House urges MLB to test for steroid use

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Responding to growing concerns that the illicit use of performance-enhancing steroids in major league baseball is widespread, the House Monday moved to pass a resolution urging mandatory testing for players.

A vote is scheduled Monday evening.

While the measure is not binding, it sends an important signal that Congress is watching how the league and its players' union is addressing the problem.

The league supports testing and has put the issue "on the table" in ongoing collective bargaining talks with the players' union, said MLB spokesman Patrick Courtney.

"Such a program would send a clear message to our nation's children that steroids are dangerous, illegal and morally offensive to our country." Rep. Nancy Johnson, R-Conn., said in a statement.

In a letter to commissioner Bud Selig and union chief Donald Fehr, Johnson suggested steroid use is responsible for recent record-breaking hitting in the league.

"In professional baseball's first 125 years, only two men hit 60 or more home runs in a season," Johnson wrote in the letter, which was signed by 218 members of Congress. "But in the past four years, that milestone has been surpassed six times, and of 238 times that players have hit at least 40 home runs in a season, 34 percent occurred in just the past five years."

Johnson cited recent admissions of steroid use by now-retired stars Ken Caminiti and Jose Canseco as evidence of the "problem that has reached epidemic proportions."

She said baseball should follow the lead of professional football, basketball and the Olympics in requiring the testing. MLB's Courtney said the league has mandatory steroid testing in its minor league programs where the players are not part of a union.

"We've brought proposals in the past to the union," Courtney said. "By and large the response has not been yes."

Comment was not immediately available from the players' union.

 

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