Baseball to hand over records

Major League Baseball plans to hand over by today's due date some of the records subpoenaed by the congressional committee investigating steroids in the sport.

"We're producing documents by the deadline," Rob Manfred, executive vice president for labor relations in the commissioner's office, told The Associated Press on Sunday night.

Asked whether baseball is giving the Government Reform Committee everything it wanted, Manfred said: "Thirty-five years of documents in three days? Everything that was humanly possible."

The congressional committee gave baseball officials until today to produce documents about their new drug-testing program, including results — with the names of players removed. The committee subpoenaed seven active or former players and four baseball executives to testify at its hearing Thursday.

The head of the panel predicted Sunday the full House easily would pass a contempt of Congress resolution if the subpoenaed players — a group that includes Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa — don't show.

Government Reform Committee chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., told NBC's "Meet the Press" that one or more of the players called to testify could be excused from appearing, though he did not specify who that might be.

But Davis said his panel would vote to find players who fail to appear Thursday in contempt, and said he thinks the House would approve such a resolution by a large margin. The last contempt of Congress prosecution was in 1983.

"These people are not above the law," Davis told NBC.

He was asked why Barry Bonds wasn't invited to the hearing.

"There are a lot of reasons why people are on or off the list, including the BALCO investigation in San Francisco, but including the fact that we didn't want to make this about one player," Davis said.

Bonds reportedly testified to a grand jury in 2003 that he used a clear substance and a cream given to him by a trainer charged in the BALCO steroid-distribution case, but the San Francisco slugger also reportedly said he didn't know they were steroids.

The ranking Democrat on the House panel, Henry Waxman of California, said on "Meet the Press" that Bonds could be summoned for a future hearing.

Subpoenaed for Thursday's session: former stars McGwire and Jose Canseco and current players Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, Curt Schilling, Frank Thomas and Jason Giambi — whose younger brother, Jeremy, told a newspaper he used steroids.