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Selig's legacy in play in next round of Congressional hearings
By T.J. Quinn and Mark Fainaru-Wada
ESPN.com

The commissioner sagged in his seat, brow furrowed, arms folded across his gray pinstriped suit, listening as members of Congress berated him and his leadership.

Through those March 17, 2005, hearings, when he sat in the front row of the gallery while others testified, Bud Selig threw glances behind him like fishing lines, hoping to catch a sympathetic look from someone who shared his sense of injustice. His reactions were particularly conspicuous when two families first testified how their sons committed suicide after extensive steroid use and then suggested that Major League Baseball needed to take greater responsibility to combat the issue with big leaguers.

When it finally was his turn at the microphone, Selig was a man trying to keep his footing against a crashing surf.

Jose Canseco's book, "Juiced," released a month earlier, had the sports world roiling with accusations of rampant steroid use among players, and it goosed Congress into action. When players were subpoenaed to appear and testify under oath, MLB sent the committee a letter that said it had no jurisdiction and that the hearings were "an absolutely excessive and unprecedented misuse of congressional power."

"That might not have been the best strategy," says Rob Manfred, MLB's senior vice president for business and labor affairs. Manfred met recently with ESPN.com.

The right strategy, though, has been elusive for Selig and other baseball officials, with their responses to the steroids issue at times reactive and defiant. Selig's supporters and MLB owners believe he has done more to fight doping in his sport than any other commissioner, at least one who has to negotiate his policy with a union.

But on Tuesday, Selig is scheduled to return to Washington, to face the same panel that blistered him two years ago. The commissioner has become a frequent witness on Capitol Hill the past few years, and this appearance represents the latest referendum on his leadership during the so-called steroids era. It's also likely to reveal how far Selig and the game have progressed since 2005.

Some committee members aren't convinced Selig has come far enough.

"The commissioner should tell the owners of baseball that this is the standard that he is going to implement, and if they don't like it, then find a new commissioner," Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., told Bloomberg Radio last week. And if the players balk, Selig should say, "'If you don't like it, then go on strike,'" Shays said.

MLB's executives argue that negotiating policy with a powerful union is a little more complicated than Shays' scenario, but Selig learned a lesson in those 2005 hearings. If he wanted to keep control of his sport, he had to take control of the issue.

"One thing about Bud, he is realistic," Manfred says. "At that point in time, he thought we were being treated differently, but that's the way it was."

With the grudging consent of the MLB Players Association, Selig toughened penalties from no suspension for a first failed test to a 50-game suspension, and the sport went from a "five strikes and you're out" policy to a more baseball-appropriate three.

And against all advice, Selig bet the farm that employing former Sen. George Mitchell to investigate the steroids era would both provide closure and put an end to accusations that the commissioner was willing to overlook doping in the national pastime. Closure, though, has been particularly difficult to come by, leaving the commissioner open to criticism for his handling of the era.

In recent weeks, Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., who is not a member of the newly renamed House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform but who previously headed up his own congressional hearings on steroid use in sports, called for Selig to step down, telling ESPN that Mitchell's selection had been "a little political" and an attempt to shield Selig from his own responsibility.

"I think his credibility is marginal, because he was the captain of the ship during all these problems," Stearns says. "If you have a CEO of a major corporation and something like this is occurring, what do they do? They replace the CEO."

Selig's supporters believe he was visionary in turning Mitchell loose on the game, but whether the report represents the clean break Selig has sought remains to be seen. And the hearings Tuesday will be an early test.

Already, Mitchell's report has had the unintended consequence of setting off a battle between the most decorated pitcher in the game's history, seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens, and the personal trainer who, in the Mitchell report, accused him of using steroids.

Now, as Selig prepares to appear in front of the committee, he will find out whether everything he has done since 2005 will be enough to keep Congress off his back.

Selig is expected to say that he is reviewing each player named in the report and eventually may suspend any active player found to have violated MLB policy. Although he hasn't indicated how he might deal with San Francisco Giants executives implicated in the report for not addressing suggestions a steroids dealer was in the team clubhouse in 2002, the commissioner found the details "very troubling," according to sources close to him. The sources indicated he wants to show he will be as tough on the clubs as he is on the players.

He also is expected to announce that MLB will meet with union officials after the hearings to negotiate Mitchell's recommendations.

Union officials and many players felt betrayed by Selig after they twice agreed to reopen the basic labor agreement to toughen the testing program, only to have him unilaterally announce the Mitchell investigation. Some felt it was an attempt by Selig to build his own anti-doping credentials at the expense of the players. The union refused to cooperate and told players they were under no obligation to speak to Mitchell, much less incriminate themselves. One source said union officials discussed trying to use legal means to block the release of names in the report, but decided against it.

Selig's best shot at protection in these next hearings might be the fact that Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader, will appear before the committee prior to Selig and union chief Donald Fehr. Mitchell's report criticized baseball's response to doping, but it didn't find particular fault with Selig personally. The report is critical of the union's refusal to cooperate, however; and if committee members ask Mitchell about that lack of cooperation, Fehr could draw more fire than Selig.

Michael Weiner, general counsel for the union and Fehr's point man on the steroids issue, declined comment for this story, in deference to the looming hearings.

On the past year, Selig embarked on a plan designed in part to shield him from a repeat of the 2005 St. Patrick's Day massacre in Washington.

"We've worked very hard to make sure that doesn't happen again," an MLB official close to Selig said on the condition of anonymity.

Selig is sure to mention that last week his office ordered background checks for all clubhouse employees and the formation of a Department of Investigations, the first of Mitchell's recommendations Selig plans to implement. Sources say MLB and the union expect to schedule meetings after the hearings to discuss the rest of Mitchell's suggestions, such as hiring an independent company to administer the drug program, a development that both MLB and the union have resisted for years. Also last week, MLB announced it was giving $3 million to a new anti-doping initiative with the United States Olympic Committee and the NFL.

Those actions mirror the moves Selig made in the buildup to the 2005 hearings. Then, he came to the Hill and announced not only a beefed-up testing plan, but also a new partnership with Drug Free America, an organization geared toward educating youth about the dangers of drug use. Those measures, the commissioner said, were designed to address concerns raised by Congress at hearings held only one year earlier.

"Every time they have done anything, they have only done it under pressure," Stearns says. "My perception is that they do just as little as possible to get by."

But Selig's most significant course change began long before last year. In fact, it started soon after he left Washington in March 2005.

Within weeks of those hearings, MLB hired as an adviser former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, who opened his own consulting firm in New York after he left President George W. Bush's staff.

Selig also sent MLB's lobbyists to Capitol Hill to spread the word that the commissioner understood and truly was fighting the union to make changes.

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ESPN