I'm generally a big fan of Sen. John McCain, but when he decides to get involved in legislating sports, he loses a lot of my respect. If you don't recall, last year McCain tried to get sports betting banned in Las Vegas to protect sports from gambling scandals, which was idiotic since Vegas is the best investigator of it's games. There has never been a sports gambling scandal which involved any casino; it's small-time bookies or gamblers who try to put the fix in.

Now McCain is leading the charge to force MLB players to conduct Olympic-style drug testing. Considering that our country is at war and has an exploding federal deficit (just chose these 2 of many serious issues) spending time on what anything to do with ballplayers just seems like a serious waste of time and money. Jumping on this bandwagon, the network morning news shows last Sunday focused on the steroid issue in baseball, as well.
On This Week with George Stephanopolous, during their roundtable segment of the show, instead of having important thinkers such as The New York Times Thomas Friedman (colleague of Will Carroll?) or Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria, discussing truly important world affairs, we were enlightened by USA Today's Christine Brennan, former Washington Redskin Darrell Green, and Cub lover George Will, discussing steroids in sports. Now here was a group that John Stewart should have went off on.

Brennan, who I've never understood how she has a job, was worthless as usual. Stephanopolous, who I think does a decent job on the show, was completely out of his element, asking one dumb question after another. The only interesting thing were the exchanges between Will and Green, as it became apparent early on that the future Hall of Fame defensive back had no idea what Will was saying. Couldn't This Week at least book a baseball player, instead of an NFL player? It's a sad panel when the only person who seems to know anything about baseball is George Will. (Ed. Note: The answer is that baseball has a gag order on steroids right now, precluding any official involvement. Granted, Will's a part-owner of TWO teams, but being Bud's friend apparently gets him around the rules.)

On Face the Nation, their whole show was dedicated to the steroids in baseball issue. While Sen. McCain is the politician out front the most in threatening governmental intervention, others like Sen. Byron Dorgan are just as happy to grndstand behind McCain. Dorgan refers to how he comes from North Dakota, the home state of Roger Maris, "He (Maris) got his strength from a refrigerator." What? And why is a Senator from North Dakota acting like he has some authority over MLB? I'm surprised he didn't brag about how his state produced Rick Helling and Darin Erstad, also.

During Dorgan's segment to create some "balance", BALCO "expert" Tommy Lasorda also joined the festivities. My thoughts on Lasorda is that if you want to hear a funny story about Pee Wee Reese or Frank Sinatra, Tommy's your guy, but if you want to understand the current world of baseball, he's got about as much to offer as Darrell Green. Lasorda spent most of his time on the show talking about how the "commissioner's (Selig) hands were tied" and that "players should be role models." Yawn.

The second half of the show had a panel of sportswriters, Mike Lupica, Buster Olney, and Hal Bodley. I would recommend going to the transcript (PDF file) to catch what these 3 had to say. Bodley, who played the Lasorda role, acting like the players have helplessly duped the owners and commissioner, performed beautifully as a PR agent for Selig. (Once again, USA Today is represented by a sports writing hack.) Lupica and yes, Buster, had some interesting points and this segment was the only one on the 2 shows that gave any decent info besides "Players Bad; Owners Victims."
If DC politicians are going to stick their nose into any MLB topic, they should be looking into figuring out how a team will settle there. Let the league and the player's union settle the whole drug testing thing on their own.