Bush awaits Mitchell's baseball steroid report

by David Nitkin

Like the rest of a baseball-loving nation, President Bush is awaiting the results of former Sen. George Mitchell's steroid investigation.

The president has not seen an advance copy of the report or been briefed on its contents, White House press secretary Dana Perino said this morning, hours before the findings were to be unveiled in New York.

But as the former managing partner of the Texas Rangers who used to talk about how Major League Baseball commissioner was a dream job, Bush has more than a passing interest in the subject.

For example, Bush was running the Rangers when slugger Sammy Sosa broke into the league on the team's roster. The Sosa of the Rangers was not the same player he would later become. He spent only one season on the Texas roster, amassing 20 hits in 84 at bats - with just a single home run - in 1989.

Sosa the long-ball hitter would not emerge for several years, after having moved from the Rangers to the Chicago White Sox (in a trade overseen by Bush) to the Cubs. It was with the latter team that he embarked on an epic -- and quite possibly tainted -- home run duel with Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals. Both players shattered Roger Maris's single-season home-run mark, with McGuire banging out 70 and Sosa hitting 66. The 1998 duel will now be remembered as the highlight of what has become known as baseball's steroid era.

Bush has told interviewers that he has no knowledge of steroid use by Sosa or other Rangers, Perino said yesterday.

But when Ann Compton of ABC News asked if the president believed that team owners bore some responsibility for the long-ignored steroid problem, Perino said she would have to check with the president and get back to her.

David Nitkin covers the White House for the Baltimore Sun, a Tribune Co. newspaper.