Strong stance against steroids, By: Bob Dolgan

July 02, 2006

Yankees owner George Steinbrenner has some advice for Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig on the steroid situation.

"He is doing a good job on the drug thing," Steinbrenner said. "He should come down hard on anybody using steroids. It should be a permanent suspension. But we don't know what the outcome of the investigation is going to be. We'll have to wait and see what happens."

Steinbrenner has fond recollections of Barry Bonds, a focal point of the steroid probe, who recently passed Babe Ruth for second on the career home run list and has a chance to catch Hank Aaron and become the career homer leader.

"Barry was a little kid around the park when his father, Bobby, played for me," Steinbrenner said. "His dad was a good man. I hate to see what the kid is going through. If he's guilty, he should step up and accept it, the way Jason Giambi did."

Giambi, the Yankees slugger, told a federal grand jury in 2003 that he injected himself with human growth hormone and had started using steroids at least two years earlier, when he was with Oakland.