WASHINGTON - Retired Major League Baseball slugger Mark McGwire has become the subject of new steroid accusations even as he faces a court-ordered appearance Thursday before Congress to discuss the subject.
The New York Daily News reported that a man convicted of trafficking steroids following an FBI investigation in the early 1990s claims to have supplied steroids to McGwire and Jose Canseco as well as many others.
Retired slugger Canseco's new book "Juiced" names McGwire and several others as taking steroids, which were not banned by Major League Baseball at the time.
McGwire hit a single-season record 70 home runs in 1998 only to have Barry Bonds break the mark with 73 homers in 2001. Both marks have been darkened by steroid accusations although both men have denied any wrongdoing.
McGwire is among seven current or former players who have been subpoenaed to appear Thursday before a House Committee hearing on steroids in baseball.
McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Jason Giambi and Rafael Palmeiro have not said if they will appear or not. Canseco and outspoken steroid critics Curt Schilling and Frank Thomas have also been subpoenaed to testify.
Failure to appear could bring the first contempt of Congress citations in 22 years, with jail time a possible result.
Not among those ordered to testify under oath was Bonds, whose friend and trainer Greg Anderson is among four men facing steroid distribution charges in the BALCO scandal proceedings set to continue this week in San Francisco.
A San Francisco Chronicle report of Bonds' grand jury transcript has the San Francisco Giants slugger admitting to taking substances believed by prosecutors to be THG, the once-undetectable steroid that rocked athletics last year.
Bonds has 703 career homers, 12 shy of Babe Ruth for second on the all-time list and 52 from moving level with Hank Aaron's all-time record.
Also under scutiny by US lawmakers will be the fact that baseball owners failed to impose doping tests at a time when the record homer pace of McGwire, Sosa and others was helping lure back spectators after fan interest dimmed following the 1994 World Series cancellation due to a labor dispute.
Testing was imposed last year and penalties were toughened in a deal between owners and players last January, but the standards are far below those of the World Anti-Doping Agency imposed on Olympic athletes.
In the wake of US lawmakers saying they will clean up baseball if the game cannot police itself properly, major league commissioner Bud Selig said he would consider conducting a low-key, confidential probe into past steroid use.
But a hush-hush investigation behind-the-scenes is unlikely to satisfy US lawmakers, who want a public forum and in-depth examination of the matter.
"If someone wants to fault us for what happened 15 or 20 years ago, OK," Selig said Sunday. "I don't have time to do that. I have time to correct the present and make sure the future is clean. That's what we're doing.
"If I'm going to do an historical retrospective, we'll do it, but it will be done very quietly. When it comes to the past, that is a subject that if would I ever do it, it would be done extremely sensitively and very confidentially."
Saying he had no clue steroids were a concern seven or eight years ago, Selig reiterated his desire to leave the past in the past.
"We need to move forward," he said. "I understand all the concerns, but the fact is we've done what we've been asked to do."
Jeremy Giambi, Jason's brother, has admitted taking steroids. He told the Kansas City Star that the new major league anti-doping policy needs to be given a chance to work.
"Baseball has taken a step forward," Jeremy Giambi said. "People need to realize that and let it work. I wouldn't want to be the first one to get caught. It might be worse than a murder trial."

03/14/2005 22:21 GMT