why wasn't bonds issue a supoena ?

[AR182]

i find it very odd that barry bonds wasn't issue a supoena to appear in front of congress. imo, this kills any credibility on this hearing.

this whole thing.....steroids, bonds attitude, selig's lack of doing anything, this congressional hearing is a complete joke.



Washington, DC (Sports Network) - Jason Giambi, Sammy Sosa and Curt Schilling were issued subpoenas Wednesday by the House Government Reform Committee. The players will be compelled to testify before the committee on March 17 at a hearing on the use of steroids in Major League Baseball.

Subpoenas were also issued to former players Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire and current players Rafael Palmeiro and Frank Thomas. In addition, subpoenas were issued to baseball officials Robert Manfred (executive vice president and labor counsel-MLB), who will testify on behalf of Commissioner Bud Selig. Don Fehr (executive director and general counsel-MLBPA) and Sandy Alderson, former general manager of the Oakland Athletics and current executive vice president of baseball operations (MLB) were also called to appear as was general manger Kevin Towers of the San Diego Padres.

Committee chairman Tom Davis and ranking member Henry A. Waxman (D-CA) issued the following joint statement on the issuance of the subpoenas:

"Today the committee issued subpoenas for the March 17th hearing on the use of steroids and baseball. It is important to note that some of the subpoenas are 'friendly' in nature - Jose Canseco, Donald Fehr and Rob Manfred, for example, have already told the Committee they will testify. They are receiving subpoenas simply to guarantee their appearance.

"The remaining witnesses, however, made it clear - either by flatly rejecting the invitation to testify or by ignoring our repeated attempts to contact them - they had no intention of appearing before the committee. They have left the committee no alternative but to issue subpoenas.

"The Committee will conduct a thorough, fair, and responsible investigation. It is important the American people know the facts on baseball's steroid scandal. And it is important that all Americans, especially children, know about the dangers of drug use. Consistent with our committee's jurisdiction over the nation's drug policy, we need to better understand the steps MLB is taking to get a handle on the steroid issue, and whether news of those steps - and the public health danger posed by steroid use - is reaching America's youth."

Last month brought the official release of Canseco's book entitled, "Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big." In it, Canseco, admits to using steroids during his career and accuses a number of ex-teammates -- notably Giambi, McGwire, Ivan Rodriguez, Palmeiro and Juan Gonzalez -- of also using steroids.

Giambi, who turned 34 in January, clubbed 41 homers and drove in 107 runs in 2003, the season in which he admitted to using several steroids provided from Barry Bonds' personal trainer Greg Anderson, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The newspaper reported Giambi, in his federal grand jury testimony, described how he used syringes to inject the human growth hormone into his stomach and testosterone into his buttocks.

Giambi issued a blanket apology during a press conference last month, but never admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs and said due to legal issues he wouldn't talk about his testimony given following the 2003 season.

Bonds and Gary Sheffield also testified before the grand jury and are also at the center of the BALCO controversy.

Some of the other key members to testify on March 17 will be Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse for the National Institutes of Health; Gary Wadler, Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at the New York University School of Medicine; and Kirk Brower, an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan Medical School.

Parents of two former high school/college athletes, who committed suicide after steroid abuse, will also testify. Donald Hooton, the father of high school baseball player, Taylor Hooton, who committed suicide after steroid abuse, will appear before the Committee. Taylor Hooton, a cousin of former major league pitcher Burt Hooton, committed suicide by hanging himself on July 15, 2003. Don Hooton has said it's likely that his son?s secret use of anabolic steroids resulted in depression that was serious enough to cause Taylor, who was a standout pitcher in Plano, Texas, to take his own life.

Ray and Denise Garibaldi, parents of former USC baseball player, Rob Garibaldi, who committed suicide after steroid abuse, will also testify.

Major League Baseball's steroid testing program has come under fire in recent years, but a new testing in effect this year policy calls for tougher penalties. A first-time offender will be suspended for 10 days. Second-time offenders will be suspended for 30 days. Third-time offenders will be suspended for 60 days. Fourth-time offenders will be suspended for one year and all suspensions will be without pay.

Under the new agreement, every player will undergo at least one unannounced test on a randomly selected date during the playing season. There is no specific limit on the number of tests to which any player may randomly be subjected, and it includes random testing during the off-season.

 

[vinnie]

Because he's an ASSHOLE they don't need to deal with at this time

 

[Hoops]

Heard a former attorney general (or close to that position, not positive) state the reason Bonds wasn't issued a subpoena was Bonds' involvement in the BALCO case. Something to do with BALCO being a federal case..judicial mumbo jumbo which I wasn't exactly following too closely.

 

[hogman14]

They only wanted the players who def. did steroids. :mj07:

 

[THE HITMAN]

Well, that certainly explains it, hog.

 

[SALTY DOG]

Hoops, you are correct.

 

[Blackman]

Heard a former attorney general (or close to that position, not positive) state the reason Bonds wasn't issued a subpoena was Bonds' involvement in the BALCO case. Something to do with BALCO being a federal case..judicial mumbo jumbo which I wasn't exactly following too closely.

Makes some sense, but then why was Giambi sent a subpoena?

 

[AR182]

FROM NOW ON, LET'S JUST CALL HIM THE TEFLON BONDS: BARRY IS NOT ON THE LIST


March 10, 2005 -- TAMPA -

Where's Barry? Seven subpoenas were issued yesterday to past and present players to testify next week before a congressional committee investigating baseball's steroids scandal. Not one of them was issued to Barry Lamar Bonds.
Jose Canseco, Jason Giambi, Mark McGwire and four other players were served. But not having Bonds appear before the House Government Reform Committee on March 17 in Washington makes a mockery of the whole proceedings. It's like not requesting Tony Soprano to a discussion on organized crime in New Jersey. Without subpoenaing Bonds, the committee's credibility is tainted.

Tom Davis, the Republican committee chairman, and Henry A. Waxman, the ranking Democrat, who first requested the hearing titled: "Restoring Faith in America's Pastime: Evaluating Major League Baseball's Efforts to Eradicate Steroid Use," insist it will be "a thorough, fair and responsible investigation."

It can be none of the above unless Bonds is forced to sit in the chair and answer the questions Giambi, McGwire and the other players will be asked, if an appeal of the whole process by Major League Baseball fails.

Bonds was suspected of using steroids long before the BALCO case, and his admission during grand jury testimony of using a cream he says he didn't know contained steroids is enough for the committee to request his presence.

Even the suits in Washington must know Bonds is as much a suspect in the court of public opinion as Giambi or McGwire. Bonds needs to be asked how he smacked 40 home runs in 532 at-bats in 1997 and four years later hit 73 in 476? He needs to be asked how a professional athlete rubs a substance on his body without knowing what it contains?

Without asking Bonds those questions, this hearing come off as a grandstand by ego-driven politicians. Without Bonds, these hearings are a waste of time and money.

Davis and Waxman seem to be very busy men. They've worked on critical issues like the cost of prescription drugs, overcrowded schools, dangerous conditions in nursing homes and the management of Homeland Security.

Those are issues that affect our everyday lives, the lives of our spouses, our parents and our children. They are the issues we expect our elected politicians to put their time and attention toward: not something as limited in scope as steroids in baseball.

But if they're going to do this, they need to do it the right way, and that's to include Bonds. Otherwise, what exactly is the goal here? To clean up baseball or to win re-election?

The view here is politicians should stay out of this and give baseball's new drug testing policy a chance. Positive tests for steroids dropped between 1 to 2 percent last season, according to the commissioner's office, down from 5 to 7 percent in 2003 and that was before the new more stringent program that calls for unannounced testing was put into effect this spring. No it's not perfect. But it's a start.

Besides, the players who attend the March 17 hearing, if it happens, aren't going to talk anyway. Giambi will invoke his Fifth Amendment rights to protect the $82 million remaining on his contract and just about every other player will do the same. Only Canseco, who stands to sell more books, is going to talk.

But if this whole exercise is to have any substance at all, Bonds needs to face the heat even if he takes the Fifth. Otherwise, it's a joke.

 

[AR182]

After fact, Congress lacks juice



Congress sent out subpoenas to baseball last night, about steroids. What else? They sent out subpoenas to Sammy Sosa and Jason Giambi and Rob Manfred, who is supposed to represent the commissioner at hearings that are supposed to start next week, and to Donald Fehr, who runs the Players Association. The House of Representatives in this case cares even less about what anybody thinks than Barry Bonds does.

This starts to look like the greatest of grandstanding now. If the subpoenas stand up in all the courts where baseball is now prepared to fight them, these hearings have a chance to be a circus, dumber than the dumbest reality television. If you think that this starts to look a little bit like McCarthyism now, with the government asking some of these big baseball people to come in and maybe be dumb enough to incriminate themselves over performance-enhancing dope, you're right about that.

You can certainly say that Rep. Tom Davis and Rep. Henry Waxman of the House Government Reform Committee are getting religion pretty late in the church service, because like most of our elected officials, they were nowhere while baseball players and their power numbers and the lie that they were all on the level were growing over the last decade like Pinocchio's nose.

But if these players used steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, they did this to themselves and to their sport, and they lied about it, and they get no sympathy now.

We all allowed baseball to live a lie about these drugs for much too long. So now Congress has gone to strongarm tactics to force people to sit in front of the country and maybe even tell the truth once in a while. Baseball's new Un-American Activities Committee.

Stanley Brand, a lawyer for Major League Baseball, bounced the boys from the House Government Reform Committee around pretty good yesterday, talking about "an absolutely excessive and unprecedented misuse of congressional power."

It is funny how these things work out sometimes. The commissioner's office in baseball and the players union agree on almost nothing in baseball. Suddenly, though, they agree on this: They want Congress to stay out of their business now that they have a real drug policy.

Maybe if the genius running the union hadn't fought real drug testing for more than a decade, baseball wouldn't find itself in this kind of mess, once again looking guilty as it says it is only looking out for the rights of the innocent. They are the ones who protected the guilty and turned everybody else into suspects.

Now the government wants to be the white knight in all this, riding in to clean up everything. But if that is the case, then where is Barry Bonds' name on their subpoena list? You have Giambi, who according to leaked grand jury testimony in the BALCO case allegedly admitted to using steroids. You have Congress calling Sosa and Frank Thomas and Rafael Palmeiro and even Curt Schilling, maybe because you can never have enough pitching.

That is an All-Star lineup if there ever was one. So where is Bonds? Why isn't he batting third?

"It seems flagrantly ridiculous," Rep. Peter King, a Republican from Long Island (one not on Davis and Waxman's committee), said yesterday, "unless there's a U.S. Attorney someplace who doesn't want Congress messing up a case that has Bonds at the center of it."

Bonds hasn't helped anybody lately, starting with himself. He defiantly talks all around the subject of steroids and says he doesn't know what cheating is, even if the next thing out of his mouth is that everybody makes mistakes. According to grand jury testimony leaked to the newspaper, Bonds admitted to unknowingly using steroids at one time. If that is the truth, and there is no evidence to the contrary, he is in the clear. But if he lied about something in front of the grand jury, and the government has evidence that proves that he lied, then he is in big trouble, no matter how many home runs he hits.

Maybe somebody in San Francisco has formally asked the government not to get in the way of BALCO. Or the government is afraid that immunized testimony in front of Congress may give Bonds a chance, down the road anyway, to walk away from real trouble the way Oliver North once did after the Iran-Contra hearings.

Rep. Peter King says his friend Tom Davis is not a grandstander. "He just wants the truth," King said.

Maybe he does. This is no way to get it. They expect us to believe they are going to hold big hearings about steroids and don't want to hear from Barry Bonds? They want to trot out Jason Giambi, who already gave the government in San Francisco what it wanted, maybe even humiliate Giambi by getting him to take the Fifth, but they don't know how they want to use Bonds yet?

These people, the ones who want to ask the questions and the ones who may or may not be forced to answer them, deserve each other. This is the way it was before baseball had real drug testing. You can't tell the guilty from the innocent, even now.

Somehow out of all this, Barry Bonds gets one more free pass.

 

[homedog]

The entire Congress hearing is a joke. Why would they want to do this?

Publiciy? Yeah I think so.

 

[Blackman]

This seemed a little wild to me, but a lawyer was on ESPN radio and threw this out there: He said that there are rumors of potential purgery charges from the Balco case, so the speculation is that Bonds and Sheffield were omitted as to not interfere with the case.

 

[THE KOD]

lol

You mean Bonds lied on the stand ?

A top tier athlete who states that he did not know what he was being given to put in his body is ludicrous. First thing anyone would ask is ...what is that ? Just from a health stand point.

Bonds of course knew all about it and everyone else is lies.

I hope they run Bonds out of town.

 

[AR182]

i usually don't agree with mushnick (n.y. post), but here is a good article on this situation.


'OWNER'S' COMMISH SHOULD OWN UP TO DUTIES

BY PHIL MUSHNICK


March 11, 2005 --

Bud Selig, if he were the rabid anti-drug baseball boss that he only lately claims he has always been, should demand to testify next week, no subpoena of him nor his seconds needed.

But then the perjury would begin the moment after he vowed to tell the truth, when he stated his position: Commissioner of Major League Baseball.

That would be false; he'd be playing the baseball card. Selig is not now, nor has he ever been the Commissioner of Major League Baseball. That's just a title in service to a public front. And that's a matter for other Congressional committees, those formed to investigate racketeering, not steroid use.

Selig does not operate as Commissioner of Baseball, not as the position, in 1920, was demanded then created. He is charged with allowing those who empower him - team owners - to make as much money as possible by all means possible.

Selig is the owners' do-as-you-please chief financial officer. He knows it, we know it, presumably, Congress knows it.

And inquiring congressmen and congresswomen would understand that baseball's steroid scandal is less about drugs than it is about money.

It's about the money that home runs spawn, money that enriches owners and players, money that took two natural enemies - team owners and the MLB Players Association - and created an alliance based in willful neglect and shared disinterest in addressing steroids, let alone eliminating them.

Heck, the worst teams in the majors sold tickets in September with the suddenly sluggers coming to town.

Congress might even know that MLB's tough new drug policy, which baseball long resisted, is a sham, nonetheless.

Some on the committee might know that a urine test, as opposed to blood testing, is known among steroid, HGH and concoction users (and their instructors) as an IQ test - only a moron could fail it.

Some likely know that MLB's new punitive measures - 10 days for strike one, 30 for strike two - are a well-worth-the-risk farce.

Selig, under oath, might face questions from people who can recall baseball before its "Commissioner" sold the game's authority to the highest bidder.

Remember, those asking the questions were able to watch World Series games as kids, before MLB eliminated half the country's children by prostituting itself for TV money.

These congressmen and congressmen might remember Sunday doubleheaders and games that were postponed before families left for the stadium, before they were forced to sit through two, two-hour rain delays.

They likely recall their home team's opener being played on an April afternoon and not in Tokyo, for money, at 5 a.m., Washington, D.C., time.

Money - TV money - is why the Yankee home opener will be played on a Sunday night.

What was once out of the question, what once would have defied common decency and a Commissioner's dignity and integrity, is now just a matter of money, the right price.

Perhaps Congress would tell Selig that it recalls when baseball left ticket scalping to ticket scalpers, and when drunks, paying six bucks for 10 cents worth of beer, weren't baseball's preferred patrons, and when going to a game didn't mean getting home at 1 a.m. on a school/work night.

Surely Congress remembers when MLB wouldn't dare profit from partnerships with companies that produce video games showing major leaguers stomping the virtual hell out of one another.

Perhaps a few on this Congressional committee can't ignore the fact that baseball's TV-centric backstops carry ads for MLB's official erection pills, reminders to watch "Sex And The City" and come-ons to lose yourself at the nearest casino.

Even with the steroid heat on Barry Bonds and no guarantee that he'd play or be pitched to if he did, Selig has allowed team owners to continue to charge extra for Giants games, to dangle Bonds for extra cash.

Yep, the perjury would begin the moment Selig identified himself as the Commissioner of Major League Baseball, as the Guardian General of the Game.

And yet, had he testified, Selig would have sat before kindred souls, politicians who also, first and foremost, represent the best interests of the moneyed people who empower them.

So why not give it a shot, Mr. Commissioner? Cowboy up. They might exploit you to put on a show for the 6 o'clock news and the little folks back home.

As for steroids, they might ask, "What did you know, and when did you stop knowing it?"

But they likely wouldn't ask you to confess to whom you're fronting for any more than they'd want an answer, under oath, to that same question.

 

[Blackman]

Scott I agree he lied, I just have a hard time believing they will try to convict him of lying on the stand.

Agree with you though, to these guys their bodies are everything, it's how they make a living, they know exactly what every pill/creme/injection does.

 

[Junk Man]

Congress doesn't need some guy walking in telling them to Kiss My Fat Black Ass and you know Barry would do it too. Much easier to call Curt Schilling so he can show off his ankle scars and the congress critters can turn it into a handjob session so we can tell the idiot voters back home that We're Doing Something About Steroids.