Senate urges stronger steroids testing for baseball

WASHINGTON -- The Senate urged major league baseball to adopt stronger steroids testing, passing a nonbinding resolution Thursday.

Senators warned that "real" legislation will follow if the players and owners fail to act.

The resolution's sponsor, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said neither he nor his colleagues want to be involved in a management-labor dispute. But he warned if baseball fails to act, "obviously we have to explore other options."

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., set a timetable of two months for action before "real legislation" is introduced. Dorgan did not say what form a bill might take.

However, House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner has said Congress should not enter a collective bargaining dispute.

Separately, the Senate Commerce Committee, which McCain chairs, voted to subpoena Justice Department documents on alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs by U.S. Olympic athletes.

The committee is seeking documents from a grand jury investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO), which has led to charges against four men, including track coach Remi Korchemny and Greg Anderson, the personal trainer for Barry Bonds. All have pleaded innocent.

At the committee hearing, McCain said the potential of sending athletes who use performance-enhancing drugs to the Athens Olympics is "extremely troublesome" and pledged to keep the material secret.

Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra declined to comment.

The Senate resolution comes a month after McCain publicly warned the players union that Congress would take legislative action to force tougher steroids testing if the players' union refused to negotiate changes on the policy.

Since then, union chief Donald Fehr has left open the possibility of making changes before the agreement expires in December 2006, but has not committed to stronger testing.

The last baseball players' contract, signed in 2002, instituted the first anonymous drug tests last year. Five to 7 percent of those survey tests came back positive for steroids, a level that triggered testing with penalties this year. But the penalties are far weaker than those of other sports.

"The damage that these individuals are doing to themselves is really terrible," McCain said. "But far more terrible is the damage that young high school athletes and college athletes are inflicting on themselves because of the precedent and the example of major league baseball players."

Neither the players union nor major league baseball officials returned calls seeking comment Thursday.