Enter Congress
For all those people wishing somebody, anybody, would get to the bottom of this whole steroid mess, have no fear, congress is here! This week, members of the House Government Reform Committee, having finished reforming the government, have asked several ballplayers linked in the steroid scandal, several ball players not linked in the steroid scandal, MLB baseball officials, and union officials to testify next Thursday in front of the committee about steroid abuse. Those players, including Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Jason Giambi, have pretty much refused to testify. As have most MLB officials. And so, yesterday, congress sent out subpoenas. Noticeably absent from all this is one Barry Lamar Bonds. This despite the fact he has become the poster-boy of alleged steroid abuse and despite the fact he's about to break the most famous record in all of sports. Not to mention despite the fact some people think this whole BALCO thing is nothing more than an attempt to get Barry.
Now some of you might be wondering why congress would want to get involved in such a matter. After all, they haven't been able to figure out yet what happened to those WMDs, or all those millions in aid for Iraqi reconstruction, or even how a gay hustler can get a press pass to the White House. Why would they want to bother themselves with baseball? According to Congressman Henry Waxman, it's because baseball hasn't shown any desire to get to the truth of what happened so it's up to congress to do it. Congress, of course, is oh so good at getting at the truth. And also because- wait for it- won't somebody think about the children?
Image of Jose Canseco attending a book signing in Oakland from SFGate
Some say, however, that this is pretty much a crock, nothing much more than something to give congressmen a chance to bloviate and be all blowhard-y. We would say that it'll be a circus, but since congress scheduled the hearings to take place next Thursday, the first night of the NCAA Tourney, nobody is going to care as they'll be too busy checking to see how the Gonzaga game affects their tourney pool to watch C-SPAN. Congress isn’t helping itself in making their case in that the logic behind who they’ve called and why has more holes in it than your typical episode of "Lost" (Polar bears? Cursed numbers? Kate as a bank robber?). The only way congress can get ballplayers to tell the truth is to have them implicate themselves and others, you know, by asking them questions like "are you now or have you ever been injected in the ass by Jose Canseco?" and yes, well, hello Joe McCarthy. There are also a lot of legal issues involved in all this, such as whether confidential drug tests can be subpoenaed or whether Giambi and Bonds can even testify as they have already testified in a Grand Jury. All of which is why MLB, showing more balls then they've ever shown, have basically told congress to take their subpoenas and shove it.
As for why Barry wasn't asked to testify, a spokesman for the committee, David Marin, said it was because Barry "tends to ramble and get off-point". As Jayson Stark of ESPN.com wrote, pity Mark McGwire for being a more concise speaker. Funny thing too is that Bonds himself said as much when he told reporters last week that he didn't think he would be called to testify because he was so out of control in his press conference. Further proof, we think, that Barry is crazy. Crazy like a fox