Selig Still Undecided on Steroid Hearing

Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig is reconsidering his refusal to attend Thursday’s House Government Reform committee hearing on steroids, according to baseball sources.

As other Major League Baseball officials begin to gather in Washington today in preparation for further negotiations with Congressional leaders and Thursday’s hearing, Selig is now expected to testify along with players’ union leader Don Fehr, baseball executives Rob Manfred and Sandy Alderson, San Diego Padre General Manager Kevin Towers and as many as seven current and former players.

Speaking to reporters Sunday in Scottsdale, Ariz., Selig said he remained unsure if he would attend the hearing. “I don’t know,” he said.

He did, however, appear more receptive to an internal investigation of past steroid use in baseball, among the topics in which the committee appears interested.

“I’d do it extremely sensitively and very confidential,” he said. “I feel very badly. There were some players’ names named. I had a player call me who was named who was just beside himself, and I don’t blame him.

“We’ll be very thorough in checking everything out. And maybe when a definitive history is written someday, long after I’m gone, maybe we can make some sense of this. But there are a lot of players being named who deny it emphatically. I believe in the sense of fairness.

“It’s unfair to a lot of people. Because somebody named a few people, do you think that’s a fair way to begin an investigation? We’ll determine that. If we decide to do a historical retrospective, we’ll do it. But it would be done very quietly. But I’m not quite sure that’s fair.”

Jose Canseco on Sunday said MLB and players’ union officials might have helped put him in prison for two months in 2003 and Congressmen Tom Davis (R-Va.) and Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles) again threatened contempt proceedings against those who ignored subpoenas for the hearing.

On the morning a New York Daily News story quoted an unnamed FBI informant saying he had provided steroids to Mark McGwire more than a decade ago and Jason Giambi’s brother, Jeremy, admitted to the Kansas City Star that he used steroids, Canseco, who is seeking immunity from the committee, told “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” he would swear under oath to the accuracy of his book, “Juiced.”

He also said he feared retribution for the book, saying, “There was an informant with me in jail at the time that mentioned that Major League Baseball, combined with the Players’ Assn., wanted me in prison.”

Canseco spent 67 days in jail in 2003 after testing positive for steroids, a violation of his probation stemming from a 2001 nightclub brawl. He was released after experts could not agree if he had taken the steroids during or prior to his probation period. On Sunday, Canseco said he believed urine samples were switched. “We are looking for the evidence right now,” he said.

The committee has subpoenaed 11 people, including Selig, Canseco, McGwire, Jason Giambi, Frank Thomas, Curt Schilling, Rafael Palmeiro and Sammy Sosa. Baseball lawyer Stanley Brand has fought the subpoenas, offering to send Manfred, Alderson and Fehr only.

Brand has questioned the committee’s jurisdiction and suggested its interest was “prurient” in nature. The committee has been criticized for subpoenaing Giambi, who testified in the federal investigation of BALCO, but not Barry Bonds, who also testified in the BALCO case and is closing in on baseball’s all-time home run record.

The congressmen are consulting with the Justice Department concerning Giambi, and Waxman said Bonds could be called at a later hearing.

“You bring Bonds in, it’s going to be just about Barry Bonds,” Davis said. “It’s more widespread than that.”

Schilling and Thomas, neither of whom was accused of steroid use in Canseco’s book, have said publicly they will attend the hearing. Others are leaning toward the same, according to sources, rather than face contempt proceedings, but lawyers for both sides are in negotiations, and the witness list could change.

On NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” Davis said, “We expect them all to show up,” then allowed, “We’re going to meet and there may be one who gets an excuse here or there, but we expect them all to be or we’re ready to vote out of contempt resolution.

“These people are not above the law. You know, they may fly in private planes or make millions of dollars and be on baseball cards, but a subpoena is exactly what it says it is. They have to appear.”

Selig announced nine days ago that less than 2% of nearly 1,200 players tested positive for steroids in 2004. Baseball since has instituted a firmer policy that requires year-round testing and sterner discipline. The names of the players who test positive will be released.

Davis said the existing policy is “not what they say it is.” He admitted, however, he had not seen the new policy; the subpoena called for delivery of the policy at noon today.

“To me, the shocking thing is that baseball doesn’t seem to have been much concerned about all the steroid stories about their players over the last 10 years,” Waxman told “Meet the Press.”

“We shouldn’t be doing these hearings. They should have been doing these hearings and for a number of reasons.”

Among them, he said, was the integrity of the game and the impact on children. He claimed that in the U.S., 500,000 children are taking steroids.

“What we’d like baseball to do is admit they have a problem, show what they are doing to fix it and make sure we can set the record straight for young people,” Davis said.