Steroid use is fair ball for Congress

A congressional subcommittee today will do something that virtually everyone else up till now has been afraid to do - try to find out the truth about steroid use in baseball.

Some fans have not particularly wanted to know the truth, because they didn't want to give up the illusion of the superhuman athlete, the star player who defies not just the odds but also the biophysics of human engineering.

Some players have not wanted to find out the truth, because the truth will not always set you free - sometimes it will send you behind bars, especially when you are violating federal drug laws.

Major League Baseball has not wanted to go anywhere near the truth, because the truth is that Major League Baseball has no idea how to make right the mistakes of the last 10 years. How do you give Roger Maris back his home run record? How do you put Barry Bonds back into his own body - the one that looked human, not like a Greek god?

Some people say that Congress has no business looking into steroid use in baseball. They are wrong. This is not just a public confidence issue; it is a public health issue. Steroids are a Schedule III Controlled Substance not because they throw doubt on sports records, but because they can kill. Sports records should be maintained by sports associations, but public health should be maintained by government organizations which are there to protect all of us.

Rep. Henry Waxman, the minority leader of the House Committee on Government Reform, has warned that the example of professional athletes, and the increasingly competitive environment in amateur and professional sports, has led to an increase in steroid use among teenagers. He cited statistics from the Centers for Disease Control that as many as half a million young Americans have used steroids for athletic purposes. Those children and young adults risk early death or severe ill effects from the use of steroids.

That's why we are supporting the efforts to get to the bottom of this scandal. Baseball had plenty of time to deal with the problem, and chose not to. Now, it is Congress's turn.

Ultimately, the fans, the players and Major League Baseball should come to the conclusion that they too must fight steroid use among athletes. There is no sense in pretending it didn't happen. The phony records speak for themselves.

Now we need to figure out how it happened, and decide as a society how to keep it from happening again.