Saturday, March 19, 2005
Ragin' Against the Roid Machine
The baseball steroid hearings have proven a couple of things:
- Baseball players are not good witnesses. They stammer, they avoid, they deke and they NEVER take on the questioner.
- The congressmen and women on the Government Reform Committee are grandstanding. They blew off the stories from families whose kids have died, possibly due to steroids, so that they could get the 'real' story from pros. They seemed to be poised to at any minute.... ask for an autograph.
- This could never happen in Canada. This would require not an afternoon of testimony but an $80M inquiry. For all its tawdriness, the US system beats our ability to look into things quickly.
- Congress needs to formalize its oversight of baseball. Given the anti-trust exemption, it seems fair that congress can keep an eye on things. But a different hearing every day, by a different committee is no way to get anything done. (Of course assuming that actually getting anything done was ever the point.)
