MLB Turns Over Steroid Documents

WASHINGTON – Major League Baseball (search ) handed over a box of subpoenaed documents Monday to the House panel investigating steroids in the sport.

The Government Reform Committee (search) had given baseball a Monday deadline for producing information about its drug-testing program (search), including test results with the names of players removed.

It wasn't immediately clear what papers the commissioner's office submitted. The committee had issued a subpoena covering 11 areas.

"We are reviewing the documents now," David Marin, a spokesman for committee chairman Tom Davis, wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

Rob Manfred, baseball's executive vice president for labor relations, had said Sunday that the commissioner's office was working on producing the documents. Asked whether baseball would give everything the panel wanted, Manfred said: "Thirty-five years of documents in three days? Everything that was humanly possible."

The documents could give Congress a better sense of just how cooperative baseball will be; it's still unclear who will show up to testify at the committee's hearing Thursday.

Davis predicted Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that the full House easily would pass a contempt of Congress resolution if subpoenaed players don't appear. He said one or more of the seven active or former players called to testify could be excused from coming, though he did not specify who.

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.

Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Jose Canseco, Jason Giambi, Rafael Palmeiro, Curt Schilling and Frank Thomas are the players who were subpoenaed. Manfred, two other baseball executives and players' association head Donald Fehr also were subpoenaed.

Canseco asked for immunity so he can testify fully, Schilling said he's willing to testify, and Thomas might testify by telephone because of an injury. McGwire, Sosa, Giambi and Palmeiro haven't said whether they'll go.

Asked why Sosa and McGwire were called, Davis said: "They've been accused by former colleagues of having used drugs. ... There is, I think, a widespread feeling that maybe they cheated their way to achieving these records by using illegal drugs."

Commissioner Bud Selig, in Scottsdale, Ariz., said Sunday he doesn't want to dwell on what's happened in the past.

"I believe trying to go back and dealing in hypothesis is counterproductive. I resent people suggesting we're turning a blind eye," Selig said. "The pragmatic thing we can do is deal with the present and the future. We're not going to spend a lot of time talking about the past."

The Daily News of New York reported Sunday that McGwire's name was mentioned several times during a federal steroids investigation in the early 1990s, although he was not the target of the probe, nor was any evidence collected against him. Two dealers caught in the federal investigation told the newspaper that a California man, Curtis Wenzlaff, gave Canseco and McGwire illegal anabolic steroids.

"I don't have any comment, other than we feel people should consider the source of the allegations," Marc Altieri, a spokesman for McGwire, said.

Selig wouldn't directly comment on the report, which he hadn't read, but said any investigation Major League Baseball conducts will be done "secretly and very confidentially."