Baseball can punish steroid users, By: Bill Madden
April 5, 2006, New York Daily News
NEW YORK - Mind you, we're probably way ahead of ourselves here - by at least two years - but baseball's long-overdue investigation of potentially widespread steroid abuse in the '90s is not the Mission Impossible many skeptics believe it to be.
And once it is completed, there are, in fact, severe punitive measures the commissioner can take against those found guilty - in particular, Hall-of-Fame eligibility - which the players union has no jurisdiction to grieve.
As for the investigation itself, it won't be easy, especially without immediate subpoena power, as commissioner Bud Selig's appointed steroids bloodhound, former Senate majority leader George Mitchell, acknowledged Thursday. Nevertheless, one person with first-hand experience in both drug investigations and the inner workings of baseball believes that Mitchell, with help from federal authorities, can get the job done.
"It is doable," asserted Jack Lawn, who, before serving as Chief Operating Officer of the Yankees from 1990-96, was an FBI agent for 27 years and headed up the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) for both Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr. for eight years. "The subpoena power will be a problem, but this will likely be a two-pronged process. The initial round is the gathering of information and evidence. There's a lot out there within the law enforcement community. Since a lot of people interviewed in the San Francisco investigation were not targets, information gleaned from them didn't go anywhere.
"As far as the interviewing process within baseball is concerned, in my mind, the trainers are key. They know more than almost anyone else what goes on in the clubhouse and what players are taking what. These are painstaking interviews to begin with, but obviously the information is out there.
"After that, Mitchell will have to take his information to a grand jury, and get the U.S. Attorney's office involved. The bottom line is, Major League Baseball needs to clear the air on all of this. The Players Association also hasn't done a good job, but whether it's Mitchell or someone he appoints, they need to sit down with (union general counsel) Gene Orza who I always found to be a reasonable person."
Lawn might get a differing view about that from MLB officials. But you have to wonder, given his vast experience and connections in law enforcement and drug control, why Lawn wasn't tapped by Selig for a prominent role in the investigation. Unlike Mitchell - whose directorship with the Red Sox and chairmanship of Disney (which through its subsidiary, ESPN Original Entertainment is producing Barry Bonds' "Bonds on Bonds" documentary) has brought about strident conflict of interest charges - Lawn can add "totally independent" to all his impressive credentials.
Once the investigation is concluded and assuming Mitchell is able to deliver certified juicers to Selig's table who broke federal laws (if not baseball's), there is both precedent and sufficient cause under his "best interests of baseball powers" for the commissioner to place the offenders on the same permanent ineligible list (which includes consideration for the Hall of Fame) as Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson.
There's a good chance most of them will be retired anyway (and therefore no longer under the aegis of the union), but you may remember in 1974 then-commissioner Bowie Kuhn suspended George Steinbrenner after the Yankee owner plead guilty to obstruction of justice charges and illegal contributions to Richard Nixon's 1972 presidential campaign. Steinbrenner argued - to no avail - that his offenses had nothing to do with baseball and were committed before he even - bought the Yankees. Federal offenses are thus grounds for the ultimate baseball punishment and there is also that clause in Hall-of-Fame eligibility rule five citing "integrity, sportsmanship and character."
