Players May Defy House

A House committee Wednesday subpoenaed 11 baseball executives and current and former players -- including Commissioner Bud Selig, Mark McGwire and Jason Giambi -- but it appeared many would defy the order to testify at a March 17 hearing investigating steroid use.

Stan Brand, the attorney representing baseball and the Major League Baseball Players’ Assn., asserted that the House Government Reform Committee lacks the legal jurisdiction to conduct the inquiry and challenged the authority of the subpoenas, calling the process an “excessive and unprecedented misuse of Congressional power.”

The committee subpoenaed Selig, baseball executive vice presidents Rob Manfred and Sandy Alderson, San Diego Padre General Manager Kevin Towers, former players McGwire and Jose Canseco, and current players Giambi, Sammy Sosa, Curt Schilling, Frank Thomas and Rafael Palmeiro.

Through a letter drafted by Brand and delivered to the committee Tuesday night, baseball offered to have Manfred and union chief Don Fehr testify. The subpoenas went out Wednesday morning.

Committee chairman Tom Davis (R-Va.) and ranking member Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) issued a statement that described the players other than Canseco of “flatly rejecting the invitation to testify or ignoring our repeated attempts to contact them,” leaving the committee “no alternative but to issue subpoenas.”

If summoned witnesses do not attend the hearing, they could be subject to Contempt of Congress citations -- voted on by the committee and then the full House -- and presented for criminal charges by the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. The misdemeanor is punishable by up to a year in prison and fines up to $1,000.

Brand did not deny baseball would be willing to take up that fight.

“That, ultimately, is how things play out if indeed they play out,” he said.

Witnesses could attend the March 17 hearing and invoke their 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

The committee also has subpoenaed copies of documents in 11 areas, including results of drug testing since 2003, all drug testing policies for steroids or addictive drugs since 1970, copies of drug-testing proposals made by Major League Baseball to the union in 1994, and documents detailing the names, disciplinary action taken and reason for suspension for all drug-related violations since 1990.

Baseball has resisted the inquiry on jurisdictional and privacy grounds, and Brand said Wednesday that the ongoing federal investigation into performance-enhancing drugs and the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative could be compromised. In that case, Giambi reportedly testified before a federal grand jury that he had used steroids, and other witnesses could be called in the future, including some of the players who have been subpoenaed by the committee. Barry Bonds and Gary Sheffield, who also testified in the BALCO case, were not subpoenaed.

“If that’s what Congress wants to do ... then, in my judgment, they’ve torn loose from their legislative moorings,” Brand said.

One committee staffer said it had seen greater resistance and “more arrogance” from Major League Baseball and its players than any other investigation the panel has conducted in recent years.

Phil Schiliro, chief of the Democratic staff to the House Government Reform Committee, said Wednesday night that he was “mystified” why anyone in baseball would defy the subpoenas. He said that Major League Baseball and its players deserved to be held “accountable just like anybody else.”

“We hoped they would comply voluntarily with the request. They didn’t. They left the committee with no alternative. The fact that they are baseball players doesn’t mean they get special treatment,” Schiliro said. “If Major League Baseball wants to litigate it and drag it out, they could do that, but it’s not going to go away. So if they want to push this into the season, that’s up to baseball.”

Canseco will be asked under oath to defend his book, “Juiced,” in which he admits to using steroids and alleges the same by many of the players called before the committee, Schiliro said. Those players -- McGwire, Giambi, Palmeiro and Sosa -- also would have the chance to defend themselves against Canseco’s accusations.

“You’ve got a bunch of players whom Canseco named in his book,” he said. “We don’t presume Canseco is telling the truth or not telling the truth. But we’re giving Canseco a chance to put up or shut up. If he’s lying in his book, he’s going to be lying under oath and he’ll be liable for perjury. There are a group of players who’s saying he’s lying. So we’re giving them an opportunity to come in. If Major League Baseball and the players are telling the truth, they just come in to testify. It just raises a question when they’re willing to go to jail to avoid coming in and being asked questions about what happened in the 1990s on steroids.”

In their statement, Davis and Waxman proposed the committee would hold a “thorough, fair, and responsible investigation.... It is important the American people know the facts on baseball’s steroid scandal. And it is important that all Americans, especially children, know about the dangers of drug use. Consistent with our Committee’s jurisdiction over the nation’s drug policy, we need to better understand the steps MLB is taking to get a handle on the steroid issue, and whether news of those steps -- and the public health danger posed by steroid use -- is reaching America’s youth.”

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Times staff writer Richard Simon in Washington contributed to this report.