It doesn’t take long for congressmen and women to get involved in sports issues. This December has seen politicians latch onto sports issues, such as steroids in baseball and the lack of widespread availability for the NFL Network on cable television. Former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell hardly got the words out of his mouth at last Thursday’s news conference detailing his 20-month investigation into steroids and other banned performance-enhancing drugs in baseball when Reps. Waxman, a Democrat from California, and Davis, a Republican from Virginia, were calling for hearings into the Mitchell Report. These were the same two congressmen who were behind the March 17, 2005, hearings by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on alleged steroid use in baseball and the “adequacy” of MLB’s response, according to the committee’s Web site. Reps. Waxman and Davis are back talking baseball, steroids — and now George Mitchell.

You do wonder what the 600,000 or so people that Rep. Waxman represents in Beverly Hills and Rep. Davis’s constituency in Northern Virginia really think about the use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs in baseball and other sports. Is that the no. 1 issue that is on the minds of the people in those districts? Or does the Mitchell Report rank below the war on terror, the Iraq War, the falling American dollar, three recent cuts in interest rates and the mortgage crisis, global warming, Iran, health care, education, social security, rising gas prices, rising food prices — and putting the NFL Network on basic expanded cable TV?

Washington politicians are like Pavlov’s dog when it comes to reflex actions to sports. They drag people to talk before committees, but generally nothing happens. MLB and its players have some more teeth in their drug-testing procedures after the March 17, 2005, hearings and the baseball writers decided Mark McGwire isn’t a Hall of Famer. The point is that baseball consumers, the ones who spend money on the industry, don’t care about juiced players, or in the cases of the NFL and NBA, about players who are getting arrested on a regular basis. But the Mitchell Report is good news for politicians as it gives them a chance to talk about a nonimportant issue which affects few people: Steroids in baseball.

There were others besides Reps. Waxman and Davis who weighed in. Florida Republican Clifford Stearns, whose district is in and around Ocala, Fla., has been among the leaders in condemning performance-enhancing drug usage in sports for years. But the congressman has apparently forgotten that these substances were banned overall by the Anabolic Steroids Control Act, and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush in November 1990. In 2004, in an exchange with this writer, Rep. Stearns felt athletes who used banned substances were cheating, but not necessarily lawbreakers, and he ignored other entertainment forms where banned substances might be used to improve the physical appearances of actors and models. Rep. Stearns now wants the commissioner of baseball, Bud Selig, to resign. But it will be difficult to dislodge Selig from his post, because Selig has a new long-term contract. Selig’s mlb.com bio also happen to end with the following:

“Major League Baseball has set all-time attendance records in each of the last four years. In 2007, attendance showed four percent growth from 2006 as 79,503,175 fans attended regular season games at the 30 Major League ballparks. And, revenues have increased more than four-fold, from $1.2 billion in 1992 to $5.2 billion in 2006.”

Unless Rep. Stearns introduces legislation on the House floor to ask Congress to fire Selig — and Congress really has no power to fire the head of a private company — Selig is going nowhere. The commissioner is well liked by the people who hired him, the MLB owners: He has made them money.

Senator Bunning of Kentucky, who was a Hall of Fame pitcher with Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and the Los Angeles Dodgers, wants all the records of all the players named in the Mitchell Report stripped from MLB’s books. Funny, though, that no one has suggested MLB refund money to consumers if indeed baseball erases those records. Some MLB teams went to variable ticket pricing and raised prices when Barry Bonds came to town for those games. Perhaps Reps. Waxman and Davis should eventually look into that aspect of MLB’s business practices.

Banned substances are low-hanging fruit for Washington politicos. They can’t be wrong on the subject, because who really would be in favor of them speaking in a positive light about illegal substances as part of the war on drugs?

Meanwhile, Senator Kerry of Massachusetts is worried that New England Patriots fans without access to the NFL Network won’t be able to watch the Patriots–Giants game on December 29 and wants the NFL, Time Warner, and Comcast to come down to Washington and mediate a settlement. Again, do the more than six million Massachusetts commonwealth residents feel this is a major concern? Kerry seems to be making the NFL Network his major issue in his bid for re-election for his Senate seat in 2008. As it happens, neither Comcast nor Time Warner seems particularly impressed with Kerry’s offer.

The strangest thing about sports legislation is that Congress has passed no significant sports bills in decades, yet they are always seeking publicity through sports. Back on July 27, Illinois Representative Bobby Rush sent a letter to NBA Commissioner David Stern saying that he was “monitoring the situation” concerning the Tim Donaghy betting allegations and that Congressman Rush, the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection, was considering holding a hearing on the matter. But apparently Rush was satisfied with the NBA’s response and has not invited Stern to talk before his committee about Donaghy.

Away from the Beltway, politicians continue to try and pour money into sports. Miami has a grand plan to build not only a ballpark for the Florida Marlins at the soon-to-be-razed parcel of land that currently houses the Orange Bowl, but city politicians also want to build a MLS facility on the property. In Santa Clara, Calif., local officials might raise the local hotel and motel tax to provide money for a new San Francisco 49ers football stadium. Meanwhile, California’s Senator Feinstein hasn’t given up on the 49ers’ ownership finding a publicly funded San Francisco stadium. In November 2006, Senator Feinstein was thinking of introducing federal legislation aimed at the 49ers that would prevent a sports team that moves from keeping its name in a new city. Florida Governor Charlie Crist, a former Minor League Baseball lawyer, is on record as supporting a new St. Petersburg stadium for the Tampa Bay Rays. The state of Illinois may be interested in buying Wrigley Field, and Fremont, Calif., is not backing off from entertaining an offer from Oakland A’s owner Lewis Wolf to build a stadium-village in the community, not far from San Jose. Finally, in Texas, NFL lobbyists, namely Commissioner Roger Goodell and Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, are pressuring Texas lawmakers to get cable companies to put the NFL Network on cable systems currently not taking the product. The Mitchell Report and the Barry Bonds indictment seem to have no real effect on how sports operates in America except in one area: It gives politicians something to talk about.

evanjweiner@yahoo.com