WASHINGTON – Major league baseball has a “legitimacy problem” due to suspicions concerning steroid use among players, Senator John McCain said Wednesday, urging the sport to institute a stronger drug-testing program.

“Sports organizations that allow athletes to cheat through weak drug testing regimes are aiding and abetting cheaters,” McCain, R-Ariz., said at the start of a hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee.

“Each of you, and particularly major league baseball, has a legitimacy problem,” he said, addressing top baseball and football officials in attendance. “As your athletes get bigger and stronger, the credibility of your product in the eyes of the public gets weaker.”

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig and union head Donald Fehr were scheduled to testify, along with NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue and union chief Gene Upshaw.

In his prepared remarks, Selig said major league baseball would like to have stronger testing but couldn’t get the union to agree.

“I realize that we have work to do,” he said. “We need more frequent and year-round testing of players. We need immediate penalties for those caught using illegal substances.”

The committee also is examining legislation sponsored by Sen. Joe Biden that would ban over-the-counter sales of androstenedione, a steroid-like supplement that Mark McGwire used the year he broke the single-season home run mark, and the newly detected steroid THG

Biden criticized the players union for resisting stronger testing for steroids.

“The union’s wrong, here,” said Biden, D-Del. “Baseball is the national pastime, but it’s the repository of the values of this country.

“There’s something simply un-American about this. This is about values, about culture, it’s about who we define ourselves to be.”

Last year, five to seven percent of the tests on players came back positive, even though they knew when the tests were coming. That level triggered more tests later this year, although a player won’t face a year’s suspension until a fifth offense.

The NFL, by contrast, has a year-round random testing program for players and imposes immediate suspensions on those who test positive for banned substances.

Baseball players have gotten larger and stronger in the last 10 years as the game’s signature power play – the home run – became much more common. Some believe players have taken illegal drugs to boost their performances and cash in on huge contracts available to the game’s premier power hitters.

The suspicion that some of the game’s greats are using steroids has loomed over spring training this year.

Some players have said they want a stronger testing program. Last month, Atlanta Braves All-Star reliever John Smoltz recommended tougher testing, saying the game’s integrity was at stake.

“There’s a way they should do tests,” he said. “Do them the way they should be done – not a platform that’s just a smoke screen.”