Lynch's pitch on the way

Unswayed by executives, players, and union officials who vowed to clean up baseball's steroid mess, the congressman who represents Curt Schilling's town of Medfield wasted no time yesterday preparing legislation aimed at policing performance-enhancing drugs in the game.

Representative Stephen Lynch, a South Boston Democrat, said he had begun crafting a bill that would protect whistle-blowers who help expose the scandal. His measure could be a harbinger of more sweeping legislation if Congress grows edgier about baseball's ability to rid itself of steroids.

"I waited more than 11 hours to be convinced that baseball was willing and able to address the problem, and all I got were a lot of reasons to believe these guys will not and cannot get their arms around this," said Lynch, who participated in Thursday's marathon hearing on steroids as a member of the House Committee on Government Reform.

"We've already seen what self-regulation can bring us," Lynch said.

He said the whistle-blower bill, which would provide Major League Baseball players and employees federal protection from recrimination, could serve as the first salvo of legislation generated by the hearing. A number of lawmakers warned that, if baseball fails to eradicate steroids in a reasonable period of time, they would try to impose a comprehensive testing and enforcement program, the most stringent of which would be modeled after the policy governing Olympic athletes.

The Olympic program requires a two-year ban for first offenders, while baseball's newly revamped proposal calls for only a 10-day suspension or up to a $10,000 fine for first offenses.

Lynch, as a relatively junior Democrat on a Republican-controlled committee, normally would wield little influence in launching high-profile legislation. But after lawmakers in both parties expressed various degrees of disgust with baseball's leadership in combatting steroids, his narrowly focused bill could garner considerable support in lieu of a more sweeping response.

"Congressional action should move in two directions," said Representative Henry Waxman, who pressed for Thursday's hearing as the highest-ranking Democrat on the committee. "We need to investigate the full extent of the steroid problem in baseball and other sports. And we should consider establishing a tough, effective, and universal no-steroids policy for all levels of athletics."

Waxman said the hearing made "clear that baseball remains in denial about the scope of the problem and the defects in its deeply flawed testing."

Baseball executives and union leaders endured blistering criticism during the hearing but appeared committed to implementing their much-maligned revamped plan to curb steroid use without significant changes. And President Bush, who increased the urgency to fight the problem by highlighting the issue last year in his State of the Union address, seemed to favor the approach.

Bush's spokesman, Scott McClellan, told reporters on Air Force One that the president believes "it's important that baseball responds in a positive and constructive manner, and they are."

Lynch, a former union lawyer, said baseball could make headway by removing a number of loopholes from its revamped policy. Chief among the "loopholes" lawmakers cited during Thursday's hearing:

The possibility of offenders receiving a fine rather than a suspension and keeping the matter private. Under the policy, second-time offenders would be suspended 30 days or fined $25,000, third-time offenders would be suspended 60 days or fined $50,000, and fourth-time offenders would face one-year suspensions or $100,000 fines.

"That's the best we could do in collective bargaining," commissioner Bud Selig told the committee. "The penalties would be much tougher if I had my way."

Selig insisted he would suspend anyone who fails a test, vowing: "There will be no exceptions."

A testing policy that permits a player who is unable to provide the minimum urine sample to return after a period in which he would not be supervised. Anti-doping specialists said leaving athletes unsupervised during such periods leaves open the door to breaches in the program's integrity.

A provision that calls for the testing policy to be suspended immediately in the event of a government investigation. Critics on the committee called the provision "an escape clause" that would discourage independent oversight of the testing program.

Union chief Donald Fehr said the criticism was unwarranted, particularly after the players agreed to significantly alter their collective bargaining agreement two years before it expires. In addition to making numerous concessions to stiffen the enforcement plan, Fehr said, the players needed to maintain some privacy rights.

"With all due respect, if Congress wants employers and unions to negotiate drug testing programs in order to clean up the programs in their own industries," Fehr told the committee, "Congress is going to have to be sensitive to the need for confidentiality, which is surely the cornerstone of any successful drug-testing policy."

Lynch said the committee may conduct additional hearings and form a task force to consider a federally mandated testing and enforcement program.