In 1919, the Chicago White Sox contrived to deliberately lose the baseball World Series, producing a gambling scandal of epic proportions and one of the most enduring lines about America’s favourite sport: ”Say it ain’t so, Joe.”
The lament, reputed to have been delivered by a small boy to the legendary fielder and hitter Shoeless Joe Jackson outside a New York courtroom, was back in circulation this week as the world of professional baseball confronted its latest demon: the use of illegal, performance-enhancing drugs.
On Wednesday, an investigative committee of Congress issued subpoenas to seven active and retired major league players, among them some of the sports biggest names, as well as four baseball officials, to testify before the house committee on government reform on the use of steroids.
On Thursday, players and team owners delivered their preliminary response: No.
Stanley Brand, a lawyer for the baseball commissioner’s office, said the players would contest the subpoenas. He went on to accuse Congress of using concerns about drug use to try to win points with the public at the sport’s expense. He also warned that the hearings could compromise a grand jury investigation now under way in California into steroid use. ”The legal audacity of subpoenaing someone who’s been a grand jury witness before there has been a trial in the case in California is just an absolutely excessive and unprecedented misuse of congressional power,” Brand told reporters.
The showdown now sets the stage for a fullscale confrontation between US lawmakers and baseball authorities. In a hard-hitting response to Brand, the committee leaders, Republican congressman Tom Davis, and Democratic congressman Henry Waxman, indicated they were determined to have the players testify. If players defy the subpoenas, the committee could vote them in contempt, an action that could potentially result in jail time.
”Baseball and ballplayers do not, by virtue of their celebrity, deserve special treatment or to be placed above the law,” the statement said. ”Any American citizen under these circumstances would be required to comply with the committee’s request. Major league baseball and baseball players are no different.”
The congressmen went on to accuse organised baseball of ignoring more than a decade of press reports about drug abuse, and said failure had encouraged an entire generation to resort to steroids in an attempt to be like their sporting heroes.
Thursday’s showdown, and a series of high-profile deaths of major league and amateur players that have been linked to steroid use, now forces major league baseball to confront problems of drug use that were addressed by other sporting officials years ago.
”I think the world of sport has been waiting for this. When we introduced our code in March 2003, many of the Olympic sports said what about the major leagues, what are they going to do?” said David Howman, director of the World Anti-Doping Agency.
Further fuel was added to the steroid scandal this year by a locker room exposé by one of the players summoned by Congress, Jose Conseco, who wrote at length about how he — and a number of team-mates — regularly injected themselves with steroids.
”It certainly taints some of the records and achievements that have been accomplished in the last 10 or 15 years,” said Dan Shaughnessy, the baseball columnist for The Boston Globe newspaper. ”It hasn’t hurt them at the gate, but I suppose there is an element of trust that has been dented.”
The players summoned by Congress to testify on March 17 include some of baseball’s biggest names: the home-run kings Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire, and Curt Schilling who last year continued pitching on an injured and bleeding ankle to lead the Boston Red Sox to their first World Series championship since 1918.
The first baseman, Jason Giambi, who has admitted using steroids and other substances before a grand jury, was also subpoenaed.
But there was criticism of the Congress decision not to summon Barry Bonds, who is poised this season to challenge the career home run records of Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron. According to leaked testimony from a grand jury investigation into doping, Bonds has admitted the inadvertent use of a cream containing steroids.
”It’s like not requesting Tony Soprano to a discussion on organised crime in New Jersey. Without subpoenaing Bonds, the committee’s credibility is tainted,” the sports columnist George Willis wrote in Thursday’s New York Post. – Guardian Unlimited Â