Congressman questions execs' steroids testimony

Last update: June 9, 2008 - 7:36 AM

A California congressman is raising questions about 3-year-old testimony by baseball executives who claimed progress in curtailing use of performance-enhancing drugs by players.

Baseball and union officials told a House committee on March 17, 2005, that the number of players who tested positive in 2004 dropped to about a dozen, from about 100 in 2003.

But the panel was not told that the 2004 testing had been partly shut down for much of the season because of the federal investigation of the BALCO steroid ring. Players who apparently tested positive in 2003 were not tested until the final weeks of the 2004 season, and might have been notified beforehand.

The committee chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., told the New York Times that it's clear some of the information provided in 2005 was inaccurate but it isn't clear whether that was intentional.

Committee staff plans to send letters to Major League Baseball and the players' union seeking answers to what Waxman termed "misinformation."

NEW YORK TIMES

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