Hall of Shame

By Sean Gregory/Washington

Mark McGwire, a balding, svelter version of his former 70-home-run self, sauntered into a congressional hearing room on St. Patrick's Day wearing a light green tie. But there were no eyes, Irish or otherwise, smiling on him from the dais. Before members of the House Government Reform Committee and millions of fans watching on television, McGwire swore to tell nothing but the truth. Instead, he told nothing. After a moving opening statement in which he cried while ruing the deaths of young steroid users, the cameras clicked in wild anticipation. Was Big Mac ready to admit that he too had supersized himself with steroids? Would he acknowledge the danger and offer a lesson to the millions of teenagers who still look up to him? Would he take up the cause of Denise and Raymond Garibaldi and Donald Hooton, who testified earlier that steroids killed their young sons?

McGwire took a deep breath. "If a player answers no, he simply will not be believed," he said about the anticipated questions of his own steroid use. "If he answers yes, he risks public scorn and endless government investigations." So unlike fellow players on the panel, Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro, who flatly denied taking steroids, and Jose Canseco, an admitted abuser, McGwire essentially took the Fifth. Mighty McGwire, the man whose eclipse of Roger Maris' home-run record galvanized a nation and who became this magazine's 1998 Hero of the Year, tried to draw a walk rather than swing for the fences. Instead, he struck out looking, and looked bad doing it.

Five months ago, baseball appeared on the cusp of another golden age, as attendance swelled to record levels and the Boston Red Sox mounted an astonishing, myth-busting World Series run. Now, as teams get ready for opening day, drugs have dulled the allure. First, leaked grand jury testimony revealed that Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi had allegedly taken performance-enhancing drugs. (Bonds denied knowing those substances were steroids.) Then, in a splashy new book titled Juiced, Canseco wrote that he had injected McGwire and Palmeiro with steroids and noted that they were far from alone in their drug usage.

During 11 hours of testimony, the House reform committee further embarrassed the game by making baseball answer for its weak steroid policy. Baseball officials told skeptical committee members that the current policy represents progress, since the sport inexplicably had no policy until 2002. But baseball still falls woefully short compared with other sports. In the NFL, players are tested randomly in and out of season, and first-time abusers miss a quarter of a season. Baseball players miss 10 days, or about 5% of the season--and the legislators were incensed to learn about language that allowed a fine instead of suspension for first timers. Olympians--facing the gold standard in terms of strictness--are subject to testing at any time and barred for two years for a first offense, for life after a second. In baseball, it's five strikes and you're out. Noted Georgia Republican and House reform-committee member Lynn Westmoreland: "There are a lot of people in prison that would like this kind of deal."

The legislators all but scorned baseball executives' attempts to defend their drug policy. Commissioner Bud Selig, looking at times pained, at times as if he just lost his dog, claimed he didn't become concerned about baseball's steroid problem until the hulking McGwire admitted he took androstenedione in 1998 (andro was legal in baseball at the time). "No manager, no general manager, nobody ever came to me in the '90s," said Selig. At best, it showed big-league naivete, since those drugs were clearly baseball's dirty little secret in the 1990s. Said Massachusetts Representative Steven Lynch, a Democrat: "I have not been reassured one bit."

Yet Congress didn't look all that much better with its relentless grandstanding. Dutch Ruppersberger, a Democrat from Maryland, asked Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning, the opening witness and an ex--big league great, about a pitch he threw to Mickey Mantle. Representative Diane Watson, Democrat from California, dissed Arnold Schwarzenegger by flashing a 1987 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED cover featuring the Republican California Governor, an ex-steroid user, flexing under the headline HOT STUFF. Florida Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen praised Cuban American Canseco for hailing from Miami. "It was a terrible day for baseball," says former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent. "It was a worse day for Congress."

The House surely produced great theater, but are the politicians just talking tough? Committee members repeatedly threatened to rescind baseball's antitrust exemption, which has been on the books for more than 80 years, if the sport doesn't adopt harsher drug rules. But some experts think Congress is bluffing. "Why would they do that?" asks Chicago-based sports-marketing consultant Marc Ganis. "It's an arrow in their quiver to say they'll pull it. If they did, what would they then have to hold over baseball?"

Although the antitrust exemption restricts the players' ability to take management to court, baseball's powerful union has negotiated such favorable free-agency and salary terms for its players that the exemption is no longer crucial. "It's a far smaller chip than Congress thinks it is," says Ganis. Withdrawing the exemption would allow baseball's minor-league teams more freedom to relocate, but many politicians have teams in their districts and want to keep them there.

The government has the power to rewrite baseball's drug laws, and Congress's patience with the sport is clearly low. Says Indiana's Mark Souder, who sits on the reform committee: "With the current policy, I don't think they'll make it through the current season [without intervention]." But Congress probably won't act too fast--it rarely does--so expect more hearings, say House reform-committee members. Some members want to call more players and perhaps baseball trainers to prove that baseball has long known about the steroid use. Rather than single out baseball, the House might try to create broad steroid restrictions for all sports or adopt the tough Olympic standard.

The hearings may help clean up baseball, but they have stained McGwire's legacy. His lawyer-crafted responses to the inquisition--"I'm not here to talk about the past," "I'm here to talk about the positive," "I don't know, I'm a retired player"--drew chuckles from the gallery. A Missouri lawmaker suggested stripping the name from the Mark McGwire Highway in St. Louis. "He's a tragic figure," says Vincent. "I feel sorry for McGwire; he was put in an impossible position. On the other hand, he did a stupid thing, and in this life, when you do a stupid thing you pay for it." --With reporting by Perry Bacon Jr./Washington and David Thigpen/Chicago

With reporting by Perry Bacon Jr./Washington, David Thigpen/Chicago