Mike Brown for commissioner

At least he can stand up to Senate panels, and his ability to blame others for problems he helped create are at least as good as Bud Selig's.

COMMISSIONER Bud Selig wants to make sure that Congress won't have him to kick around anymore. He's so intent on avoiding a repeat of his March 17 drubbing by grandstanding members of Congress that he won't accept the heck of a good compromise the baseball players union has proposed for stiffening steroids suspensions.

Probably the worst aspect of his refusal, which became public yesterday, is that by standing firm on his proposal of last April, he is playing a game of chicken with the union. If the players don't accept his three-strikes-and-you're-out proposal, let them face federal legislation that would impose even harsher penalties on steroids users.

Two days in advance of another Congressional hearing, this one before the Senate Commerce Committee scheduled for tomorrow, Donald Fehr, the union's executive director, wrote Selig a letter and made it public. Fehr's action was in line with Selig's strategy in April when he wrote to Fehr and publicized his 50-100-life proposal.

There is a difference, however. Selig made his letter public to put pressure on the players; his position might not have otherwise been public. Even if Fehr had not made his letter public, the union's position would have been revealed at tomorrow's hearing.

The union has not bought Selig's proposal entirely, but it has agreed to stiffen the penalties for positive steroids tests, and it has offered for the first time to allow players to be tested for amphetamines, another element of Selig's proposal.

"You stated that our agreement must cover amphetamines," Fehr wrote to Selig. "You proposed a structure for accomplishing that, and we have accepted the structure."

Amphetamines have been a baseball staple for decades. No one had ever proposed getting them out of the game. Players testified at the Pittsburgh drug trials in 1985 that Willie Stargell dispensed greenies to his teammates if they wanted them. Willie Mays had red juice, according to testimony at the trials, the liquid form of greenies, a k a amphetamines.

But Peter Ueberroth, then the commissioner, said he didn't believe the testimony (though he said he believed other testimony that the same players offered under oath) and took no action. Selig is the third commissioner since Ueberroth. He was the acting commissioner and then the real commissioner for a dozen years, make that a dozen and a half, and did nothing about amphetamines, made no attempt to rid baseball of them.

Now amphetamines are suddenly so evil that the union has to agree to have players tested for them, or Congress will enact legislation. So the union does agree, and Selig is still not satisfied.

Data point: the Yankees on Sunday, their last regular season game at The Stadium, announced that attendance had surpassed four million for the first time ever. Clearly, fans are staying away in droves this year, disgusted by the rampant drug use of players. As Yogi once said, "No one goes there anymore, the place is too crowded."

Selig, who talks about the integrity of the game - even though fans have demonstrated in record numbers that they don't have a problem with the integrity of the game - would rather let Congress take over his sport than agree to a genuine compromise with players who have gone further than any group of players before.

Selig's strategy -- I call it the "He did it" plan -- is to play to the Congress' innate capacity to agree with themselves, and paint the Players' Union as the bad guys here. Funny. As Chass notes, Selig was patting himself on the back in March over the great success of last year's drug testing plan. Then he got bitch slapped by Congress and suddenly nothing short of lifetime bans and three strikes your out will do.

Selig should be siding with the players on this one. After all, having opened up their collective bargaining agreement -- an unprecedented action by the powerful union -- they will not take lightly to having this gesture batted away by Selig as being unsatisfactory. They'll remember when the agreement expires and the owners are demanding the next bunch of absurd concessions and threatening a lockout.