, the committee’s credibility is tainted.
Tom Davis, the Republican committee chairman, and Henry A. Waxman, the ranking Democrat, who first requested the hearing titled: “Restoring Faith in America’s Pastime: Evaluating Major League Baseball’s Efforts to Eradicate Steroid Use,” insist it will be “a thorough, fair and responsible investigation.”
It can be none of the above unless Bonds is forced to sit in the chair and answer the questions Giambi, McGwire and the other players will be asked, if an appeal of the whole process by Major League Baseball fails.
Bonds was suspected of using steroids long before the BALCO case, and his admission during grand jury testimony of using a cream he says he didn’t know contained steroids is enough for the committee to request his presence.
Even the suits in Washington must know Bonds is as much a suspect in the court of public opinion as Giambi or McGwire. Bonds needs to be asked how he hit 40 home runs in 532 at-bats in 1997 and four years later hit 73 in 476? He needs to be asked how a professional athlete rubs a substance on his body without knowing what it contains?
Without asking Bonds those questions, this hearing come off as a grandstand by ego-driven politicians. Without Bonds, these hearings are a waste of time and money. Davis and Waxman seem to be very busy men. They’ve worked on critical issues like the cost of prescription drugs, overcrowded schools, dangerous conditions in nursing homes and the management of Homeland Security.
Those are issues that affect our everyday lives, the lives of our spouses, our parents and our children. They are the issues we expect our elected politicians to put their time and attention toward: not something as limited in scope as steroids in baseball.
But if they’re going to do this, they need to do it the right way, and that’s to include Bonds. Otherwise, what exactly is the goal here? To clean up baseball or to win re-election?
The view here is politicians should stay out of this and give baseball’s new drug testing policy a chance. Positive tests for steroids dropped between 1 to 2 percent last season, according to the commissioner’s office, down from 5 to 7 percent in 2003 and that was before the new more stringent program that calls for unannounced testing was put into effect this spring. No it’s not perfect. But it’s a start.
Besides, the players who attend the March 17 hearing, if it happens, aren’t going to talk anyway. Giambi will invoke his Fifth Amendment rights to protect the $82 million remaining on his contract and just about every other player will do the same. Only Canseco, who stands to sell more books, is going to talk.
But if this whole exercise is to have any substance at all, Bonds needs to face the heat even if he takes the Fifth. Otherwise, it’s a joke.
