Baseball hearings first step toward revival

“In their zeal to draw attention to themselves, members of Congress demonstrated Thursday why… “In their zeal to draw attention to themselves, members of Congress demonstrated Thursday why it takes them so long to get anything done.”

“At a hearing into steroids use in baseball, the House Committee on Government Reform wasted hours and hours by grabbing hold of a phony issue and refusing to let it go,” wrote The New York Times’ Murray Chass last week.

Chass is not alone in thinking the representatives involved in these hearings are guilty of self-promotion. Sports commentators and columnists across the country have condemned the committee’s actions as an exercise in grandstanding. And it’s entirely possible that Congress’ motives for subpoenaing baseball executives and players, both current and former, are entirely self-serving.

The truth, though, is that the committee’s motives are totally irrelevant.

Baseball is and will always be the national pastime, but right now the game is a total mess. The players’ union is too strong, the economics are totally out of whack and the commissioner is a former used car salesman. I refuse to believe, even for one second, that some of the legislators involved in these hearings aren’t genuinely interested in cleaning up baseball.

That the hearings have the added benefit of being good politics is a plus, because it provides people in seats of power some incentive to take the actions necessary for the restoration of the game’s popularity and credibility with the American people.

When the U.S. Supreme Court granted baseball an antitrust exemption in 1922, it was the right move for the time; but the Court left a loophole for change, stating that Congress would have the power to amend the exemption.

It’s likely that within the next three years, we will begin to hear talk of Congress wanting to revoke baseball’s antitrust exemption — and rightfully so. If baseball has proved anything over the past 15 years, it is its total inability to govern itself properly.

During the off-season, the owners and players agreed to implement a new steroid testing policy for the beginning of this season. The new plan sets the punishment for a first-time offender at a 10-day suspension, with the penalties increasing for each offense.

In football, the same first-timer is forced to sit down for four games — a quarter of the entire season — and is subject to scrutiny from both the media and the fans as additional consequence for his actions.

The serious penalties in baseball’s new plan don’t kick in until an offender is caught for the fifth time. So we’re to understand that cheating is OK, but only up to a point. Furthermore, the agreement stipulates that newer designer steroids, amphetamines and human growth hormones, while banned, will not be tested for.

Baseball has serious fundamental and economic flaws, and nobody in either of the sport’s governing bodies seem especially eager to fix them. It’s time someone held the powers that be accountable. It’s time someone held the commissioner’s feet to the fire. It’s time someone set limits on how much owners can spend. And it’s time someone took the players off their high horses and leveled the balance of power.

The game is sorely in need of repair, and that process might best be served by dragging it through the mud at first, as long as the repairs occur. Congressional hearings not only help call public attention to the severity of baseball’s problems, but they hopefully present enough of a threat to both Commissioner Bud Selig and players’ union head Donald Fehr that change will be forthcoming: That’s what’s really important here. So, pardon me for not caring about why Congress staged last Thursday’s 11-hour exhibition.

I love baseball. I love it more than anything else, and it pains me to see my game tarnished as it has been, especially over the last 11 years. It seems that for every great moment or feel-good story the game manages to produce, it finds a way to shoot itself in the foot.

The players’ strike of 1994 cast a shadow over the game that was lifted in 1998 by two of the most likable characters in sport. Four seasons later, a narrowly averted lockout left a sour taste in fans’ mouths, but their palates were cleansed by three straight outstanding seasons, followed by some of the best postseason play in the game’s history. The Red Sox won their first World Series in 86 years after the most improbable comeback victory in the history of sports, but just months later, the game is being dirtied once again.

Imagine just how the game might capture the hearts and minds of the public if, for every great victory, there weren’t an equally disheartening defeat. Then, and only then, will baseball be able to reclaim its place as the national pastime.

You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but Matt Wein has never used steroids. E-mail him at mattwein@hotmail.com.