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Selig, Fehr take share of blame in Steroid Era

BY KEN DAVIDOFF | ken.davidoff@newsday.com

January 16, 2008

WASHINGTON - The alleged offending players have received the brunt of the scrutiny from baseball's Mitchell Report. But yesterday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee turned the spotlight to the other side, baseball's management, and the San Francisco Giants came away in the worst shape.

Overall, yesterday's hearing on baseball and illegal, performance-enhancing drugs carried a far higher degree of civility than its March 17, 2005 predecessor, during which both commissioner Bud Selig and Players Association head Donald Fehr received blistering criticism. This time, many committee members applauded the two men for the progress made since that last get-together.

Nevertheless, Selig, Fehr and their respective constituencies took their share of hits, and it now looks as if Selig will have to penalize Giants owner Peter Magowan and general manager Brian Sabean, at a minimum, if he wants to stay in the committee's good graces. It will be a price paid for the Giants' coddling of their longtime superstar, and baseball's current all-time home run king, Barry Bonds.

Committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) raised the Bonds-Giants issue, quoting extensively from the Mitchell Report. George Mitchell wrote that former Giants trainer Stan Conte asked Sabean repeatedly to remove Greg Anderson, Bonds' personal trainer and supposed link to Bonds' steroids supply, from the team's clubhouse. Sabean responded, Conte said, with apathy and inaction.

Magowan, meanwhile, told Mitchell and his investigators that he asked Bonds, back in February 2004, whether he was using steroids.

Oddly, Magowan first said that Bonds told him that he took substances that he learned only afterward were steroids. Two days after his interview, Magowan's lawyers called a member of Mitchell's staff to say that he "misspoke," and amended Magowan's statement; the owner could recall only that Bonds said he didn't knowingly take steroids.

Selig,pressed whether the Giants should have reported their concerns to Major League Baseball's central office, replied, "Of course." He said that discipline for Sabean was "under review."

Magowan, in a statement released by the Giants, said, "The San Francisco Giants wholeheartedly support the efforts of commissioner Selig and Senator Mitchell, and we pledge to embrace every necessary reform to address this serious problem.

"When the Mitchell Report was released, I said that we accepted our fair share of responsibility for what has happened. Now we have to do everything we possibly can to work with the commissioner and Senator Mitchell to effectively combat the use of performing-enhancing drugs in baseball."

"Fair shares of responsibility" came up repeatedly in the questioning yesterday, as multiple officials implored both Selig and Fehr to take accountability for their roles in baseball's steroids era.

While both men have been dramatically reluctant in the past to own up to mistakes, the duo played along yesterday. Said Selig, in his opening statement: "I have personally agonized, thousands of times, over what could have been done differently, and I accept responsibility for everything that happens in our sport."

Added Fehr, in his opening statement: "In retrospect, we should have acted sooner. The MLBPA accepts its share of the responsibility, as do I."

In other issues that arose:

Selig said that he hoped to institute all 20 of Mitchell's recommended improvements by the start of spring training. Nevertheless, neither Selig nor Fehr appeared enthusiastic about farming out their drug-testing program to an independent party, as Mitchell implored them to do in his report, and Fehr faced his fiercest critic in District of Columbia representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat.

When Fehr started to explain why all components of drug testing should be collectively bargained, Norton cut him off, insisting that she knew about labor law and simply wanted her question answered. Fehr immediately apologized.

Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) implored baseball to take blood samples from players and freeze them, should a viable blood test for human growth hormone come to be - as a deterrent to the players. Selig said he didn't think that would work, and Fehr cited the controversy that resulted from seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong's stored test.