SOFTBALL.(The Talk of the Town)(baseball players and steroids)

Over coffee in the cafeteria of the Rayburn House Office Building early Thursday morning, several congressional staffers acknowledged the obvious: baseball had come to Washington, and the politics of sport was threatening to supplant the sport of politics. "I bumped into this reporter, and he was all important, like, 'I'm here to cover the hearings,' " one man said. "Well, we have hearings here every day. I mean, I like baseball, but our priorities are out of order."

"It's hero-worship, that's all it is," another man replied, shaking his head.

Upstairs, inside the chambers of the Committee on Government Reform, the steroid hearings soon began--and demonstrated that hero-worship is thriving, in the halls of Congress, at least. Jim Bunning, the junior senator from Kentucky, and a Hall of Fame pitcher, was the first to testify, and encomiums were quick to follow. Candice Miller (R., Mich.) wanted to let Bunning know that she was grateful that he'd pitched for her home-town Detroit Tigers. She'd even heard he threw a no-hitter. John McHugh (R., N.Y.), for his part, said that he'd visited Cooperstown in 1996 to watch Bunning's Hall of Fame induction--a memorable experience.

Nearly eight hours later, after various passing tributes to Nellie Fox, Mickey Mantle, and Henry Aaron, the urge to be a part of the national pastime had not subsided. Linda Sanchez (D., Calif.) leaned forward and spoke into her microphone: "Let me just start by saying that I'm a huge baseball fan." Jose Serrano (D., N.Y.) looked out at the panel of assembled ballplayers--seated, left to right: Mr. Jose Canseco, Mr. Sammy Sosa, Mr. Mark McGwire, Mr. Rafael Palmeiro, Mr. Curt Schilling--and asked them not to think of his colleagues as legislators. "Think of us as no different than the people you see in the stands," he said.

Meanwhile, some of the athletes seemed to be testing their political chops. Mark McGwire's teary insistence that we focus on positives, not negatives, his repeated assertions that he was there to talk about the future, not the past--it all might have played better on the stump. And Curt Schilling, the most actively political of the bunch (he ...