Yesterday’s agreement between Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Player’s Association concerning performance enhancing drugs is unquestionably a good thing. The deal, which must be ratified by both sides, includes a 50-game suspension for a first failed test,100 games for a second, and a lifetime ban for a third.

If the goal of any drugs policy is prevention rather than punishment, then stiff penalties like a 50-game suspension for a first steroids offense and a lifetime ban for a third are what is needed. If the goal is to rid the game of drugs rather than curry favorable press and avert embarrassment, than a ban on amphetamines, which was also included in the new policy, is also needed.

As always, we would be wise to reserve judgment on the new program until we see how it’s actually implemented – last week’s revelation that supposedly unannounced drug tests actually give players several unsupervised hours in which they can glut themselves on masking agents or procure clean urine samples, showed that even a decent testing plan can always be improved – but I can’t think of a reason why anyone would oppose this agreement.

For those of us who have been critical of congressional involvement in baseball’s steroids crisis, denouncing the appalling and limitless ignorance of pharmacology displayed by the posturing senators and the sickening moralism of the preening representatives, a question is raised: Were we wrong to say Congress should not have been involved?

I say no. This is, admittedly, convenient in that it allows me to get off without admitting error, but it’s surely not a good idea to judge a process by whether it leads to a desirable result. (Senator McCain, whose relentless pressure led to the present deal, would certainly agree with this.)

The objections to Congress imposing, or threatening to impose, international drug testing standards on baseball were many, but three were paramount.

First was that Congress was outside its area of expertise, as amply demonstrated in the various bizarre and inane claims (regarding a supposed mass wave of steroid-related teen suicides, for instance) made by our elected representatives during last winter’s hearings, and by the notably inexpert experts called to testify.

Second was that Congress always has more important business to tend to than sports scandals.

Most important, though, was that steroids are really just drugs, to be dealt with like other drugs. Congress hasn’t held investigations into the widespread use of marijuana among rappers, or cocaine among Hollywood producers. Were senators to threaten Screen Actor’s Guild members with the loss of their professional status should they test positive for crystal meth, the world would surely be up in arms. Treating ballplayers differently than anyone else subject to American law, this line of argument goes, is just wrong.

Regardless of the good results congressional pressure brought about, I still object to that pressure, for all these reasons and more.

I still think the idea of Congress subjecting Americans to international law is dubious at best, especially when that law is to be administered by the International Olympic Committee, and I still think Congress was wrong to threaten to write laws that would forbid ballplayers and other athletes from taking legal substances.

This last point is subtler than it is usually thought to be. Because the federal government subsidizes professional sports through various elements of the tax code – especially those that allow municipal bonds meant for the construction of ballparks to be issued tax-free and those that allow corporate entertainment in pricey luxury boxes to be written off as a business expense – it does have a legitimate interest in the inner workings of those sports. The appropriate way to protect that interest, though, would be to threaten sports owners with the revocation of those elements of the tax code, not to threaten legislation of the game.

The difference is important. In the former scenario, the government says that the corruption and illegitimacy brought about by drug use in sports is an issue important enough that the government is willing to forego revenue over it; in the latter, it keeps on subsidizing wickedness while creating a class of citizens to whom a different set of laws applies.

Of course, Congress would never take tax benefits worth billions away from sports owners – plutocrats who in their day jobs as CEOs contribute millions to re-election campaigns and party committees; so, rather than dealing with the problem through the appropriate means, it bullied players and owners into cutting a new deal by claiming the law would be re-written if they didn’t.

I can’t sign on to that. Process is important, and there are things much more valuable than ensuring juiced-up shortstops can have the book thrown at them if they fail a drug test – things like ensuring Congress doesn’t illegitimately intervene in the workings of American businesses. Yesterday might have been a good day for baseball, but it was a bad day for the country at large.

tmarchman@nysun.com