Congress and Baseball: Not Exactly Peanuts and Cracker Jacks

It's been a long year for baseball.

With the outing of Yankees star Alex Rodriguez, another one bites the dust. This is the latest in a string of disappointments resulting from a multi-year investigation into the use of steroids in baseball.

Giving A-Rod credit, he owned up to the dirty deed remarkably quickly and did not go on showboating his righteousness to the media, fans and investigators. But all this begs the question, now a year after the Congressional hearings and the release of the Mitchell Report, what good did it all do? 

From the get-go, I was skeptical of the place Congress had in all this.  Not because I did not think it was within their purview, but because it mostly seemed like the equivalent of shouting down a 4-year old who spilled their juice when you've got an 800-pound gorilla standing behind you (in the form of the economy, two wars, a thousand other more pressing problems, etc.).

If you want to debate the legal merits of Congress's jurisidiction, go ahead, but it will get you nowhere. They pretty much do whatever they want. And when it comes to the use of banned substances being used with little or no oversight within an organization that has long been granted an anti-trust exemption by the federal government, they are well within their rights to launch an investigation.

Stupid? Yes. Time and money pit? Yes.  Illegal. Sorry, no. 

That said, I was willing to give them some leeway if the Mitchell Report and associated Congressional testimony would actually, you know, result in Bud Selig and Major League Baseball taking some action. Witch hunts are only useful if they actually scare all the witches straight. It's likely that between Miguel Tejada, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, at least a few players are rethinking their choices.

But the problem is, Bonds, Clemens and Tejada never would have faced charges or reprimand unless Mitchell's report had come out and resulted in Congressional hearings.  Has MLB taken any steps against individual players or attempted to reform any of its policies? 

Mitchell was commissioned to produce his independent report at the behest of Bud Selig after an earlier set of Congressional hearings. Mitchell's report, with its ties to federal drug investigations, was significant because he was able to compel witnesses to testify against specific players — namely Brian McNamee and Kirk Radomski. 

Once the investigators had evidence, Congress could subpoena said players and ask them about their drug use directly.  Those who lied, to put it mildly, were idiots.  They were only baiting investigators to come after them for perjury when they faced no real charges if they had just told the truth.  But again, without the Congressional hearings in tandem with the report, no player would be facing real penalty, and only those who lied to investigators currently face charges. Tejada, Clemens and Bonds are now facing federal perjury charges. 

Frankly, they did it to themselves, but it's unfortunate that the only real way to hold players accountable is to first launch an expensive and wide-ranging investigation that works alongside ongoing drug inquiries; second, bring the findings of said report before a Congressional committee and compel witnesses to testify in an expensive and well-publicized forum; third, further investigate the testimony of individual players and determine whether they were being truthful.  So basically it takes millions of dollars and three to four years. Thank goodness Mitchell's investigation wasn't subsidized by your tax dollars, only the hearings and subsequent perjury investigations. 

Will the MLB be launching one of these investigations every 10 years or so and offering up three more sacrificial lambs? I think it's pretty awful that a few players face federal charges, jail time and fines for lying to federal investigators about something that is so relatively insignificant. They are being made an example of while MLB stands quietly in a corner and wipes their hands of the matter.

I guess maybe it is cheaper than changing their policies and actually holding individuals, teams and owners accountable. Because, well, that might hurt ticket sales. Who's ready for spring training?