WASHINGTON, DC--The House Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection Subcommittee extended an invitation to Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber to attend this week’s steroid hearings. Though soccer has no discernible steroid problem and nobody would care if they did, the committee decided to invite Garber out of politeness. Garber will testify on Wednesday, even though nobody will be listening to him.

“We wanted to interview all the commissioners from the major sports leagues,” said Cliff Stearns (R-FL), chairman of the subcommittee, “so we immediately thought of the obvious guys—Stern, Tagliabue, Selig, and Bettman. Then somehow this Garber guy found about it. He called and was like ‘So…when should I show up to testify?’ I felt so bad. I was like ‘Oh, you didn’t get a call? Um…yea, we want you to show up Wednesday.’ So now he’s testifying during the afternoon session. It’s no problem. It’ll give me an opportunity to run to the bank and do some errands.”

Stearns purposely scheduled Garber as the last speaker so he and his colleagues could have the option of cutting out early during his testimony.

“We’ve got a chance to get early dismissal Wednesday as a result of Mr. Garber speaking,” said Stearns. “I think a few people should stick around just to keep up appearances, but most of us will probably take off, especially if it’s a nice day. I hope he doesn’t take offense to it. After all, we were nice enough to invite him in the first place. He should just be happy that he got to come to Washington and meet a real congressman.”

Garber’s testimony is expected to shed little light on the steroid problem in sports or any solution to that problem. In fact, some members of the committee were surprised to find out that the US had its own professional soccer league.

“We have a soccer league? Wow, I didn’t know that,” said Fred Upton (D-MI). “All this time I thought only children and foreigners played soccer. Well, I guess that answers the question of whether these hearings can get any more pointless. The answer is a resounding ‘yes.’ I guess I’ll have to wear my special glasses with the pictures of the wide-open eyes taped to the lenses. I thought I would have no use for those things after the state of the union address.”

Stearns defended his decision to invite Garber, saying that the commissioner’s testimony might provide a little comic relief during the slow proceedings.

“I don’t think it’s such a bad thing that we have this guy testifying,” said Stearns. “First of all, it was a nice thing to do. I think we made the guy really happy. Secondly, it could be really funny, especially with [Tim] Murphy (R-PA) and [Mike] Ferguson (R-NJ) cracking jokes the whole time, like when we had that FCC guy in here talking about Janet Jackson’s tits. Remember that? I spit coffee all over my goddamn shirt. Not that steroids are a laughing matter. It’s just that soccer is.”

The other commissioners that were invited to speak at the hearing supported Stearns decision to invite Garber. David Stern of the NBA called Garber “a nice guy” who is also known for his brevity.

“I’m glad they called Don. I’ve met him a few times and always found him to be a pleasant individual,” said Stern. “I’ve seen him speak, too. He really gets to the point. He’s not going to give any long-winded speeches like Tagliabue or Selig. And he’s not going to babble incoherently like Gary Bettman. I don’t know what he’s going to be able to tell us about steroid use, but hey, if you’re going to have a dog and pony show, you might as well go all out. He’s just as good at pretending to care as the rest of us.”

Garber, unaware that he was invited to the hearings out of pity, said he was looking forward to contributing to the proceedings. He also said he would do everything in his power to eliminate the scourge of steroids from our national sports landscape.

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