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Baseball to Launch Steroids Investigation

Major League Baseball is launching an investigation into whether Barry Bonds and others used steroids, reports AP baseball writer Ronald Blum.

Major League Baseball will investigate alleged steroid use by Barry Bonds and other players, and plans to hire U.S. Senate majority leader George Mitchell to lead the effort. A baseball official told The Associated Press on Wednesday that final plans were to be announced Thursday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because commissioner Bud Selig has not yet made his intentions public.

Selig’s decision to launch the probe, first reported Wednesday by ESPN, comes in the wake of “Game of Shadows,” a book by two San Francisco Chronicle reporters detailing alleged extensive steroid use by Bonds and other baseball stars. The commissioner has said for several weeks that he was evaluating how to respond to the book.

Some in Congress have called for an independent investigation. Mitchell, a Maine Democrat and a director of the Boston Red Sox, has been a director of the Florida Marlins and served on an economic study committee that Selig appointed in 1999. Mitchell’s possible involvement was first mentioned Wednesday in The New York Times. The name of a lawyer who will run the mechanics of the probe also was to be announced.

No matter what the findings of an investigation, it would be difficult for baseball to penalize anyone for steroids used prior to Sept. 30, 2002, when a joint drug agreement between management and the players’ association took effect. Baseball began drug testing in 2003 and started testing with penalties the following year.

 
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