McCain Needles Baseball Players, Restore Confidence in Game

ABC’s Bret Hovell Reports: John McCain was quick to react to the Mitchell Report on the use of performance enchancing drugs in baseball and said it should spur the players’ union to "restore confidence back in the game."

"Well I hope as a result of this that the major league baseball players association will come to the table seriously and not continue to drag their feet and delay serious action on this significant information that Senator Mitchell will be revealing about use of performance enhancing substances," McCain said during a stop in Sioux City, Iowa.

He called the use of performance drugs "unfair to the other players in the game who don’t do it, and unfair to the fans and unfair to record holders. So I would strongly urge the major league players association to sit down with the owners and we restore confidence back in the game and to the performance of those players."

In the past, McCain has called baseball’s current drug testing policy "a joke" and threatened to write legislation that would force baseball to have more stringent testing.

During a Senate committee hearing in 2004 when the baseball steroid scandal first surfaced, McCain warned baseball’s owners and union officials that they were in danger of "becoming a fraud in the eyes of the American people" if they didn’t reform the league’s drug testing policies.