Testimony enthralls Utahns

WASHINGTON — Take me out to the ball game — or at least to a congressional hearing.

The national pastime was on trial, sort of, before a House committee Thursday, and Utah's three House members were all rapt observers, especially Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, who sits on the Government Reform and Oversight Committee.

"What happened is, the world paid attention today to the whole steroid issue," Cannon said. "And what the world heard was the best athletes in the world saying, 'Don't be stupid, they (steroids) are bad for you."

Cannon has not heard of any lawmaker proposing tougher laws against steroids, but he believes the congressional hearing — the focus of the sports world for a day — has forced Major League Baseball and its players to confront the issue head on. And he believes they are now paying attention.

Some of the biggest names in baseball testified before the committee, making a seat in the committee room one of the hardest tickets to obtain in Washington, D.C.

The committee as a rule did not press the athletes on whether they personally took steroids, something Cannon, who played baseball as a child (though he says he was a lousy pitcher), agreed with. The issue was not to put athletes at risk of criminal prosecution for illegal drug use but to get their insights as to the extent of the problem.

And every one of them echoed the sentiment that steroids were bad.

"What has happened with baseball is tragic," said Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, who is furious at the scandal that has called into question all of the recent records in the sport. "It's about time baseball was called on the carpet for what has happened. Major League Baseball has brought a great American tradition down by lack of enforcement."

Matheson never played baseball as a youth — tennis and football were his sports of choice — but he had a season press pass to Boston Red Sox games as a reporter for WHRB FM 95.3, the Harvard University radio station.

Like millions of long-suffering Red Sox fans, Matheson found himself caught up in baseball fever with the Sox's unlikely comeback in the 2004 American League Championship Series and ultimate World Series victory over the St. Louis Cardinals.

And his love affair with the game makes it that much harder for him to take the fact that, he said, "Baseball has been inept at dealing with the steroids problem."

Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, is a die-hard baseball fan who still maintains his Stingers season tickets even though he's 2,000 miles away in the nation's capital. He played catcher as a kid because no one else volunteered, and he has volunteered every step of the way on his children's ball teams.