On the morning of February 13, the day of Clemens' hearing in the House Oversight Committee, C-SPAN held a forum on the issue and California Representative Maxine Waters was their guest. I called into the program and asked Rep. Waters why Congress was even paying attention to this, with so many other important issues out there. The answer I received was subtle and surprised me.
Rep. Waters fed me a pre-programmed line about how baseball is America's pastime and little children look up to these athletes, etc. Then she said, almost in passing, that baseball has special tax benefits, but if you sneezed you would have missed it.
As it turns out, professional baseball enjoys the privilege of favorable antitrust legislation given to it by none other than the U.S. Congress. Professional sports are not subject to monopoly rules, which govern other industries. This means they are allowed to control the number of markets allowed to participate and fix their own price scale without competition. Since Congress granted this privilege, they have a vested interest in keeping pro sports squeaky clean, and steroids don't help retain that image.
The owners of the sports franchises make out pretty well on the deal, as taxpayers finance their stadiums and cut them tax breaks to monopolize the industry, while all profits are kept by the owners. (See our 11-16-2007 column, "Public Funding Needs to Find the End Zone.") It's the best of both worlds: socialism and capitalism.
The sad part about this is that there would be no public outcry if the national media were to jump on a story like this. People love their local teams to the point where criticisms of public fiscal policies regarding the teams are tuned out. Think of when the Chiefs threatened to leave Kansas City. Taxpayers were more than willing to have a tax-hike to keep the team.
So the question becomes: Do steroids in pro sports disenfranchise taxpayers from enjoying what their dollars pay for? Wednesday, February 27, the Commissioners of the four major sporting leagues were on Capitol Hill to answer that question to the same Oversight Committee Clemens had to answer to. Unfortunately, the session became a CYA operation and nothing was resolved.
The other three major sports in America - football, basketball, and hockey - have remained out of the steroid limelight, but still have issues of their own. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell had to answer to Senator Arlen Specter about "Spygate," the recent controversy where the New England Patriots were videotaping their opponents' signals and play calling. The NBA is still trying to recover from a slew of recent incidents, including Ron Artest's fight in the stands and Isaiah Thomas' sexual harassment settlement. These types of headlines don't bode well on Capitol Hill.
Oddly, most people seemed shocked when the steroid bomb was dropped on Clemens, but not when it was dropped on Barry Bonds. Yet comparisons of these two men from age 30 to age 40 are strikingly similar. It is pretty hard to put on seventy pounds of muscle after age thirty, and for both of these superstars to do it at the same time is highly suspicious. They both went from being relatively lean to being hulking ogres. The same can be said for Jose Canseco, Mark McGuire, Miguel Tejada, Sammy Sosa, John Rocker, and many more baseball stars of the past decade.
So maybe the time has come for those special tax breaks and anti-trust laws to expire on professional sports. Most teams would survive (although the Royals might go under), as sporting events are only getting more expensive and the attending public seems more than willing to pay the cost. The rest of us don't even have the option of voting with our dollar, because the teams get our dollar anyway.
Tell us what you think. Write Spectrum at editor@mcckc.edu.
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