Hearing on Steroids in Major League Baseball and the Mitchell Report

When our Committee held its first hearing three years ago on Major League Baseball’s steroid scandal, I talked about how the culture of major league clubhouses trickled down to become the culture of the high school gym.

Later that same day, Don Hooten and Denise and Raymond Garibaldi proved that connection with their powerful testimony about the deadly impacts steroids had on their sons.

The Hooten and Garibaldi families were frustrated that baseball wasn’t doing more to confront its role in a growing epidemic. For our part, this Committee made it clear to the players and owners that they needed to take two major steps. The first was to dramatically strengthen the league’s testing program for performance enhancing drugs; the second was to investigate the extent of steroids use.

The starting point for addressing any scandal is the facts. If a cheating scandal broke out at any university, the bare minimum we would expect is a thorough review of what happened and how it happened.

This, unfortunately, wasn’t baseball’s first impulse. The Commissioner, the owners, and the union didn’t want to look to the past. The code of silence in baseball clubhouses was threatening to become baseball’s official policy.

To his credit, Commissioner Selig listened to the testimony at our hearing and recognized that baseball had a serious problem. He then did the right thing and asked Senator George Mitchell to take a hard look at baseball’s steroid era.

I thank Commissioner Selig for that and I thank Senator Mitchell for taking on an enormous challenge.

Anyone who reads the Mitchell report will come to understand just how difficult this challenge was. Virtually no one volunteered information to Senator Mitchell. In fact, only one active player, Frank Thomas, agreed to speak with his investigators.

Senator Mitchell and his staff did superb work, but I think even they would acknowledge that their report isn’t a comprehensive accounting of the steroids scandal. If reports had epitaphs, this one’s would be: “It didn’t tell us everything, but it told us enough.”

And what it tells us is damning. The illegal use of steroids and performance enhancing drugs was pervasive for more than a decade, Major League Baseball was slow and ineffective in responding to the scandal, and the use of human growth hormones has been rising.

The Mitchell report also makes it clear that everyone in baseball is responsible: the owners, the Commissioner, the union, and the players.

Despite that shared responsibility, most of the media attention over the past month has focused on the players. They are the face of the game. And they are the ones our kids emulate.

As Chuck Kimmel, the President of the National Athletic Trainers’ Association recently pointed out, “Young athletes are very impressed by what their sports heroes say and do. There’s a real authority carryover in these situations. They assume because a person is an expert in one area that they’re qualified in another.”

Our Committee hasn’t had an easy experience with individual players. We’ve tried to be sensitive to their legitimate privacy rights and to the obvious harm this issue can do to their reputations. But too often their responses to legitimate questions have been evasive or incomplete.

This investigation is no different than any other that we undertake. We expect — and the law requires — truthful testimony.

In one important instance, the Mitchell report provides new information relating to one of our previous inquiries. Three years ago we initiated an investigation into testimony that Rafael Palmeiro provided on March 17, 2005. Mr. Palmeiro testified that he never took steroids. Several months later he tested positive for Winstrol, a powerful steroid.

As part of that investigation, we interviewed Miguel Tejada for relevant information. A transcript of that interview has never been made public, out of respect for Mr. Tejada’s privacy. But in that interview, Mr. Tejada told the Committee that he never used illegal performance-enhancing drugs and that he had no knowledge of other players using or even talking about steroids

The Mitchell report, however, directly contradicts key elements of Mr. Tejada’s testimony. The conflict is stark and fundamental to the Committee’s 2005 investigation. As a result, Ranking Member Tom Davis and I will be writing the Department of Justice today to request an investigation into whether Mr. Tejada gave truthful answers to the Committee.

I also want to make it clear that the steroid scandal is not just about ballplayers.

In my view, not enough attention has been paid to the Mitchell report’s indictment of the people who run baseball. The players seemed to have been surrounded by enablers and officials willing to look the other way. In the end, the owners and the Commissioner’s office are every bit at fault as the players.

The report recounts how the medical director for Major League Baseball actually led a presentation in 1998 on the benefits that could be obtained from testosterone. Team doctors who attended the meeting were disturbed: the league’s medical office seemed to be sending an official message of leniency.

The situation in the league’s security office didn’t seem to be much better. Little investigating seems to have been done when reports of illegal steroid use were passed along. In a steroids case involving former Cleveland Indians outfielder Juan Gonzalez, the league’s security office appears to have done nothing.

In another case, a bullpen catcher for the Montreal Expos, Luis Perez, gave Kevin Hallinan, the director of security for Major League Baseball, a list of eight players who had obtained anabolic steroids. I want to read from the Mitchell report what happened next:

“Hallinan told us that the Perez incident could have been the ‘single most important steroids investigation’ he conducted, but to his disappointment he was not given permission to interview the major league players named by Perez.”

The Mitchell report also recounts the efforts of Stan Conte, the chief trainer for the San Francisco Giants, to remove Greg Anderson from the Giant’s clubhouse. Mr. Anderson was Barry Bonds personal trainer. The different approaches taken by Mr. Conte, the Giants general manager Brian Sabean, and the Giants president, Peter Magowan, are a sad reflection of the poor leadership many teams brought to this effort.

It is a dismal record and it needs to be put front and center, not hidden. It helps us understand how the steroids era infected baseball and how that virus spread to colleges and high schools.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that I believe baseball is now taking steroid use seriously and making fundamental changes.

In 2005, Commissioner Selig and Don Fehr, the head of the players union, voluntarily reopened bargaining. To their credit, they worked together to make baseball’s steroids policy one of the toughest in sports.

And in the wake of the Mitchell report, Mr. Fehr accepted responsibility and said: “In retrospect, we should have done something sooner.”

Since the report’s release, Commissioner Selig has begun implementing some of the Mitchell recommendations and both the owners and the players have agreed to try to reach agreement on additional changes.

This Committee wants Major League Baseball to have the most effective program possible. We also want to do everything we can to eliminate the use of these drugs by children.

Frank and Brenda Marrero, the parents of Efrain Marrero, are here this morning, along with Don Hooten. Ephrain Marrero was a promising 19-year-old college athlete who turned to steroids and ultimately committed suicide. In his memory, Mr. and Mrs. Marrero have established a foundation to fight steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. They have also submitted testimony for this hearing, and I ask unanimous consent that it be made part of the record.

I want to close by reading from their statement. It reads:

“Simple, honest accountability is all we are asking for. … No family should have to endure the anguish we’ve suffered — but tens of thousands of youngsters are at risk. For them we ask you to dig deep — find the unvarnished truth and report it fairly.”

To Mr. and Mrs. Marrero, Mr. Hooten, and to all the concerned parents around our nation, I want you to know we are trying to do just that.